Dirk Niefanger

Dirk Niefanger, who grew up in Cologne, studied German literature, philosophy, sociology and political science in Tübingen and Vienna. He taught at universities in Göttingen, Berlin and Braunschweig before taking up the chair of ‘Modern German Literature with a Systematic Focus’ in Erlangen. He is currently an elected member of the DFG Review Board for Literary and Cultural Studies. Although his research interests are wide-ranging, they are methodologically related through the cultural-historical understanding of literature. They lie in the early modern period (Baroque, drama/theater, literary positioning), modernism (Viennese modernism, interwar period) and contemporary culture. Aspects of the Graduiertenkolleg, such as authorship and authorial staging (e.g. in the DFG project ‘Posierende Poeten’), work politics (e.g. with Monika Maron), the relationship between sociography and literature (e.g. in a DVjs essay on Kracauer), war, social distinction and the forms and functions of reality references, autofictions and biographemes, repeatedly occupy him. He is particularly interested in German Pop Literature (for example in the Brinkmann Handbook), including its regional manifestations (Ruhrpop). In June 2023, Wallstein published his latest book: ‘Lessing divers. Soziale Milieus, Genderformationen, Ethnien und Religionen’.

 

Publications on the research field of the Research Training Group in recent years:

 

• Auf Bäckertüten und Koffergurten. Literatur als regionales Lifestyle-Produkt im öffentlichen Raum, in: Literatur im öffentlichen Raum, Sonderband Text+Kritik, hg. v. Doren Wohlleben, München 2023, S. 63–74.
• Hanns-Josef Ortheils Erfindung seines Lebens. Autofiktion – Werkpolitik – Öffentlichkeitspräsenz, in: Studi Germanici (Roma) 21 (2022), S. 99–118.
• Rolf Dieter Brinkmann Handbuch, hg. v. Markus Fauser, Dirk Niefanger und Sibylle Schönborn, Stuttgart: Metzler 2020.
• Erzählen als Zumutung. Ein Unding der Liebe (1981) von Ludwig Fels, in: Christine Lubkoll, Manuel Illi, Anna Hampel (Hg.): Politische Literatur. Begriffe, Debatten, Aktualität, Stuttgart: Metzler 2019, S. 385–400.
• 1968 und die deutsche Literatur. In: Helmut Neuhaus (Hg.): Die 68er plus 50 Jahre. Atzelsberger Gespräche 2018. Erlangen: FAU Press 2019, 41–61.
• Realitätsreferenzen im Gegenwartsroman. Überlegungen zu ihrer Systematisierung, in: Birgitta Krumrey, Ingo Vogler, Katharina Derlin (Hg.): Realitätseffekte in der deutschsprachigen Gegenwartsliteratur. Schreibweisen nach der Postmoderne?, Heidelberg: Winter 2014, S. 35–62.