Office: HMNSS 2514
Phone:
(951) 827-1379
Fax:
(951) 827-2160
sabine.doran@ucr.edu
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SABINE DORAN
Department of Comparative Literature and Foreign Languages
University of California, Riverside
Riverside, CA 92521-0321
EDUCATION
Ph.D., Freie Universität Berlin, Comparative Literature, 2004
Visiting Researcher, Stanford University, Comparative Literature, 1997-99
DAAD Exchange Student, Stanford University, Comparative Literature, 1996-97
M.A., Philipps-University, Marburg, German Literature (Minor: Film Studies and Philosophy), 1993
ACADEMIC EMPLOYMENT
Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature, University of California, Riverside , 2004-
Visiting Assistant Professor of German, Oberlin College, 2003-04
DISSERTATION
Gelbe Momente: Ästhetische Materialität in Hofmannsthal und der Avantgarde
Director: Gert Mattenklott (Berlin); Co-Director: Karl Heinz Bohrer (Stanford)
This dissertation examines how certain extra-literary techniques derived from mass media were assimilated and deployed in avant-garde texts, specifically with regard to the color yellow. Yellow is seen as best able to concretize and activate the divergent cultural forces at work during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The color of light, warmth, and value (gold), yellow is also the color of decay, death, and excrement. I argue that Hofmannsthal and other avant-garde authors use the ambivalence of yellow to delimit and demarcate what they see as the aesthetic and political ambivalence of the modern era. The comparison between synaesthetic moments of color, sound, and smell in the nineteenth- and early twentieth-centuries reveals a major shift in aesthetic conceptions, from an aesthetics of awakening towards an aesthetics of negativity. I also show how Romanticism and its ideology of the Blue Flower is a pivotal moment in the aesthetics of color, surrounded by Goethe on one side, and the avant-garde of the fin-de-siècle, Surrealism, and Expressionism on the other.
RESEARCH INTERESTS
Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Literature and Culture; Modern Poetry and Theater; Intellectual History; Cinema Studies; Literature and Visual Art; Jewish Studies; Color Theory
OTHER STUDIES
EHESS (Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales): seminar, Jacques Derrida (1999-00)
ASCA (Amsterdam School of Cultural Analysis): intensive seminar, Rudolph Gasché (Kant's Aesthetics), University of Amsterdam (March 2000)
UCLA Paris Program in Critical Theory: seminar, Samuel Weber, Fall 1999, (Benjamin’s Passagenwerk).
HONORS
Horst Frenz Prize nomination, American Comparative Literature Association, 2001
DAAD Scholarship, Stanford University, 1996-97
Hessische Nachwuchswissenschaftlerförderung, 1994-96
Stipendium der Künstlerkolonie Worpswede, 1989-90
BOOK IN PROGRESS
The Aesthetics of Yellow in Modern Art and Literature
ARTICLES
"The Temporality of Short Fiction and the Yellow Nineties." In Currents in Short Fiction: Tale Short Story, Novella. Eds. Holger Klein and Wolfgang Görtschacher. Tubingen: Stauffenberg, Studies in English and Comparative Literature, Vol. 20 (2004).
“Chronos/Chroma: Yellow Figures in Proust’s La Prisonnière and Bely’s Petersburg." The Comparatist 28 (2004): 53-75.
CONFERENCE PAPERS
April 2004: “The Still-Moment: Towards an Aesthetics of Synaesthesia in Film” on Film and Global Flow panel, American Comparative Literature Association Annual Conference at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
November 2001: "The Temporality of Short Fiction and the Yellow Nineties," Currents in Short Fiction, Institute for English Studies, University of Salzburg .
April 2001: "Chronos - Chroma: Departing in Yellow" on East/West panel, ACLA annual conference at the University of Colorado, Boulder. Paper was nominated for the Frenz Prize.
TEACHING EXPERIENCE
Summer 2004 - Free University of Berlin, SummerUniversity: “Berlin-Metropolis.”
Intensive interdisciplinary course in German culture. Course explores the city through film, art, and literary texts. Berlin's dramatic transformations—its rise, fall, and resurrection—are studied as a microcosm of Germany's and Europe's troubled history in the twentieth century. Readings from Brecht, Kafka, Benjamin, Kaiser, Döblin, Christa Wolf, and Heiner Müller. Films include The Cabinett of Dr. Caligari, Wings of Desire and Run, Lola Run.
Summer 2004 - Free University of Berlin, SummerUniversity: “Exile Literature: Mann, Brecht, and Adorno.”
This course treats the major aspects of exile: identity, political alternatives, the situation and history of the exile country, including comparisons between Germany and the country of exile. We examine the form and function of exile literature and ask how exile literature enriched and influenced German literature in general. Authors covered include Celan, Brecht, Klaus and Thomas Mann, Anna Seghers, Hannah Arendt, Adorno and Horkheimer. The course features afternoon excursions to the Jewish museum, the literary colloquium, the Brecht-Haus, and other places of interest.
Summer 2004 - Free University of Berlin, SummerUniversity: “ Berlin in the Twenties.”
Intensive summer course for foreign students, conducted in German. Course examines works by German authors active in Berlin during the city’s golden period: Brecht’s Three Penny Opera (1928); Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front (1929); late stories of Kafka; poems of Benn, Lasker-Schüler. Class excursions to the Jewish quarter, Brecht Theater, and famous artists’ cafés.
Spring 2004 - OberlinCollege: “Still Moments and Moving Pictures: Classic German Cinema.”
This upper division course studies how German cinema developed out of the German theatrical tradition, particularly Expressionism. Classic films from Fritz Lang to Wim Wenders show the power of the still-moment within the moving picture. We also examine the ideological content of German film through an analysis of cinematic techniques.
Spring 2004 - OberlinCollege: “Explorations in Modern German Culture.”
This conversation / composition class studies short excerpts from famous German novelists, poets and philosophers of the late nineteenth and the twentieth centuries. I also use film-clips, songs, and paintings as a springboard for discussion and composition writing. The course is organized around a series of themes, which connect the readings and cultural materials presented each week to specific historical contexts.
Fall 2003 - OberlinCollege: “ Berlin in Film and Literature: A City in Transit.”
This upper division course explored a topography of the city as seen mainly through film and literary texts, but also through architecture and paintings. Berlin’s dramatic transformations—its rise, fall, and resurrection—were studied as a microcosm of Germany’s and Europe’s troubled history in the twentieth century. Readings of Benjamin and Kracauer provided the theoretical background for looking at films such as “Wings of Desire” (Wenders), “The Cabinett of Dr. Caligari,” and the “Three-Penny-Opera.” We also focused on Doeblin’s epic novel “Berlin Alexanderplatz” and its filmic adaptations.
Fall 2003 - OberlinCollege: Elementary German.
In this intensive German class, meeting 5 days a week, I used a multi-media-approach. In conjunction with daily lessons in class, the students are required to use the language lab not only for exercises in pronunciation, but also for the weekly test that I posted on the “Blackboard” system. I used the textbook “Neue Horizonte,” which offers a variety of innovative material, e.g., an almanac introducing each chapter, a “video-corner,” and an “info-exchange.”
Fall 2003 - OberlinCollege: Intermediate German.
Complete responsibility for lectures, office hours and grading. Goal of the course was grammar review, which included a wide variety of readings covering German cultural history, music, film, and literature. I used the textbook “Kaleidoscope.” For three weeks we focused on Friedrich Duerrenmatt’s novel, Der Richter und sein Henker, as well as the filmic adaptation.
Summer 2003 - Freie Universität Berlin, SummerUniversity: “Expression and Epic Theatre: Kafka, Brecht and the Bauhaus.”
Intensive summer course for foreign students, conducted in German. Complete responsibility for curriculum design, grading, lectures, excursions. This course examined early twentieth-century artistic movements in an effort to create an interface between literary texts and visual art. Works studied included Kaiser’s The Burgers of Calais, Brecht’s The Good Person of Szechuan, Kafka’s “The Hunger Artist,” and paintings by Kirchner, Kandinsky, and Marc. Excursion to the Bauhaus Archive, the Brücke Museum, and the Brecht House offered students a concrete experience of Berlin’s artistic life.
Summer 2002 - Freie Universität Berlin, SummerUniversity: “ Berlin in the Twenties.”
Intensive summer course for foreign students, conducted in German. Complete responsibility for curriculum design, grading, lectures, excursions. Course examined works by German authors active in Berlin during the city’s golden period: Brecht’s The Three Penny Opera (1928); Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front (1929), late stories of Kafka, poems of Benn, Lasker-Schüler. Class excursions to the Jewish quarter, Brecht theater, and famous artists’ cafés, charted a literary topography of Berlin.
1994 - Language Instructor in German, Bildungswerk, Hannover. Complete responsibility for intensive language courses for Russian-German immigrants.
1993 - Language Instructor in German, Jazykova Skola, Prague . Complete responsibility for intensive language and culture courses for advanced students of German.
LANGUAGES
German: native speaker
English: near-native fluency
French: read, speak
Latin & Russian: read
REFERENCES
Karl Heinz Bohrer, Professor of Comparative Literature
Department of Comparative Literature
Stanford University
René Girard, Andrew B. Hammond Professor (Emeritus)
Departments of Comparative Literature, Religious Studies, and French and Italian
Stanford University
Gert Mattenklott, Professor of Comparative Literature
Allgemeine und Vergleichende Literatur Wissenschaft
Freie Universität Berlin
Hayden White, Professor of Comparative Literature and German
Department of Comparative Literature
Stanford University
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