Beate Schirrmacher
ASSOCIATE PROFESSORBeate Schirrmacher is an associate professor in comparative literature. She earned her PhD in German Literature in 2012 at Stockholm University and her M.A. in Comparative Literature at Freie Universität Berlin in 2000.
Beate's research centers on intermedial questions exploring how literature interacts with other media. Especially, she has focused on the intermedial relationship between literature and music, for example how to analyze fiction that appears to be structured like a sonata or a fugue and why classical music in literature and film is so often linked to violence.
Currently, she explores the representation of legal trials in literature and news media asking how the representation of legal processes also mediates issues of credibility and the construction what we perceive to be facts.
As a former freelance journalist, she continues to comment on research-related questions in news media, on the radio and in newspapers.
Teaching
Beate teaches Introduction to Literary Analysis in Comparative Literature as well as Literary History at basic level, as well as several courses in intermediality at both basic and advanced level. She also supervises at basic and advanced level.
Research
Representation of Trials in other Media (with Corina Löwe)
A legal trial is a complex process used to agree upon what can be considered as (legal) facts. Representations of trials in other media don't only tell the story of a specific case but also convey questions of truth production and credibility. In this project, we investigate how social conflicts and questions of truth production are mediated when trials appear in literature, film, and news media. Which aspects are chosen for a credible re-presentation of the complexity of the trial? And how can these insights be used in today's social climate which lacks a common basis on what can be regarded as facts and truth?
The Common Ground of Music and Violence in Literature (2014-2016)
Why do so many texts with intermedial reference to music deal with violence, war and trauma? Throughout history, violence and music have proven to be easily combined. The combination of music and violence in literature and film however, repeatedly calls forth ambivalent reactions. This is often superficially explained as a contrast of beauty and barbarism. Texts like A Clockwork Orange or films like Apocalypse Now, however, suggest that music and violence have much in common.
This project follows up on these questions, by analyzing the intermedial references to music in violent contexts in texts of Heinrich von Kleist, Anthony Burgess's A Clockwork Orange and Elfriede Jelinek's Die Klavierspielerin. These texts do highlight the common ground music shares with violence. Taken together, music and violence do render each other ambiguous as ethical and aesthetic questions are at stake at the same time. This merging creates ambivalence in reception, which in the texts is used to highlight affect and performative language, which are felt as an assault in reading.
Music in the Fiction of Günter Grass (2005-2012)
Beates PhD-thesis explores the role of music in Günter Grass's novels. In pointing out the vital role of intermediality for Grass's narrative strategies, the thesis opens up for a new, intermedial perspective on his work. The study develops a transmedial methodology for analysing intermedial references, stressing how the notion of "musicality" within the text is created by media characteristics shared by both music and literature as repetition, simultaneity and performativity. It shows how references to music are used to realise Grass's poetological concept of the simultaneous presence of past, present and future, paspresenture.
My research groups
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Digital Humanities Digital humanities is an interdisciplinary field of study that represents a bridge between the arts and humanities and information technology.
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Linnaeus University Centre for Intermedial and Multimodal Studies (IMS) IMS is an interdisciplinary research centre that takes a broad media-oriented perspective on questions of narration, meaning…
My ongoing research projects
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Project: Communication across Media Borders: The Limitations and Possibilities of Transmediation The project investigates how meaning is changed – corrupted or enhanced – when travelling among…
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Project: On Narratives in Criminal Trials The aim of this project is to study narratives in authentic criminal trials and also in fictional contexts where trials are described.
Publications
Article in journal (Refereed)
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Schirrmacher, B., Hart, H. (2022). Music, Noise, and Nature: : Energetic Ambiguities in Benedikt Erlingsson's Woman at War.. Music and the Moving Image. 15 (3). 3-19.
Status: Published -
Schirrmacher, B., Löwe, C. (2021). Hur rapporteras från en rättegång och varför? : Rättegångsrapportering som medietransformation. HumaNetten. (46).
Status: Published -
Schirrmacher, B. (2019). Der wohltemperierte Erzähler : Die Gewalt ambivalenter Erzählung in Heinrich von Kleists „Die Heilige Cäcilie oder Die Gewalt der Musik". German Life and Letters. 72 (3). 279-296.
Status: Published -
Schirrmacher, B. (2019). The Transmediation of Ambivalence. Violence and Music in Burgess's A Clockwork Orange and Kubrick's Film Adaptation. Ekphrasis. Images, Cinema, Theory, Media. 22 (2). 26-40.
Status: Published -
Schirrmacher, B. (2017). Disturbing the Metaphor : Performance and Medial Presence in the Fiction of Elfriede Jelinek and Günter Grass. Academic Quarter. 16. 36-50.
Status: Published -
Schirrmacher, B. (2016). Musical Performane and Textual Performativity in Elfriede Jelinek's The Piano Teacher. Danish Musicology Online. Word and Music Studies. 85-99.
Status: Published
Conference paper (Refereed)
- Schirrmacher, B. (2014). The Common Grounds of Music and Violence : Depicting Violence in Literature with Intermedial References to Music. Ideolgy in Words and Music: Proceedings of the 2nd Conference of the Word and Music Association Forum Stockholm, November 8–10, 2012. 141-154.
- Schirrmacher, B. (2012). The Use of Musical Intermediality in Creating Spatial Temporality : Günter Grass's Novel Ein weites Feld (1995). Time and Space in Words and Music: Proceedings of the 1rst Conference of the Word and Music Association Forum, Dortmund, November 4-6, 2010. 111-123.
- Schirrmacher, B. (2010). Die Engführung der Zeit : Intermedialität und Günter Grass' Konzept der Vergegenkunft. Sprache – Literatur – Kultur. Text im Kontext : Beiträge zur 8. Arbeitstagung schwedischer Germanisten in Uppsala, 10.-11.10.2008. 279-288.
- Schirrmacher, B. (2009). Günter Grass's 'Paspresenture' and the Musicalization of Im Krebsgang. WMA online.
- Schirrmacher, B. (2008). Die Unzuverlässigkeit des schuldigen Erzählers : Erzählerfiguren bei Günter Grass, ihr Verhältnis zur Schuld und das Häuten einer Zwiebel. Points of Arrival / Zielpunkte : Travels in Time, Space, and Self / Unterwegs in Zeit, Raum und Selbst. 119-128.
Chapter in book (Refereed)
- Bruhn, J., Schirrmacher, B. (2022). Media combination, transmediation and media representation. Intermedial Studies : An Introduction to Meaning Across Media. London, Routledge. 100-105.
- Atã, P., Schirrmacher, B. (2022). Media and Modalities : Literature. Intermedial Studies : An Introduction to Meaning Across Media. London, Routledge. 42-55.
- Holt, K., Schirrmacher, B. (2022). Media and Modalities – News Media. Intermedial Studies : An Introduction to Meaning Across Media. London, Routledge. 86-99.
- Bruhn, J., Lutas, L., Salmose, N., Schirrmacher, B. (2022). Media Representation : Film, Music and Painting in Literature. Intermedial Studies : An Introduction to Meaning Across Media. Routledge. 162-193.
- Bäckström, P., Führer, H., Schirrmacher, B. (2022). The intermediality of performance. Intermedial Studies : An Introduction to Meaning Across Media. London, Routledge. 198-224.
- Bruhn, J., Salmose, N., Schirrmacher, B., Tornborg, E. (2022). Truthfulness and truth claims as transmedial phenomena. Intermedial Studies : An Introduction to Meaning Across Media. Routledge. 225-254.
- Löwe, C., Schirrmacher, B. (2021). How to Tell the Story of a Trial : Media Transformation in Court Reporting. Narratives in the Criminal Process. Frankfurt am Main, Vittorio Klostermann Verlag. 277-297.
- Schirrmacher, B. (2021). Singing words and Sticky Music : Fragmentary Lyrics and Acts of Violence. Arts of Incompletion : Fragments in Words and Music. Leiden, Brill Academic Publishers. 143-165.
- Rossholm, A.S., Schirrmacher, B. (2018). Witnessing AIDS in the Archive. A Visual History of HIV/AIDS : Exploring the Face of AIDS Film Archive. Abingdon & New York, NY, Routledge. 28-43.
- Schirrmacher, B. (2018). Ambivalenz verspüren : Musik, Gewalt und der Körper in Elfriede Jelinek’s Die Klavierspielerin und Anthony Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange. Visualisierungen von Gewalt : Beiträge zu Film, Theater und Literatur. Berlin, Peter Lang Publishing Group. 125-143.
Collection (editor) (Refereed)
- Wåghäll Nivre, E., Schirrmacher, B., Egerer, C. (2013). (Re-)Contextualizing Literary and Cultural History : The Representation of the Past in Literary and Material Culture. Stockholm, Acta Universitatis Stockholmiensis. 318.
Conference proceedings (editor) (Refereed)
- Schirrmacher, B., Hart, H., Heady, K., Hinz, H. (2014). Ideology in Words and Music : Proceedings of the 2nd Conference of the Word and Music Association Forum Stockholm, November 8–10, 2012. Stockholm, Acta Universitatis Stockholmiensis. 181.
- Grote, M., Henjum, K.B., Ingebrigtsen, E., Pietzuch, J.P., Pietzuch, A., et al. (2013). Perspektiven : Das IX. Nordisch-Baltische Germanistentreffen in Os/Bergen, 14.-16. Juni 2012. Stockholm, Acta Universitatis Stockholmiensis. 600.
Conference paper (Other academic)
- Jensen, S.K., Schirrmacher, B. (2019). Wagner Attacks : “The Ride of the Valkyries” in War and Propaganda. Sounds of Mass Media: Music in Journalism and Propaganda : Program with abstracts. 3-4.
Chapter in book (Other academic)
- Bruhn, J., Schirrmacher, B. (2022). Intermedial Studies. Intermedial Studies : An Introduction to Meaning Across Media. London, Routledge. 3-27.
- Schirrmacher, B. (2016). Mute Performances : Ekphrasis of Music and Performative Aesthetics in Eyvind Johnson’s Romantisk berättelse. Silence and Absence in Literature and Music. Amsterdam, Brill Academic Publishers. 102-116.
- Schirrmacher, B. (2015). Günter Grass intermedial : Text zwischen Bild und Klang. Freipass : Schriften der Günter und Ute Grass Stiftung. Band 1. Berlin, Christoph Links Verlag. 221-233.
- Schirrmacher, B. (2015). Störfaktor Medium : Fernsehen, Video und Internet bei Günter Grass. Sendbote zwischen den Kulturen : Gustav Korlén und die germanistische Tradition an der Universität Stockholm. Stockholm, Acta Universitatis Stockholmiensis. 275-288.
- Schirrmacher, B. (2015). Interdisziplinärer Workshop für NachwuchswissenschaftlerInnen Elfriede Jelinek - "Es ist Sprechen und aus" : Die Arbeitsgruppe 4 - Intermediale Fragestellungen. Jelinek(Jahr)Buch 2014-2015. Wien, Praesens Verlag. 279-287.
- Schirrmacher, B. (2015). Några tonsteg mot tystnaden : Musik i Eyvind Johnsons Romantisk berättelse. Omvägar till sanningen : Nya Perspektiv på Eyvind Johnsons författarskap. Höör, Symposion Brutus Östlings bokförlag. 67-85.
- Schirrmacher, B. (2014). ‘Glaube Hoffnung Liebe‘ : Das Kapitel einer Un-Heilsgeschichte in der Blechtrommel. Von Katz und Maus und mea culpa : Religiöse Motive im Werk von Günter Grass. Köln, Peter Lang Publishing Group. 161-178.
Doctoral thesis, monograph (Other academic)
- Schirrmacher, B. (2012). Musik in der Prosa von Günter Grass : Intermediale Bezüge —Transmediale Perspektiven. Doctoral Thesis. Stockholm, Acta Universitatis Stockholmiensis. 281.
Collection (editor) (Other academic)
- Bruhn, J., Schirrmacher, B. (2022). Intermedial Studies : An Introduction to Meaning Across Media. London, Routledge. 354.
Article, review/survey (Other academic)
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Schirrmacher, B. (2013). Trummor och kontrapunkt : musikens roll i Günter Grass prosa. Litteratur och språk. Västerås, Mälardalens Högskola. (9). 29-56.
Status: Published
Article, book review (Other academic)
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Schirrmacher, B. (2010). Rezension: Odendahl, Johannes. Literarisches Musizieren. Wege des Transfers von Musik in die Literatur bei Thomas Mann. Moderna Språk. 104 (1). 59-61.
Status: Published
Article in journal (Other (popular science, discussion, etc.))
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Schirrmacher, B. (2019). Så kan kulturen hjälpa oss att hålla två tankar i huvudet samtidigt. Dagens Nyheter. (2019-09-06).
Status: Published -
Schirrmacher, B. (2006). Grass och tyskarnas ömma punkt. Uppsala Nya Tidning. 12 nov. B8.
Status: Published -
Schirrmacher, B. (2004). Kerstin Ekmans världsbild : en kvinnlig utopi. Nya Argus. 97 (7). 127-134.
Status: Published -
Schirrmacher, B. (2004). Ett musikaliskt offer : Om fugans inflytande i Günter Grass’ novell Krabbans gång. Artes (Stockholm). 30 (2). 71-86.
Status: Published -
Schirrmacher, B. (2003). Att göra utopin levande igen : Upprepning och utopi i Kerstin Ekmans "Gör mig levande igen". Artes (Stockholm). 29 (2). 78-87.
Status: Published
Article, book review (Other (popular science, discussion, etc.))
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Schirrmacher, B. (2007). Alla ska inte med längre : Tysk socialreform kanske visar vart Sverige är på väg. Miljömagasinet. Miljömagasinet Alternativet. 27 (2). 10.
Status: Published