Blue Humanities Exhibition
Zum Tag der Wissenschaft 2026 stellten Studierende der English-Speaking-Cultures ihre Forschungsergebnisse zum Thema Wasser und Literatur der Öffentlichkeit vor.
Unten finden Sie Literaturangaben und Leseempfehlungen zu folgenden Kursen sowie einige digitalisierte Poster sortiert nach Kursen:
1) The Fate of Ophelia
2) Blue Shakespeare
3) Writing the Caribbean
4) Literary Form
The Blue Humanities: An Overview, by F. Fuß, E. Gauggel Arévalo, R. Pleus, L. Hilf, A. Rizo and K. Sazdova
References:
Alaimo, Stacy. “Trans-Corporeality.” Posthuman Glossary, edited by Rosi Braidotti and Maria Hlavajova, Bloomsbury Academic, 2018, pp. 435-438.
---. “Trans-Corporeal Feminisms and the Ethical Space of Nature.” Material Feminisms, edited by Stacy Alaimo and Susan Hekman, Indiana UP, 2008, pp. 237-64.
---. “States of Suspension: Trans-Corporeality at Sea." ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment, vol. 19, no. 3, Dec. 2012, pp. 476-493. https://doi.org/10.1093/isle/iss068.
Gillis, John R. “The Blue Humanities” Humanities, vol. 34, no. 3, 2013.
Kuznetski, Julia, and Stacy Alaimo. “Transcorporeality: An Interview with Stacy Alaimo.” Ecozon@: European Journal of Literature, Culture and Environment, vol. 11, no. 2, 2020, pp. 137-46 doi.org/10.37536/ECOZONA.2020.11.2.3478.
Mentz, Steve. “Toward a Blue Cultural Studies: The Sea, Maritime Culture, and Early Modern English Literature.” Literature Compass, vol. 6, no. 5, 2009, pp. 997-1013.
---. An Introduction to the Blue Humanities. Routledge, 2024.
Oppermann, Serpil. “Blue Humanities.” Environmental Humanities Glossary: Emergent Key Terms. Edited by Ulrik Ekman and Daniel Irrgang. U of Copenhagen, 2025. https://artsandculturalstudies.ku.dk/research/art-and-earth/environmental-humanities-glossary/blue-humanities/
Ophelia in "Hamlet"
by Amine Beria Kaplan, Lara Marie Behning, Lili Mavie Zietz, Marharyta Nakaliuzhna, Reinaldo Carrillo Núñez, Antonia Schirmer, Asra Caki Patricia Akyüz, Regina Rittscher and Henrike Beckemeyer
References:
Foucault, Michel. “L’eau et la folie.” Médecine et Hygiène, vol. 21, no. 613, 1963, pp. 901–906.
Shakespeare, William. Hamlet. Edited by Ann Thompson and Neil Taylor, Bloomsbury, 2006.
Showalter, Elaine. “Representing Ophelia: Women, Madness, and the Responsibilities of Feminist Criticism.” Shakespeare and the Question of Theory, edited by Patricia Parker and Geoffrey Hartman, Methuen, 1985, pp. 77–94.
Wagner, Linda Welshimer. “Ophelia: Shakespeare’s Pathetic Plot Device.” Shakespeare Quarterly, vol. 14, no. 1, 1963, pp. 94–97. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/2868164.
Ophelia in Pop Culture
by Baris Bolat, Emma Heuke, Marie Heydelmann, Filiz-Sophie Kuruoglu, Lucy Porter, Tim Riemeier, David Scheerer, Angelina Weimer and Emilie Wills
Bachelard, Gaston. L’eau et les Rêves: Essai sur L’imagination de la Matière. Librairie José Cort, 1942.
Berg, Dianne E. “‘I Think Nothing, My Lord’: Emptiness, Absence, and Abused Innocence in ‘Ophelia, the Rose of Elsinore’.” Borrowers and Lenders: The Journal of ShakespeareAppropriations, vol. 9, no. 1, 2023. https://doi.org/10.18274/XSUR9672.
Chen, Xinyi. “Water and Woman: Ophelia’s Femininity in the Elizabethan Age.” Proceedingsof the 2nd International Conference on Literature, Art and Human Development(ICLAHD 2020), Atlantis Press, 2020, pp. 250–256. https://doi.org/10.2991/assehr.k.201215.433.
Condal, Ryan J., and George R. R. Martin, creators. House of the Dragon. HBO Entertainment, 2022–.
Gürbilek, Nurdan, and Victoria Holbrook. “Dried Spring, Blind Mirror, Lost East: Ophelia, Water, and Dreams.” Middle Eastern Literatures, vol. 20, no. 2, 2017, pp. 133–61. https://doi.org/10.1080/1475262X.2017.1342444.
Habinek, Lianne. “Ophelia with Spectator: Hamlet and Watery Cognition.” Water andCognition in Early Modern English Literature, edited by Nicholas Helms and Steve Mentz, Routledge, 2025, pp. 47–64. https://doi.org/10.5117/9789463724791_ch02.
Martin, George R. R. Fire and Blood. Bantam Books, 2018.
Raimi Sam, director. Spider-Man. Performances by Kirsten Dunst, Tobey Maguire, and Willem Dafoe, Columbia Pictures, 2002.
Romanska, Magda. “Ontology and Eroticism: Two Bodies of Ophelia.” Women’s Studies, vol. 34, no. 6, 2005, pp. 485–503. https://doi.org/10.1080/00497870500277914.
Ronk, Martha C. “Representations of ‘Ophelia’.” Criticism, vol. 36, no. 1, 1994, pp. 21–43. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/23116623.
Saarenvesi, Riina. Dracula’s Women: The Representation of Female Characters in aNineteenth-Century Novel and a Twentieth-Century Film. Master’s Thesis, University of Jyväskylä, 2004. urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:jyu-2004938823.
Shakespeare, William. Hamlet. Edited by Robert S. Miola, W. W. Norton, 2019.
Showalter, Elaine. “Representing Ophelia: Women, Madness, and the Responsibilities of Feminist Criticism.” Shakespeare and the Question of Theory, edited by Geoffrey H. Hartman and Patricia Parker, Routledge, 1985, pp. 77–94.
Smith, Alison. “Ophelia and Victorian Visual Culture: Representing Body Politics in theNineteenth Century, by Kimberly Rhodes.” Victorian Studies, vol. 51, no. 3, 2009, pp. 528–530. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/10.2979/vic.2009.51.3.528.
Stoker, Bram. Dracula. 1897. Edited by Roger Luckhurst, Oxford UP, 2011. Oxford World’s Classics.
Swift, Taylor. “Love Story.” Fearless. Big Machine Records, 2008.
---. “Taylor Swift - The Fate of Ophelia (Official Music Video)” YouTube, 5 October 2025, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ko70cExuzZM.
---. “The Fate of Ophelia.” The Life of a Showgirl. Republic Records, 2025.
Talairach-Vielmas, Laurence. “Madwomen and Attics.” Women and the Gothic: AnEdinburgh Companion, edited by Avril Horner and Sue Zlosnik, Edinburgh UP, 2016, pp. 31–45.
Weiner, Robert G. “Three Stories, Three Movies and the Romances of Mary Jane and Spider-Man.” Web-Spinning Heroics: Critical Essays on the History and Meaning of Spider-Man, edited by Robert M. Peaslee and Robert G. Weiner, McFarland, 2012, pp. 166–76.
"I Am Not What I Am": Genderfluidity and Water in Shakespeare's "Twelfth Night", by Lea Hilf and Ghazal Shirvani
References:
Bălan, Andrea. “‘I Am Not What I Am’: Liminality as the Existential Terrain of Twelfth Night.” Literary Imagination, vol. 24, no. 3, 2022, pp. 205-215, https://doi.org/10.1093/litimag/imac044.
Neimanis, Astrida. “Hydrofeminism: Or, On Becoming a Body of Water.” Undutiful Daughters: Mobilizing Future Concepts, Bodies and Subjectivities in Feminist Thought and Practice, edited by Henriette Gunkel, Chrysanthi Nigianni, and Fanny Söderbäck, Palgrave Macmillan, 2012, pp. 85-99.
Shakespeare, William. Twelfth Night, or What You Will. Bloomsbury Publishing, 2025.
“Twelfth Night.” Cincinatti Shakespeare Company, https://cincyshakes.com/on-stage/twelfth-night.
Summary of the Play:
Buccola, Regina. “Twelfth Night by Shakespeare| Plot summary.” YouTube, 28 September 2019, www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=JPQAUs0YRYc&ra=m.
Antonio in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night (c. 1601): Flowing between Queerness and Masculinity, by Michelle Bosnak and Yiqi Liang
References:
Charles, Casey. “Gender Trouble in Twelfth Night.” Theatre Journal, vol. 49, no. 2, 1997, pp.121–41. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/3208678.
Chow, Jeremy. The Queerness of Water: Troubled Ecologies in the Eighteenth Century. University of Virginia Press, 2023. https://doi.org/10.2307/jj.2089632
Maynard, Steven. “Making Waves: Gender and Sex in the History of Seafaring.” Acadiensis, vol. 22, no. 2, p. 144, https://journals.lib.unb.ca/index.php/Acadiensis/article/view/11951.
Lemire, Beverly. “A Question of Trousers: Seafarers, Masculinity and Empire in the Shaping of British Male Dress, C. 1600–1800.” Cultural and Social History, vol. 13, no. 1, 2016, pp. 1–22, https://doi.org/10.1080/14780038.2016.1133493.
Shakespeare, William. Twelfth Night, or, What You Will. Edited by Keir Elam, Arden Shakespeare, 2008.
What Cares These Roarers? How the Sea Subverts Power in Shakespeare’s "The Tempest", by Nana Yaw Amponsah Asomaning
References:
Mentz, Steve. An Introduction to the Blue Humanities. Routledge, 2023.
Chen, Cecilia, et al. Thinking with Water. McGill-Queen's University Press, 2013.
Shakespeare, William. The Tempest. Arden, 2011.
Images:
Crane, Walter, “Boatswain: ‘Hence! What Care These Roarers for the Name of King?’ The Tempest, Act 1, Scene 1, circa 1845 – 1915”, Folger Imaging Department, https://digitalcollections.folger.edu/img34486
Crane, Walter, “Pros: ‘By Accident Most Strange, Bountiful Fortune, Now My Dear Lady, Hath Mine Enemies Brought to This Shore’ The Tempest, Act 1, Scene 2”, circa 1845 – 1915, Folger Imaging Department, https://digitalcollections.folger.edu/img3132
Norwood, Richard, “The First Survey of the Somers Isles (Bermuda), 1622”, Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/
Shakespeare and The Blue Humanities: Sonnets 64 & 65, by Swantje Timm and Liv Grete Enk Bremen
Brayton, Dan. “Sounding the Deep: Shakespeare and the Sea Revisited.” Forum for Modern Language Studies, vol. 46, no. 2, 2010, pp. 189-206.
Steve Mentz, “Shakespeare and the Blue Humanities”, SEL Studies for English Literature, vol. 59, no. 2, 2019, pp. 383-392.
Readings:
Steward, Patrick. “Sonnet 64 - Shakespeare - Patrick Stewart - Self-tape - 2020 - 4K” YouTube, 1 August 2023. www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQXVc9LkINE.
Stewart, Patrick. “Sonnet 65 - Shakespeare - Patrick Stewart - Self-tape - 2020 - 4K” Youtube, 1 August 2023. www.youtube.com/watch?v=oGeZYyXTOHs.
Illyria as a Catalyst, by Marie Hambach
References:
Ake, Jami. “Glimpsing a ‘Lesbian’ Poetics in Twelfth Night.” Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900, vol. 43, no. 2, 2003, pp. 375–394. http://www.jstor.org/stable/4625073.
Charles, Casey. “Gender Trouble in Twelfth Night.” Theatre Journal, vol 49, no. 2, 1997, pp. 121–141. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3208678.
Shakespeare, William. Twelfth Night. Edited by Richard Proudfoot, Ann Thompson, David Scott Kastan and H.R. Woodhuysen, The Arden Shakespeare, Revised Edition, Bloomsbury, 2008.
The Sea, Death and Deception: The Ocean and its Versatile Character in "Twelfth Night", by Helena Wolf
Glossary:
Psychopomps: Deities that transport the souls of the dead from this world to the underworld.
Acheron/Styx: The rivers on which, the dead were transported to the underworld.
Hermes: Messenger of the gods, psychopomp, trickster
Thanatos: Son of goddess Nyx, god of the dead, psychopomp
Elysium: Part of the greek underworld, where the gods themselves, as well as heroes and the
righteous spend their afterlives.
References:
Shakespeare, William. Twelfth Night. Edited by Keir Elam, Bloomsbury Publishing, 2008.
Homer. Homeric Hymns. Homeric Apocrypha. Lives of Homer. Translated by Martin L. West, Harvard University Press, 2003.
Brayton, Dan. "Sounding the Deep: Shakespeare and the Sea Revisited". Forum for Modern Language Studies, vol. 46,2010, pp. 186-206.
Mentz, Steve. "Shakespeare and the Blue Humanities". Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900, vol. 59, no. 2, 2019, pp. 383-392.
Murray, A. S. Manual of Mythology. Greek and Roman, Norse, and Old German, Hindoo and Egyptian Mythology. Wellesley College Library, 1895.
Taylor, Thomas. The Hymns of Orpheus: Tr. from the Original Greek: with a Preliminary Dissertation on the Life and Theology of Orpheus. B. White and Sons, 1792.
Images:
Hirémy-Hirschl, Adolf, “Die Seelen am Acheron”. 1898. Wikimedia. https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datei:Adolf_Hir%C3%A9my-Hirschl_-_Die_Seelen_am_Acheron_-_942_-_%C3%96sterreichische_Galerie_Belvedere.jpg
Twelfth Night, 1969: Judi Dench as Viola. Reference ID 115616. Photo by Reg Wilson (c) RSC. https://images.rsc.org.uk/
Writing the Caribbean: Water and the British Empire
References and Further Reading:
Chow, Jeremy. Eighteenth-Century Environmental Humanities. Bucknell University Press, 2022.
Chow, Jeremy. The Queerness of Water: Troubled Ecologies in the Eighteenth Century. University of Virginia Press, 2023
Mentz, Steve. 2023. An Introduction to the Blue Humanities. Routledge.
Krise, Thomas W., editor. “Introduction.” Caribbeana: An Anthology of English Literature of the West Indies, 1657-1777. University of Chicago Press, 1999.
Kaul, Suvir. Eighteenth-Century British Literature and Postcolonial Studies. Edinburgh University Press, 2009.
Download the full course bibliography
Image Credits:
“Bostar Roads, St. Kitts”, from A Residence in the West Indies and America by Thomas Staunton St. Clair (London, 1834). Source: Wikimedia.
Illustration from The Life and Strange Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe, illustrated by Walter Paget (London: Cassel & Co, 1896). Source: Wikimedia.
Illustration of two British ships dismasted in the Great Hurricane of 1780 near the island of St. Lucia in the eastern Caribbean by William Elliott (1784). Source: Wikimedia.
Identity and Self-Representation in Olaudah Equiano’s "The Interesting Narrative" (1789), by Lorette Genot and Nana Yaw Asomaning
References:
Bohls, Elizabeth A. Slavery and the Politics of Place: Representing the Colonial Caribbean. Cambridge University Press, 2014. Cambridge Studies in Romanticism.
Bolster, William Jeffrey. Black Jacks: African American Seamen in the Age of Sail. Harvard University Press, 1997.
Equiano, Olaudah. The Interesting Narrative. 1789. Edited by Brycchan Carey, Oxford University Press, 2018.
Howard, Jonathan. Inhabitants of the Deep: The Blueness of Blackness. De Gruyter, 2025.
Kloß, T. Sinah, et al. “Competing Memories: An Introduction to the Politics of Remembering Enslavement, Emancipation, and Indentureship in the Caribbean.” Competing Memories of Enslavement, Emancipation and Indentureship: The Politics of Remembering in the Caribbean. Edited by Sinah Theres Kloß, Andrea Gremels and Ulrike Schmieder. De Gruyter, 2026, pp. 1–21.
Mentz, Steve. An Introduction to the Blue Humanities. 1st ed., Routledge, 2023.
Image Credits:
Orme, Daniel. “Olaudah Equiano or Gustavus Vassa the African”, 1789, Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Olaudah_Equiano_-_Project_Gutenberg_eText_15399.png
Bodies, Water and Voice: Water as a Barrier and a Bridge in "A History of Mary Prince" (1831), by Michelle Bosnak, Dona Angel Robert Anitha and Kate Denney
References:
Aljoe, Nicole N. “Creole Testimonies in Caribbean Women’s Slave Narratives.” Caribbean Literature in Transition, 1800–1920, vol. 1, edited by Evelyn O’Callaghan and Tim Watson, Cambridge University Press, 2021. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108647830.004.
Baumgartner, Barbara. “The Body as Evidence: Resistance, Collaboration, and Appropriation in the History of Mary Prince.” Callaloo, vol. 24, no. 1, 2001, pp. 253–275. https://doi.org/10.1353/cal.2001.0005.
Larrabee, Mary Jeanne. “‘I Know What a Slave Knows’: Mary Prince’s Epistemology of Resistance.” Women Studies, vol. 35, no. 5, 2006, pp. 453–473. https://doi.org/10.1080/00497870600716381.
Mary Prince. The History of Mary Prince: A West Indian Slave. 1831. Penguin Classics, 2000.
Neimanis, Astrida. “Hydrofeminism: Or, On Becoming a Body of Water.” Undutiful Daughters: New Directions in Feminist Thought and Practice (Breaking Feminist Waves). Edited by Henriette Gunkel, Chrysanthi Nigianni and Fanny Söderbäck, Palgrave Macmillan, 2012, pp. 85–99.
Paquet, Sandra Pouchet. “The Heartbeat of a West Indian Slave: The History of Mary Prince.” African American Review, vol. 26, no. 1, 1992, p. 131. https://doi.org/10.2307/3042083.
Image Credits:
Cover of the Penguin Classics Edition (2000). Detail of a nineteenth-century banner reproduced by courtesy of Anti-Slavery International, London (photo: James Harris).
Watery Form by Emma Heuke
References:
Falconer, Blas. “Couplet.” Handbook of Poetic Forms, edited by Jessica Bandschuh and Irmtraud Huber, De Gruyter, 2025, pp. 213-229
Oswald, Alice. “A Short Story of Falling.” Poetry Foundation, https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/90860/a-short-story-of-falling.
Oswald, Alice. “Poet Alice Oswald Reads From Falling Awake.” YouTube, 16 December 2022, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MTLfOJMs51s.
"Ode on a Storm" by an anonymous author, by Esther Köhlmoos
“Ode.” A Little Book on Form: An Exploration Into the Formal Imagination of Poetry, Harper Collins, 2017, pp. 209–221.
“Ode on a Storm.” The Oxford Book of The Sea, edited by Jonathan Raban. Oxford University Press, 2001, pp. 117–119.