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Curriculum Vitae

  • Lena Linne is a postdoctoral researcher and lecturer (wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin) at the chair of English literature. Drawing upon her expertise in classics, she is currently working on a postdoctoral research project which examines the role of Homer's epics in 21st-century English literature. In the context of this project, she spent the winter semester 2022/23 as a visiting scholar at the Centre for Classical Reception at the University of Exeter.
    Her Ph.D. thesis Unlived Lives in English Literature: A Typological Study was published in September 2019. It combines narratology and the study of motifs, and it focuses on a wide range of authors, among them Henry James, Virginia Woolf and Alice Munro.
    She obtained her M.Ed. degree in English and Latin in 2014, and her B.A. degree in English Studies and Classics in 2011.

Research Interests

  • Classical myths in contemporary literature
  • 20th- and 21st-century fiction
  • Narrative theory
  • Intertextuality
  • Alice Munro
  • Robert Louis Stevenson

Work in Progress

  • Postdoctoral project: "Troy Revisited: The Homeric Epics in Contemporary English Literature"

Publications

Monograph

  • Unlived Lives in English Literature: A Typological Study. Anglistische Forschungen 467. Heidelberg: Winter, 2019.

Articles

  • “Internal Focalization and Restriction of Knowledge in Gothic Novels: The Example of Ann Radcliffe’s The Mysteries of Udolpho.” Literaturwissenschaftliches Jahrbuch, vol. 64, 2023, 225-50.
  • "Meta-Epic Reflection in Twenty-First-Century Rewritings of Homer, or: The Meta-Epic Novel." Connotations 31 (2022): 56-84.
  • With Burkhard Niederhoff: "Annotation as an Embedded Textual Practice: Analysing Explanatory Notes in Three Editions of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.” Connotations 29 (2020): 48-76.
  • "'That's him pushing the stone up the hill': Contemporary Versions of the Sisyphus Myth". Ambige Helden. Ed. Nicolas Potysch and Angelika Zirker. Spec. issue 6 of helden. heroes. héros: E-Journal zu Kulturen des Heroischen (2019): 37-45.
  • "Memorial, Or How Alice Oswald Excavates the Iliad". Nexus: Studentische Zeitschrift des Seminars für Klassische Philologie an der RUB 7 (2018): 28-31.
  • With Burkhard Niederhoff: "'[M]emories and similes laid side by side': The Paratactic Poetics of Alice Oswald’s Memorial". Connotations 27 (2018): 19-47.
  • "Unlived Lives in Alice Munro’s ‘Walker Brothers Cowboy’ and ‘Something I’ve Been Meaning to Tell You’". Literatur in Wissenschaft und Unterricht 48 (2015): 309-24.

Teaching (2014-2023)

Winter Semester 2023/24

  • “A Room of One’s Own”: Women Writing about Writing
  • Introduction to Literary Studies

Previous Courses

    Classical Reception
  • Postcolonialism and the Classics
  • Penelope and Odysseus: Ancient Characters through the Ages
  • The Trojan War and Its Long Aftermath: Homer in the 21st Century
  • Three Contemporary British Poets [C.A. Duffy, A. Oswald, W. Cope]

  • Individual Authors in Focus
  • James Joyce: Dubliners and A Portrait of the Artist
  • Kazuo Ishiguro
  • Cross-Dressing, Gender Identity, Women’s Rights: The Friendship and Fiction of Vita Sackville-West and Virginia Woolf
  • Governesses and Teachers: The Novels of Charlotte and Anne Brontë
  • Alice Munro

  • Fiction and Narrative Theory
  • Metahistorical Fiction
  • Focalization, Perspective, Point of View: A Historical Perspective
  • Modernist Short Stories
  • The Short Story in Canada

  • Themes and Motifs
  • Reading the Comedy of Wit
  • English Romantic Poetry
  • Sensibility from Laurence Sterne to Jane Austen
  • Two Unconventional Socialists: G.B. Shaw and George Orwell
  • Alternate History
  • The Motif of the Unlived Life

  • Survey Courses
  • Introduction to Comedy
  • Introduction to Literary Studies (3x)

Conference Papers and Guest Lectures (Selection)

  • “Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey in Contemporary Women’s Fiction: Victims and Culprits”. Conference “Bestselling Muses: Current Popular Retellings of Greek and Roman Myth from a Female Perspective”, Rome, October 26, 2023.
  • “Landmarks of the Oral Tradition: What the Reception of Homer’s Epics Can Tell us About Canonicity”. 17th International Connotations Symposium “Textual Reasons for Canonicity”, Ellwangen, July 31, 2023.
  • “Troy Revisited: The Homeric Epics in Twenty-First-Century Women’s Fiction.” Guest lecture at the Department of Classics and Ancient History, University of Exeter, November 23, 2022.
  • "Von Menschen und Maschinen: Die Optimierung des Menschen in Kazuo Ishiguros Klara and the Sun." Jahrestagung der Görres-Gesellschaft "Die Optimierung des Menschen", RWTH Aachen, September 24, 2022.
  • "Between Homage and Exposure: How Twenty-First-Century Women’s Fiction Revisits the Trojan War Myth." ESSE Conference 2022, Panel "Ancient Greeks and British Modernity", Universität Mainz, September 1, 2022.
  • "'[A] gaming-table, a duel, and a Roman amphitheatre': Pleasure and R. L. Stevenson's Suicide Club." Conference "RLS 2022: Stevenson and Pleasure", Université Bordeaux Montaigne, June 17, 2022.
  • With Shelby Judge (Glasgow): "'We called him the butcher': A Textual Exploration of Pat Barker's The Silence of the Girls." Text exploration session at the workshop "Adapting Violence in/from 'Classic' Texts", University of Bern / online, March 25, 2022.
  • "Adapting Homer's Iliad: Women's Rewritings of the Trojan War." Seminar "Rewriting the Past: Antiquity in Contemporary Literature", Universität Freiburg / online, January 24, 2022.
  • "'Sing, Muse, he said, and I have sung': Metageneric Reflection in Contemporary Rewritings of the Homeric Epics". 16th International Connotations Symposium "Metagenre", online, July 27, 2021.
  • "Oliver Twist: Mehr als nur der Weg eines Fürsorgezöglings". Talk planned to be given at the Blue Square of Ruhr University Bochum, 18 December 2020; cancelled due to coronavirus pandemic.
  • With Burkhard Niederhoff: "Annotation as an Embedded Textual Practice: Analysing Explanatory Notes in Three Editions of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde". 15th International Connotations Symposium "Understanding (through) Annotations", Tübingen, July 29, 2019.
  • With Burkhard Niederhoff: "‘[M]emories and similes laid side by side’: The Paratactic Poetics of Alice Oswald’s Memorial". 14th International Connotations Symposium "Self-Imposed Fetters: The Productivity of Formal and Thematic Restrictions", Mülheim an der Ruhr, August 1, 2017.
  • "The Motif of the Unlived Life in English Literature". Doktoranden/innen-Kolloquium der Fakultät für Philologie "Medien der Literatur/Mediale Gebrauchsformen", Ruhr-Universität Bochum, December 13, 2014.

Miscellaneous

  • 10/2022-02/2023: Visiting Scholar at the Centre for Classical Reception (University of Exeter)
  • since 2021: Member of the Early Career Researchers Board of RUB Research School
  • 2019: Erasmus+ grant for one-week teaching stay at Wroclaw University (Poland)
  • 2016-2018: Mentee in the programme "mentoring³" (Universitätsallianz Ruhr)
  • 2016: NRW-Zertifikat "Professionelle Lehrkompetenz für die Hochschule" (Basismodul)


Address

Dr. Lena Linne
Ruhr-Universität Bochum
Department of English
GB 6/140 Fach 166
44780 Bochum, Germany

Office hours during the term break:
Tue, 11-12 (except March 26)

Please contact me by email to
make an appointment.
You can choose between a meeting
on Zoom and a meeting on campus
(GB 6/140).

Tel: +49-234-32-25056

Email: Lena.Linne-at-rub.de