Second Cohort

Anne Bertram

Anne holds a BA in British Studies as well as a BA and MA in American Studies from the University of Leipzig. During her studies she received funding from the Studienstiftung des Deutschen Volkes, worked as an instructor and research assistant at the Institute for American Studies in Leipzig, and as a social media manager for the German-American Institute Saxony. Her research interests are located in the realm of popular culture and film studies, predominantly centering on displays of femininity and contemporary renditions of regional Gothic.

 

Project: Imaginings of White Femininity in Contemporary Iterations of Sentimental Southern Gothic Visual Culture (WT)

Recent years have seen an increase and revival of a Southern Gothic aesthetic on social media platforms and in US film. At the core of this visual culture is the commodified staging of untouched nature, abandoned buildings, Christian symbolism, and young white women. In my dissertation project, I explore how this aesthetic is permeated by the sentimental and which dominant myths about US-American society are reproduced and worked through in these cultural products. My aim is to develop the concept of a ‘sentimental Southern Gothic’ which is centered around the therein contained narratives and imaginings of white femininity. On a theoretical level, the intricacies and the tying together of research on the sentimental as well as the Gothic mode is decisive and further intertwined with perspectives from regionalism, affect, hauntology and nostalgia studies. The cultural work of the ’sentimental Southern Gothic‘ is then to be captured and decoded through a discourse analysis of social media content and film. By uncovering how products of this specific visual culture construct and promote an image of a supposedly apolitical and ahistorical US South, my dissertation project seeks to make a critical contribution to existing understandings of the sentimental as an aesthetic narrative strategy.

 

Isabelle Brandis

Isabelle Brandis studied English and American Studies as well as Scandinavian Studies at Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg. She holds a master’s degree in North American Studies: Culture and Literature. Due to her vast interest in languages, she acquired basic knowledge of Spanish and Korean through language courses and self-study, and is furthermore fluent in English, Swedish and Danish. Her research interests focus on representations of race, class, gender and sexuality in popular culture and literature.

 

Project: Unraveling the Sentimental: Girlhood, Home, and Family Bonds in Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women, Lucy Maud Mongomery’s Anne of Green Gables and Their Screen Adaptations

Children have always been at the center of sentimental discourse as almost nothing is more deeply rooted in sentimentalization than the depiction of a child and the process of coming-of-age. Childhoods and the relationships to family and kin provide a broad playing field for sentimental discourse and are often expressed in a sentimental code that can be well analyzed in literary texts and media representation. Anne of Green Gables (1908) by Lucy Maud Montgomery and Little Women (1868/69) by Louisa May Alcott are among the most beloved North American (children’s) classics, which still enjoy great popularity internationally since their publication, not least also thanks to their well-known adaptations. In my PhD project I will thus examine the complex portrayals of affective intensity as part of the Little Women and Anne of Green Gables narratives and consider changes in the characters’ identity constructions and interpersonal relationships throughout their various adaptational interpretations over the years. Further attention will be paid to the adoption or rejection of the narratives’ historically sentimentalized notions of marriage and female domesticity with a special focus on the significance that is ascribed to the concepts of family, the creation of kinship and community within the construction of home and a place of belonging. The planned research aims to demonstrate the nuances within the sentimental representations of nineteenth-century girlhood and familial bonds in a comparative juxtaposition of the original texts and their selected adaptations.

 

Sandra Grimminger

Sandra holds a Master’s degree in Sociology from Friedrich Alexander University Erlangen-Nuremberg. After graduating, she engaged in ethnographic research projects centred on the subject of digitalisation. Her research is driven by the question of why we believe what we believe and how social reality is created. Since April 2025, she has been doing her doctorate as part of the DFG Research Training Group “The Sentimental in Literature, Culture and Politics”.

Project: The Influence of Sentimental Narratives on Collective Identity Formation in Spiritual Volunteering

The research project investigates how emotionalized narratives and sentimentally framed experiences contribute to the creation of belonging and identity in the context of spiritual volunteering. The focus is on the question of how longing, nostalgia and affective connectedness are staged, experienced and negotiated in ritualized practices and communal communication. Spiritual volunteering – for example in yoga retreats or ashrams – offers an exemplary experiential space in which romanticized notions of closeness to nature, inner authenticity and transcendent community are cultivated. The project pursues a sociology of knowledge and symbolic-interactionist approach in order to analyze the performative power of feelings and sentimentality in these social processes. Through ethnographic fieldwork and the evaluation of affectively charged interactions, the aim is to show how emotional experiences are collectively interpreted, shared and condensed into an element of identity-forming community. The focus is particularly on the social practices and narratives through which spirituality is experienced and embodied as a perceived truth.

 

Vanessa Hardinger

Vanessa received her BA in English Literature with a minor in Communication Studies from the
University of Nevada, Reno and her MA in English Studies from Friedrich-Alexander-Universität
Erlangen-Nürnberg. Her research interests include Romantic and Victorian literature, gothic and
horror studies, gender studies, popular media and culture, narratology and genre theory.

Project: Heartache Horror: Home, Family, and Generational Trauma in the Sentimental Horror of
Mike Flanagan’s Television Series

This project focuses on modern popular horror which explores personal and cultural generational trauma through the use of the home and family as a site of both sentimentality and horror. Drawing on the tropes and traditions of Gothic literature, much of contemporary horror explores the haunting nature of the past through its lingering griefs, traumas, and injustices, which, failing to have been properly confronted and rectified, continue to antagonize the present. This project will explore the combination of horror and sentimentality and how it creates a space for richly textured stories which explore the emotional depths of both the personal and cultural traumas of a given society. A cultural reading of popular modern horror, such as thetelevision works of director Mike Flanagan (The Haunting of Hill House, The Haunting of Bly Manor, Midnight Mass, The Midnight Club, and The Fall of the House of Usher) aims to question how sentimentality operates as a mode of storytelling within horror, as well as contribute to the discussion of how sentimentality may exist as horror as well.

 

Jacob Hovde

Jacob Hovde holds a master’s degree in British and North American Cultural Studies from the University of Freiburg. After studying political science at the University of Mannheim, followed by a B.A. in History and English at the University of Freiburg, he developed a strong interest in how cultural and media studies scholars can contribute meaningfully to central issues in public discourse, particularly in the fields of urban studies and environmental humanities. He understands Bruno Latour’s call to “faire le boulot” as his mission statement: to render environmentalist messaging more effective and to conceive new narratives that offer alternatives to ultraconservative or neoliberal ideology. In this vein, Hovde completed his master’s thesis, Exploring Adequate Images for Hyperobjects: Toward a Postmodern Environmental Ontology.

 

Project: Bridging the Sentimental Gap: Climate Change Cinema and Attuning to Hyperobjects 
Following decades of climate change communication, the information deficit – once identified as the primary roadblock to collective awareness and subsequent action – has largely been addressed. Yet, green initiatives are losing the momentum that reactionary political movements, which ignore or actively reverse climate mitigation efforts, are simultaneously gaining. This dynamic coincides with and is fueled by a public sentiment displaying growing levels of inertia towards the crisis. Unsurprisingly so, when considering research from environmental humanities suggesting that hard data lacks the cultural response to adequately embed its information. Especially when this data is introduced into an environmental ontology informed by Cartesian dualist notions of the human as an entity distinct from a culturally constructed notion of ‘nature.’ This dissertation argues that sentimental forms of cinema can elicit emotional responses that align with the spatiotemporal and affective dimensions of hyperobjects, fostering deeper audience engagement with the complexities of global warming. It aims to contribute to efforts seeking to address the „crisis of imagination“ identified by Amitav Ghosh and elaborated by Dipesh Chakrabarty and Bruno Latour. Drawing from Morton’s concept of hyperobjects, as well as the growing research on the affective dimensions of visual representations, the study seeks to identify sentimental aesthetic strategies that enable audiences to emotionally connect with the hyperobject of climate change. Close readings of selected cinematic texts will be employed to infer a grammar of environmental sentimentality ­– a set of aesthetic and narrative guidelines informing emotionally resonant environmental representations that weaken the felt disconnection from the phenomenon and, in the long term, inspire meaningful action in the face of the climate crisis.

 

Ege A. Özbek

Ege A. Özbek holds a Joint Master’s degree in English and American Studies from the University of Graz and Université Paris Cité. He earned his BA in American Culture and Literature with a minor in Art History from Hacettepe University. His master’s thesis focused on contemporary American eco-documentary. His research interests include visual culture, film studies, photography, and intermediality.

Project: The Manifestations of the Sentimental in Contemporary Activist Documentary

This project explores sentimentality as both an aesthetic mode and a communicative code in contemporary activist documentaries. It investigates how the sentimental evokes empathy, fosters solidarity, and inspires political engagement. Blending cinematic artistry with journalistic integrity, these documentaries challenge dominant media narratives and address the systemic injustices of neoliberalism, capitalism, racism, and colonialism, while encouraging grassroots activism. The central question guiding this study is: What are the manifestations of the sentimental mode as aesthetics and sentimental code as discourse in contemporary activist documentaries? Drawing on an interdisciplinary framework—combining affect theory, documentary film theory, cultural studies, and Marxist theory—the project examines how sentimentality can either critique or reinforce existing power structures. Methodologically, the research employs qualitative approaches such as textual and visual analysis, historical contextualization, critical discourse analysis, and comparative analysis. The study focuses on films including Union (2024), Power (2024), Powerlands (2022), The Ants & the Grasshopper (2021), and No Other Land (2024). These documentaries, chosen for their thematic range and political urgency, engage with issues such as environmental justice, labor rights, and institutional power. Through these case studies, the research highlights the transformative potential of the sentimental to shape emotional and political responses to contemporary crises.

 

Yuling Shi

Yuling Shi received her Bachelor’s degree in Chinese Language and Literature, with a minor in English Language and Literature, in China. After working as an English teacher for three years, she moved to Germany for further studies. She completed her master degree in English and American Studies at the University of Bamberg. Her research interests include Chinese literature, martial arts fiction and popular culture, memory studies, and narratology.

Project: Knightly Bones, Tender Heart: The Sentimental in Chinese Knight-Errant

As a long celebrated literal and cultural symbol, the Chinese knight-errant has captivated the hearts and minds of generations of Chinese people transcending the limitations of time, space and ideologies. What intrinsic qualities have established the knight-errant as one of the most beloved icons in Chinese culture? What does the popularity of the knight-errant reveal about the evolution of Chinese cultural identity? My project seeks to answer these questions by proposing that Chinese knight-errant is, at its core, a sentimental subject—an autonomous moral agent unbound by external authorities or principles. Moreover, the shifting sentimental dimensions in the portrayal of knights-errant serve as an elaborate footnote to the genealogy of sentimentality in China. The project examines the sentimental dimension of the knight-errant figure in Chinese martial arts fiction and its interconnectedness with the evolution of Chinese sentimentality. My methodology is genealogical, focusing on specific, pivotal moments in the development of knight-errantry, which also informs my selection of primary texts. The research covers the martial arts fiction from the middle to late Tang Dynasty, the work of Wang Dulu in the early 20th century, and the work of Jin Yong in the latter half of the century, through both textual and contextual historical analysis. By doing so, this research aspires to offer a fresh lens through which to analyze the intricate connections between knight-errantry and Chinese sentimentality, and to uncover new dimensions for interpreting Chinese cultural and social dynamics.

 

Luiza Sydorova

Luiza studied political science and economics at the Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg. She also completed her Master’s degree in Political Science at FAU. Her master thesis focused on Antifeminism of the New Right in Germany. Her research interests include gender studies, postcolonialism and eastern europe.

Project: Form and function of the sentimental in the negotiation process of gender relations in Ukraine after the Russian invasion

The Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 marks a profound social turning point that is also significantly changing gender relations. This research project examines this change from the perspective of sentimentality as a discursive and social phenomenon. While classic role patterns dominated at the beginning of the war – women and children fleeing, men fighting – an increasing questioning of traditional gender roles became apparent as the war progressed. The focus is on Ukrainian discourse, which is characterized on the one hand by the construction of national identity and on the other by a conscious differentiation from Russian values. The latter favors progressive developments, such as the growing social acceptance of the LGBTQ+ movement. The sentimental dimension proves to be a central means of interpreting and controlling social change. Using critical discourse analysis, the project analyzes the role of sentimentality in the context of war, identity and gender. The aim is to open up new perspectives for interdisciplinary gender studies and to shed new light on the historical tension between the national question and the question of women.

 

Chan Wai Charles Wong

Charles holds a BA in English from the University of London and a MA in English Studies
from Freie Universität Berlin. Before joining the Research Training Group at FAU
Erlangen-Nürnberg, he had doctoral proposals accepted at the University of York and at
Freie Universität Berlin, where he was also awarded the Elsa-Neumann-Stipendium.

Project: Affective Alienation: The Aesthetics of [Un]sentimentality in Contemporary Anglophone Fictions

This project looks at [un]sentimentality and its range of associated expressions – apathy, ambivalence, passivity, vagrancy – in contemporary Anglophone fiction, arguing that an aesthetics revitalizing a Brechtian approach to art and politics can be located through a deliberate distancing from affect. Tracing affective alienation in recent short stories by Colin Barrett and Ottessa Moshfegh and recent novels by Daisy Hildyard, Eimear McBride, Sarah Bernstein and Teju Cole, the project posits that literary [un]sentimentality is ultimately not an absence of affect, but the strategic deployment of ‚flat‘, ‚minor‘, and ‚uneven‘ affects as effects. Doing so allows these fictions to reflect an understanding of disaffection as epitomizing a contemporary human experience shaped by multiple crises and illuminate the historical and material conditions undergirding these crises through a critical distance. Such a management of affect shades into a politics of artistic unsentimentality that is marked by a rejection of neoliberal-codified forms of empathy, opening up new affective grounds for sentimental literature beyond immediate identification and pathos.