Renata Schellenberg
Biography
I am Professor of German and Program Advisor for the German Studies Program here at Mount Allison. I have been at Mount A since 2004 and since that time I have taught diverse language, literature and culture courses in our program, as well as managing the various exchange and work opportunities that exist with Germany. Our program is small but busy!
My area of expertise is eighteenth-century German literature and culture and I have published on such key authors as Goethe, Herder and Alexander von Humboldt as well as on scientific literacy and material culture in this fascinating period between Classicism and Romanticism. I love German literary culture and am thrilled to be able to share this interest with my students. I even get them to read (and hopefully like) Goethe. No small feat.
In addition to this core expertise in eighteenth-century German literature, I have also been researching forms of commemoration in post-conflict societies. In 2016 I published a monograph entitled Commemorating Conflict: Models of Remembrance in Postwar Croatia, in which I investigated the relationship between memory, identity and national belonging in post-1990 Croatia. I have also published on war museums and memorials in the region. I am currently working on a SSHRC-funded project that explores memorial practices in Namibia, particularly in relation to the genocide of the Nama and Herero people that occurred during German imperial rule in the 1900s. I focus particularly on the material legacy of this organized, historical violence and the means by which this memory has been documented and preserved by the institutional authorities who shape the national memorial landscape.
Publications
“Cultivating Contacts: Collectors, Critics and the Public in Eighteenth-Century Germanophone Europe,” German and European Cultural Histories Around 1800: Between Network and Narrative, eds. Birgit Tautz and Crystal Hall, Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment, 2024. 139-55.
Monograph
Commemorating Conflict: Models of Remembrance in Postwar Croatia. Oxford: Peter Lang, 2016.
Peer-Reviewed Articles and Chapters in Press
"Composing the Blue Book: The Use of Oral Sources to narrate German South-West Africa," Oral History Review (2023). doi.org/10.1080/00940798.2022.2160263.
“The Emergence of the Art Dealer in Eighteenth-Century Germany,” Art Markets. Agents and Collectors in Europe and the United States 1550-1950, ed. Adriana Turpin. London: Bloomsbury, 2021. 151-60.
“Memory, Mobility and Migration in today’s Istria,” Journal of Contemporary European Studies (2021). 25 Pages. DOI: 10.1080/14782804.2021.1891869
“Reparation and Remembrance: Determining the Future of German-Namibian Relations,” EuropeNow 33 (2020), www.europenowjournal.org/2020/04/27/reparations-and-remembrance-determi…
“Refugee Reception in Goethe’s Hermann und Dorothea,” Goethe Yearbook 27 (2020): 83-99.
“The Post-Yugoslav Literature of Dubravka Ugrešić,” The Many Voices of Europe, eds. Gisela Brinker-Gabler and Nicole Shea. Berlin: de Gruyter, 2020. 103-13.
“Witnessing the Object,” Augenzeugenschaft als Konzept, eds. Claudia Hattendorff and Lisa Beißwanger, Transkript Verlag, 2019. 195-209.
“Museums and Museality: Celebrating the 150th Anniversary of Vienna's Ringstrasse,” Journal of Austrian Studies 51.2 (2018): 31-51.
“The literary legacy of the Düsseldorfer Gemäldegalerie,” Journal of the History of Collections, fhy013, https://doi.org/10.1093/jhc/fhy013
“Goethe und Die neue Melusine: A Critical Reinterpretation,” Melusine's Footprint: Tracing the Legacy of a Medieval Myth, eds. Deva Kemmis, Misty Urban and Melissa Ridley Elmes. Leiden: Brill, 2017. 303-324.
“Commemorative War Museums in 1990s Postwar Croatia,” The Museum Review 2.1 (2017), http://articles.themuseumreview.org/tmr_vol2no1_schellenberg.
“Aesthetic and Commercial Influences on Travel in Early Nineteenth-Century Germany,” Travel Writing in Dutch and German, 1790-1930. Modernity, Regionality, Mobility, eds. Alison E. Martin, Lut Missinne and Beatrix van Dam. New York: Routledge, 2017. 198-213.
“Politics and Remembrance in post-war Vukovar,” Journal of Balkan and Near Eastern Studies 17.1 (2015): 15-28.
“Moving towards the Museum in Eighteenth-Century Germany,” Material Culture Review (2012): 47-52.
“The Self and Other Things: Goethe the Collector,” English Goethe Society (2012): 166-177.
“Print and Preserve: Periodicals in Late Eighteenth-Century Germany,” Re-Writing the Radical: Enlightenment, Revolution and Cultural Transfer in 1790s Germany, Britain and France. Berlin: de Gruyter, 2012. 88-102.
“The Impact of Ossian: Herder’s Literary Legacy,” The Voice of the People: Writing the European Folk Revival, eds. Mathew Campbell and Michael Perraudin. London: Anthem, 2012. 9-20.
“Scientific Literacy in Eighteenth -Century Germany,” Languages of Science in the Eighteenth Century, ed. Britt-Louise Gunnarson. Berlin: de Gruyter, 2011. 91-107.
“Goethe’s Opposition to Scientific Convention,” Literature’s Reflections on Science, ed. Cedric Barfoot. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2011. 133-151.
“The Incommensurability of Nature and Beauty of Thought: Goethe’s Scientific Method,” The Journal of Science in Society 1.2 (2009): 45-58.
“The Fantasy of America as an Idea of Europe in the 18th Century,” The Idea of Europe in the 18th Century, ed. Lara Piccardo. Paris: Champion, 2009. 129-141.
“Collecting and Recollecting: Creating a Museum Culture in Eighteenth-Century Germany,” The International Journal of the Inclusive Museum 1 (2008): 91-96.
“Words and Images, Texts and Pictures,” Word and Image in the Long Eighteenth Century: An Interdisciplinary Dialogue. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholar Press, 2008. 360-363.
“Viewing the New World Through Nature,” Special Issue: The Global Eighteenth Century, ed. Vlatka Velcic. Genre 26 (2006): 31-49.
“The Genesis of Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre (1821),” New German Review 17 (2002): 47- 63.
“Subversive Satire: The Glasgow Verses,” Maruliana 9 (2002): 371-376.
Edited Volume
Editor (with Christina Ionescu). Word and Image in the Long Eighteenth Century: An Interdisciplinary Dialogue. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2008.
Research
Age of Goethe; Post-Enlightenment German Literature; Museum and Collection Studies; Memory Studies; Turn of the Century Vienna
Grants, awards & honours
2022 SSHRC IG Grant
2021 Paul Paré Excellence Award
2020 International Scholarship Staatliche Museen zu Berlin
2019 SSHRC IDG Grant
2017 Hiob Ludolf Fellowship, Gotha Research Centre, Gotha, Germany
2017 SSHRC Aid to Small Universities Grant "MTA Connects"
2016 Paul Pare Research Excellence Award
2015 Fellowship for Enlightenment Studies, IZEA, Halle, Germany
2015 Research Fellowship, Klassik Stiftung Weimar, Weimar, Germany
2015 SSHRC IDG Grant
2014 IMLR/UCL Visiting Research Fellow in Cultural Memory Studies, London, UK