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Gabriela Stoicea

Clemson University, Department of Languages, Faculty Member

Yale University, German, Alumna

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures, Alumna

Trinity College, Connecticut, Language and Culture Studies, Teaching Fellow in German

Clemson University, Interdisciplinary Studies, Faculty Member

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Ph.D. in German, Yale University
M.Phil. in German, Yale University
M.A. in German, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
M.A. in Translation, Interpretation and Terminological Studies, University of Bucharest
B.A. in English and German, University of Craiova
ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7039-3290

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The University of Texas at Austin

Vitaly Chernetsky

University of Kansas

University of Ulster

Central European University

Cristiana Facchini

Università di Bologna

Kansas State University

Shaun Gallagher

University of Memphis

Armando Marques-Guedes

UNL - New University of Lisbon

Ucla

University of Michigan

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Books (Authored) by Gabriela Stoicea

Fictions of Legibility: The Human Face and Body in Modern German Novels from Sophie von La Roche to Alfred Döblin

Transcript, 2020

This monograph examines how the incidence and role of physical descriptions in German novels chan... more

Books (Edited) by Gabriela Stoicea

Lessing Yearbook vol. 48: Eighteenth-Century Catastrophes

by Carl Niekerk and Gabriela Stoicea

Das Lessing Yearbook/Jahrbuch 2021 »Katastrophen des 18. Jahrhunderts« befasst sich mit der Frage... more Das Lessing Yearbook/Jahrbuch 2021 »Katastrophen des 18. Jahrhunderts« befasst sich mit der Frage, wie das achtzehnte Jahrhundert auf Katastrophen bzw. katastrophale Ereignisse reagierte, und wie diese Erfahrungen die Gesellschaftsvisionen und das Weltverständnis der Aufklärung prägten oder in Frage stellten. Die einzelnen Beiträge beschäftigen sich mit dem Siebenjährigen Krieg, der Explosion des Breslauer Pulverturms, dem Phänomen der Hungersnot, Erdbeben als Katastrophen, theologischen Aspekten des Katastrophen-Diskurses, gender-spezifischen Aspekten der Katastrophe und Reaktionen auf die Französische Revolution.
>> Available for purchase under https://www.wallstein-verlag.de/9783835350595-lessing-yearbook-jahrbuch-xlviii-2021.html

Book chapters by Gabriela Stoicea

The Body in Perspective: Sophie von La Roche’s Geschichte des Fräuleins von Sternheim (1771)

Fictions of Legibility

Sophie von La Roche's novel, which now takes pride of place in the canon of eighteenth-century Ge... more Sophie von La Roche's novel, which now takes pride of place in the canon of eighteenth-century German literature, was published one year before Von der Physiognomik (1772), the essay in which Johann Caspar Lavater laid the groundwork for his best-selling Physiognomische Fragmente zur Beförderung der Menschenkenntnis und Menschenliebe. 1 Even though it predates Lavater's four-volume treatise, Geschichte des Fräuleins von Sternheim draws extensively on the widespread interest in reading, visuality, and the human body that propelled the Swiss pastor to fame during the 18 th century. As the present chapter will elucidate, an analysis of physiognomic and pathognomic details from this novel reveals a writer committed to making a difference in the debate surrounding human physicality, but also in the legitimation of the novel and of female authorship. I will argue that La Roche's use of physiognomy and pathognomy is intimately connected with the specific brand of multi-perspectival narration that she developed, thereby showcasing a level of literary craftsmanship that women were deemed incapable of at that time. More specifically, La Roche adopted the epistolary novel form with its connotations of femininity, naturalness, and authenticity, and she put her own spin on it by developing a polylogic narration through the voices of multiple letter-writing characters who report from different perspectives on one and the same incident. 2

The Body as "Versable" Type: Friedrich Spielhagen's Zum Zeitvertreib (1897)

Fictions of Legibility

may not automatically spring to mind as one of the giants of German literature, but he is undoubt... more may not automatically spring to mind as one of the giants of German literature, but he is undoubtedly a prominent figure in the field of narrative theory, where many regard him as Friedrich von Blanckenburg's most notable successor in the 19 th century (Blatter 1993: 132). Spielhagen was one of, if not the, most widely read German novelist of the 1860s and 1870s. He then lost his claim to fame as a fiction writer, only to be unexpectedly reinstated for his theoretical writings. As late as 1908, however, some people still heralded Spielhagen as the foremost novelist of his generation. "Enger als er war und ist wohl kein deutscher Dichter mit den Strömungen seiner Zeit verbunden, stärker als in seinen Romanen pulst wohl nirgends das äußere Leben der Nation," declared the author of a laudatory article published in the "Bayerische[r] Courier" and cited by Spielhagen's daughter on the occasion of her father's 80 th birthday (Spielhagen 1909: 169). Today Spielhagen's oeuvre can no longer inspire such enthusiasm from the margins of German literature, to which it has been relegated along with many other Realist works. The debate over why this celebrated author fell into disrepute after a promising debut lies beyond the scope of the present study. Suffice it to say that literary canonization operates in myriad, sometimes mysterious, ways, and that irrespective of the initial reasons for Spielhagen's fall from grace, most critics even today hold fast to the idea that his literary and theoretical personas are incompatible. 1 As will become evident throughout this chapter, it is not only possible, but necessary to develop an integrated approach to Spielhagen's output,

The Soul-Stripped Body: Alfred Döblin's Berlin Alexanderplatz (1929)

Fictions of Legibility

prose author, essay writer, theorist, doctor, and film buff. One name, multiple personalities-and... more prose author, essay writer, theorist, doctor, and film buff. One name, multiple personalities-and not all of them compatible, as Döblin himself acknowledged. In an autobiographical essay from 1928, whose title "Zwei Seelen in einer Brust" is a clear riff on Faust's famous lamentation "Zwei Seelen wohnen, ach! in meiner Brust," the physician Döblin and the writer Döblin appear as distinct individuals talking about each other in a teasing, antagonistic manner. The publications of the latter leave the former "total gleichgültig" (Döblin 1986: 103), and the writer does not mince words either, calling the neurologist "mein gerades Gegenstück" (ibid: 105). This dramatization of Döblin's divided allegiances was originally meant to be satirical, but over time it fueled the idea of an unbridgeable gap between his medical and literary pursuits. Recent scholarship has successfully challenged this misconception. Critics have started to look at Döblin's medical writings in conjunction with his literary texts by way of demonstrating that an integrated approach is not just possible and worthwhile, but necessary in the case of someone with such varied interests. Untangling the intricacies of Döblin's thinking on psychopathology and on other pressing issues of the time can shed new light on his fictional works, as well as on the interaction between literature and other disciplines during the early 20 th century. In the spirit of this recent shift in critical paradigm, I wish to argue in this chapter that physical descriptions from Döblin's novel of 1929 relate in complex ways to contemporaneous developments in mental health, novel writing, visual media, and politics. The Case Against Psychology Berlin Alexanderplatz is widely considered the most prominent novel of German modernism. The plot is notoriously hard to follow, because it is often interrupted by info-bites, similar to the consciousness of the modern city dwellers that populate Döblin's fiction. In a nutshell, the book documents the painstaking adjustment to freedom and to life in the big city of Franz Biberkopf, who is released from prison

"When History Meets Literature: Jonathan Israel, Sophie von La Roche, and the Problem of Gender"

The Radical Enlightenment in Germany: A Cultural Perspective, 2018

This essay explores some of the ways in which Jonathan Israel’s concept of Radical Enlightenment ... more This essay explores some of the ways in which Jonathan Israel’s concept of Radical Enlightenment can be made useful for literary studies. An in-depth analysis of Sophie von La Roche’s novel Geschichte des Fräuleins von Sternheim (1771) shows that although Israel offers little in the way of new insights into eighteenth-century gender relations, his pluralistic account of the Enlightenment does provide a fresh lens through which to reexamine the literary merits of female writers. The article also argues that the benefits of pairing historiography with literary fiction run both ways – in other words, that La Roche, in turn, can help address what is missing from Israel’s thinking, namely an acknowledgment that some of the foremost intellectual debates of the time were also waged on literary ground, and also by women.
>> Reviewed in the "Goethe Yearbook" : https://muse.jhu.edu/article/762275

Journal articles by Gabriela Stoicea

Moosbrugger and the Case for Responsibility in Robert Musil’s "Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften”

German Quarterly, 2018

Robert Musil’s epic novel "Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften" comes back time and again to the case of ... more Robert Musil’s epic novel "Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften" comes back time and again to the case of Christian Moosbrugger, an enigmatic figure accused of brutally killing a prostitute. Musil never resolved this character’s fate, or his exact significance for the novel. Despite (or precisely because of) this, the Moosbrugger leitmotif continues to provide fodder for debate. This article argues that the positioning of this “musical murderer” at the interface of law, morality, and the arts makes him the perfect vehicle for exploring the notion of responsibility in its myriad juridical, ethical, and philosophical intricacies. Underlying it all, I argue, is a deep reflection on the role of literary narratives in shaping readers’ approach to responsible reading, thinking, acting, and being in the world.

Re-Producing the Class and Gender Divide: Fritz Lang's "Metropolis"

Women in German Yearbook, Jan 1, 2006

The Difficulties of Verbalizing Trauma: Translation and the Economy of Loss in Claude Lanzmann's" Shoah"

The Journal of the Midwest Modern Language …, Jan 1, 2006

"What a Strain it is to be Evil": A Critical Re-evaluation of Totalitarian Violence in Selected Plays by Bertolt Brecht and Eugène Ionesco

Talks & Presentations by Gabriela Stoicea

Converting to the Novel: A Secular Endeavor?

Radical, Moderate, and Everything in Between: On the Emancipation of a Literary Genre

Back to the Balkans: Re-Imagining Alterity through the Gaze of post-1989 Balkan Cinema

The Traumatic Site of Translation in Claude Lanzmann’s "Shoah"

Performing Gender: Brecht and Woolf Re-Visited

Translation as Medium: The Search for Social Meaning in Contemporary Romanian Advertising

Book Reviews by Gabriela Stoicea

Review of "Weibliche Kreativitaet um 1800," edited by Linda Dietrick and Birte Giesler, Göttingen: Wehrhahn, 2015.

Lessing Yearbook, 2017

(with Johannes Schmidt) Review of Herder und die Künste. Ästhetik, Kunsttheorie, Kunstgeschichte by Elisabeth Décultot and Gerhard Lauer (eds.), Lessing Yearbook 42 (2015), 213-215

Review of Herta Müller: Politics and Aesthetics by Bettina Brandt and Valentina Glajar (eds.), in German Studies Review 38.3 (2015), 704-706.

Review of "Thomas Mann. Neue kulturwissenschaftliche Lektüren" by Stefan Börnchen, Georg Mein, and Gary Schmidt (eds.). In German Studies Review 37.1 (2014): 208-210.

Fictions of Legibility: The Human Face and Body in Modern German Novels from Sophie von La Roche to Alfred Döblin

Transcript, 2020

This monograph examines how the incidence and role of physical descriptions in German novels chan... more

Lessing Yearbook vol. 48: Eighteenth-Century Catastrophes

by Carl Niekerk and Gabriela Stoicea

Das Lessing Yearbook/Jahrbuch 2021 »Katastrophen des 18. Jahrhunderts« befasst sich mit der Frage... more Das Lessing Yearbook/Jahrbuch 2021 »Katastrophen des 18. Jahrhunderts« befasst sich mit der Frage, wie das achtzehnte Jahrhundert auf Katastrophen bzw. katastrophale Ereignisse reagierte, und wie diese Erfahrungen die Gesellschaftsvisionen und das Weltverständnis der Aufklärung prägten oder in Frage stellten. Die einzelnen Beiträge beschäftigen sich mit dem Siebenjährigen Krieg, der Explosion des Breslauer Pulverturms, dem Phänomen der Hungersnot, Erdbeben als Katastrophen, theologischen Aspekten des Katastrophen-Diskurses, gender-spezifischen Aspekten der Katastrophe und Reaktionen auf die Französische Revolution.
>> Available for purchase under https://www.wallstein-verlag.de/9783835350595-lessing-yearbook-jahrbuch-xlviii-2021.html

The Body in Perspective: Sophie von La Roche’s Geschichte des Fräuleins von Sternheim (1771)

Fictions of Legibility

Sophie von La Roche's novel, which now takes pride of place in the canon of eighteenth-century Ge... more Sophie von La Roche's novel, which now takes pride of place in the canon of eighteenth-century German literature, was published one year before Von der Physiognomik (1772), the essay in which Johann Caspar Lavater laid the groundwork for his best-selling Physiognomische Fragmente zur Beförderung der Menschenkenntnis und Menschenliebe. 1 Even though it predates Lavater's four-volume treatise, Geschichte des Fräuleins von Sternheim draws extensively on the widespread interest in reading, visuality, and the human body that propelled the Swiss pastor to fame during the 18 th century. As the present chapter will elucidate, an analysis of physiognomic and pathognomic details from this novel reveals a writer committed to making a difference in the debate surrounding human physicality, but also in the legitimation of the novel and of female authorship. I will argue that La Roche's use of physiognomy and pathognomy is intimately connected with the specific brand of multi-perspectival narration that she developed, thereby showcasing a level of literary craftsmanship that women were deemed incapable of at that time. More specifically, La Roche adopted the epistolary novel form with its connotations of femininity, naturalness, and authenticity, and she put her own spin on it by developing a polylogic narration through the voices of multiple letter-writing characters who report from different perspectives on one and the same incident. 2

The Body as "Versable" Type: Friedrich Spielhagen's Zum Zeitvertreib (1897)

Fictions of Legibility

may not automatically spring to mind as one of the giants of German literature, but he is undoubt... more may not automatically spring to mind as one of the giants of German literature, but he is undoubtedly a prominent figure in the field of narrative theory, where many regard him as Friedrich von Blanckenburg's most notable successor in the 19 th century (Blatter 1993: 132). Spielhagen was one of, if not the, most widely read German novelist of the 1860s and 1870s. He then lost his claim to fame as a fiction writer, only to be unexpectedly reinstated for his theoretical writings. As late as 1908, however, some people still heralded Spielhagen as the foremost novelist of his generation. "Enger als er war und ist wohl kein deutscher Dichter mit den Strömungen seiner Zeit verbunden, stärker als in seinen Romanen pulst wohl nirgends das äußere Leben der Nation," declared the author of a laudatory article published in the "Bayerische[r] Courier" and cited by Spielhagen's daughter on the occasion of her father's 80 th birthday (Spielhagen 1909: 169). Today Spielhagen's oeuvre can no longer inspire such enthusiasm from the margins of German literature, to which it has been relegated along with many other Realist works. The debate over why this celebrated author fell into disrepute after a promising debut lies beyond the scope of the present study. Suffice it to say that literary canonization operates in myriad, sometimes mysterious, ways, and that irrespective of the initial reasons for Spielhagen's fall from grace, most critics even today hold fast to the idea that his literary and theoretical personas are incompatible. 1 As will become evident throughout this chapter, it is not only possible, but necessary to develop an integrated approach to Spielhagen's output,

The Soul-Stripped Body: Alfred Döblin's Berlin Alexanderplatz (1929)

Fictions of Legibility

prose author, essay writer, theorist, doctor, and film buff. One name, multiple personalities-and... more prose author, essay writer, theorist, doctor, and film buff. One name, multiple personalities-and not all of them compatible, as Döblin himself acknowledged. In an autobiographical essay from 1928, whose title "Zwei Seelen in einer Brust" is a clear riff on Faust's famous lamentation "Zwei Seelen wohnen, ach! in meiner Brust," the physician Döblin and the writer Döblin appear as distinct individuals talking about each other in a teasing, antagonistic manner. The publications of the latter leave the former "total gleichgültig" (Döblin 1986: 103), and the writer does not mince words either, calling the neurologist "mein gerades Gegenstück" (ibid: 105). This dramatization of Döblin's divided allegiances was originally meant to be satirical, but over time it fueled the idea of an unbridgeable gap between his medical and literary pursuits. Recent scholarship has successfully challenged this misconception. Critics have started to look at Döblin's medical writings in conjunction with his literary texts by way of demonstrating that an integrated approach is not just possible and worthwhile, but necessary in the case of someone with such varied interests. Untangling the intricacies of Döblin's thinking on psychopathology and on other pressing issues of the time can shed new light on his fictional works, as well as on the interaction between literature and other disciplines during the early 20 th century. In the spirit of this recent shift in critical paradigm, I wish to argue in this chapter that physical descriptions from Döblin's novel of 1929 relate in complex ways to contemporaneous developments in mental health, novel writing, visual media, and politics. The Case Against Psychology Berlin Alexanderplatz is widely considered the most prominent novel of German modernism. The plot is notoriously hard to follow, because it is often interrupted by info-bites, similar to the consciousness of the modern city dwellers that populate Döblin's fiction. In a nutshell, the book documents the painstaking adjustment to freedom and to life in the big city of Franz Biberkopf, who is released from prison

"When History Meets Literature: Jonathan Israel, Sophie von La Roche, and the Problem of Gender"

The Radical Enlightenment in Germany: A Cultural Perspective, 2018

This essay explores some of the ways in which Jonathan Israel’s concept of Radical Enlightenment ... more This essay explores some of the ways in which Jonathan Israel’s concept of Radical Enlightenment can be made useful for literary studies. An in-depth analysis of Sophie von La Roche’s novel Geschichte des Fräuleins von Sternheim (1771) shows that although Israel offers little in the way of new insights into eighteenth-century gender relations, his pluralistic account of the Enlightenment does provide a fresh lens through which to reexamine the literary merits of female writers. The article also argues that the benefits of pairing historiography with literary fiction run both ways – in other words, that La Roche, in turn, can help address what is missing from Israel’s thinking, namely an acknowledgment that some of the foremost intellectual debates of the time were also waged on literary ground, and also by women.
>> Reviewed in the "Goethe Yearbook" : https://muse.jhu.edu/article/762275

Moosbrugger and the Case for Responsibility in Robert Musil’s "Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften”

German Quarterly, 2018

Robert Musil’s epic novel "Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften" comes back time and again to the case of ... more Robert Musil’s epic novel "Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften" comes back time and again to the case of Christian Moosbrugger, an enigmatic figure accused of brutally killing a prostitute. Musil never resolved this character’s fate, or his exact significance for the novel. Despite (or precisely because of) this, the Moosbrugger leitmotif continues to provide fodder for debate. This article argues that the positioning of this “musical murderer” at the interface of law, morality, and the arts makes him the perfect vehicle for exploring the notion of responsibility in its myriad juridical, ethical, and philosophical intricacies. Underlying it all, I argue, is a deep reflection on the role of literary narratives in shaping readers’ approach to responsible reading, thinking, acting, and being in the world.

Re-Producing the Class and Gender Divide: Fritz Lang's "Metropolis"

Women in German Yearbook, Jan 1, 2006

The Difficulties of Verbalizing Trauma: Translation and the Economy of Loss in Claude Lanzmann's" Shoah"

The Journal of the Midwest Modern Language …, Jan 1, 2006

"What a Strain it is to be Evil": A Critical Re-evaluation of Totalitarian Violence in Selected Plays by Bertolt Brecht and Eugène Ionesco

Converting to the Novel: A Secular Endeavor?

Radical, Moderate, and Everything in Between: On the Emancipation of a Literary Genre

Back to the Balkans: Re-Imagining Alterity through the Gaze of post-1989 Balkan Cinema

The Traumatic Site of Translation in Claude Lanzmann’s "Shoah"

Performing Gender: Brecht and Woolf Re-Visited

Translation as Medium: The Search for Social Meaning in Contemporary Romanian Advertising

Review of "Weibliche Kreativitaet um 1800," edited by Linda Dietrick and Birte Giesler, Göttingen: Wehrhahn, 2015.

Lessing Yearbook, 2017

(with Johannes Schmidt) Review of Herder und die Künste. Ästhetik, Kunsttheorie, Kunstgeschichte by Elisabeth Décultot and Gerhard Lauer (eds.), Lessing Yearbook 42 (2015), 213-215

Review of Herta Müller: Politics and Aesthetics by Bettina Brandt and Valentina Glajar (eds.), in German Studies Review 38.3 (2015), 704-706.

Review of "Thomas Mann. Neue kulturwissenschaftliche Lektüren" by Stefan Börnchen, Georg Mein, and Gary Schmidt (eds.). In German Studies Review 37.1 (2014): 208-210.

Thomas Elsaesser, “R.W. Fassbinder: Prodigal Son, Not Reconciled?”. In A Companion to Rainer Werner Fassbinder, edited by Brigitte Peucker, Wiley-Blackwell, 2012, pp. 45-52.

Film Theory. An Introduction through the Senses, by Thomas Elsaesser and Malte Hagener. New York: Routledge, 2010

The Emperor and Rome: Space, Representation, and Ritual. Eds. Björn C. Ewald and Carlos F. Noreña. Cambridge & New York: Cambridge UP, 2010

Call for Papers Lessing Yearbook 2021: "Eighteenth-Century Catastrophes"

by Gabriela Stoicea and Carl Niekerk

Dean’s Award for Excellence in Teaching, Clemson University, May 2016.

Faculty Research Fellowship awarded by the College of Architecture, Arts and Humanities at Clemson University, Fall 2014.

DAAD fellowship to participate in the Interdisciplinary Summer Seminar “The Epic Side of Truth: Narration and Knowledge in the German Literary Tradition” held at Cornell University, June-July 2014.

Lightsey Fellowship for faculty summer research, Clemson University

Research travel grant awarded by the College of Architecture, Arts and Humanities at Clemson University, Summer 2014.

Robert M. Leylan fellowship in the Humanities, 2010-2011.

John F. Enders fellowship and research grant, Yale University—Research project conducted at the Deutsches Literaturarchiv Marbach, Summer 2010.

Research fellowship at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Spring 2010.

Elsie A. and Charles F. Hunt scholarship, Yale University, Fall 2009.