Thomas Gurke
I am DAAD Visiting Professor and Director of Graduate Studies at the Department of German, Nordic, Slavic and Dutch at the University of Minnesota.
I have previously worked and researched at universities and archives in Germany, Switzerland, Ireland, China (remote) and the US, with teaching experience in the fields of English and German Literature as well as Cultural Studies.
My interdisciplinary MA degree in modern English Literature (HHU Düsseldorf) and Musicology (Robert Schumann School of Music Dusseldorf) led to an award-winning PhD-dissertation on the intermedial and affective dynamics between text and music in the works of James Joyce.
Since then my research focuses on the intersections between media and culture, in particular the impact of media combinations on the sphere of the popular. I have published on phenomena of intermediality as well as convergence and remix cultures in both Modern and contemporary literature. I am the co-editor of Words, Music, and the Popular: Global Perspectives on Intermedial Relations (Palgrave, 2021).
Supervisors: Prof. Dr. Therese Seidel and Prof. Dr. Roger Lüdeke
I have previously worked and researched at universities and archives in Germany, Switzerland, Ireland, China (remote) and the US, with teaching experience in the fields of English and German Literature as well as Cultural Studies.
My interdisciplinary MA degree in modern English Literature (HHU Düsseldorf) and Musicology (Robert Schumann School of Music Dusseldorf) led to an award-winning PhD-dissertation on the intermedial and affective dynamics between text and music in the works of James Joyce.
Since then my research focuses on the intersections between media and culture, in particular the impact of media combinations on the sphere of the popular. I have published on phenomena of intermediality as well as convergence and remix cultures in both Modern and contemporary literature. I am the co-editor of Words, Music, and the Popular: Global Perspectives on Intermedial Relations (Palgrave, 2021).
Supervisors: Prof. Dr. Therese Seidel and Prof. Dr. Roger Lüdeke
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Publications by Thomas Gurke
on the relationship between the verbal and the musical. The contributors’
international perspective and focus on seeing this relationship as a form of
intermediality allows them to open new directions for inquiry by simultaneously
employing and interrogating a range of traditional oppositions, such as those
between popular and classical music, rock and pop, the accessible and the
‘difficult,’ the canonical and the ‘minor,’ the present and the historical past, live
and recorded music.”
— Philip Auslander is Professor in the School of Literature, Media, and Communication at the Georgia Institute of Technology, USA
“As a scholar of popular culture, what excites me about this eclectic collection is
the way that it explodes any fixed conception of the relationship between elite
and popular music in favor of an exploration of the flexible borders between
music and lyrics, high and low, text and performance, art and commerce,
traditional and emergent, live and mediated, original and remix, spectatorship
and participation, and so much more. Each essay offers nuanced, intermedial
readings of specific sites of music production, each of which ask fundamental
questions about the nature of popular music, past, present, and future.”
— Henry Jenkins is Provost Professor of Communication, Journalism,
Cinematic Arts and Education at the University of Southern California, USA
This collection of essays explores the relation of words and music to issues of the
popular. It asks: What is popularity or ‘the’ popular and what role(s) does music
play in it? What is the function of the popular, and is ‘pop’ a system? How can
popularity be explained in certain historical and political contexts? How do class,
gender, race, and ethnicity contribute to and complicate an understanding of the
popular? What of the popularity of verbal art forms? How do they interact with
music at particular times and throughout different media?
Thomas Gurke is Lecturer for English and Cultural Studies at the University of
Koblenz-Landau, Germany.
Susan Winnett is Professor of American Studies and Transcultural Studies at the
Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf, Germany.
“Brick Lane (2007)”. Kevin A. Morrison (ed.). London’s East End: A Short Encyclopedia. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co. 2023, 39
“German Catholic Church”. Kevin A. Morrison (ed.). London’s East End: A Short Encyclopedia. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co. 2023, 90
“Gilbert and George”. Kevin A. Morrison (ed.). London’s East End: A Short Encyclopedia. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co. 2023, 91-92
“Millennium Dome”. Kevin A. Morrison (ed.). London’s East End: A Short Encyclopedia. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co. 2023, 155-156
“Million-Peopled City, The”. Kevin A. Morrison (ed.). London’s East End: A Short Encyclopedia. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co. 2023, 156
“New Realism”. Kevin A. Morrison (ed.). London’s East End: A Short Encyclopedia. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co. 2023, 164-165
The East End is an iconic area of London, from the transient street art of Banksy and Pablo Delgado to the exhibitions of Doreen Fletcher and Gilbert and George. Located east of the Tower of London and north of the River Thames, it has experienced a number of developmental stages in its four-hundred-year history. Originating as a series of scattered villages, the area has been home to Europe’s worst slums and served as an affluent nodal point of the British Empire.
Through its evolution, the East End has been the birthplace of radical political and social movements and the social center for a variety of diasporic communities. This reference work, with its alphabetically organized cross-referenced entries and its original and historical photography, serves as a comprehensive guide to the social and cultural history of this global hub.
What processes and negotiations of identity-construction are taking place? What is at stake for popular culture and – indeed – literature? Which function does music fulfil in Cho’s ‘morphings’?
The following two projects illustrate our attempts to explore and utilise the relationships between participatory culture and the literary classroom as sketched above. Our first venture, "POP: Perspectives on Poetry", was tailored for the Sciencity Düsseldorf 2013 – an academic open-house event where we tried to bridge the gap between the classroom and 'the world out there'. The idea was to re-read classical poetics as a theory of the popular and vice-versa: that is, to 'mash up' perspectives on the contemporary media landscape and the literary canon in ways that demonstrate how our work need not rely on separating them in the first place. The second project, "Mapping the Mash-Up", was a graduate course at Heinrich-Heine University in 2016. Here too, we connected traditional and non-traditional approaches to literary studies. By emphasising the mash-up's characteristic trait of also being a "literary remix" (Voigts 2015, 150) we wished to provide a tool to introduce theories of adaptation and appropriation. Focussing on three contemporary examples of literary mash-ups allowed us to propose a simple typology of adaptation for the classroom: 'empowerment', 'resistance', and 'recontexualisation'
on the relationship between the verbal and the musical. The contributors’
international perspective and focus on seeing this relationship as a form of
intermediality allows them to open new directions for inquiry by simultaneously
employing and interrogating a range of traditional oppositions, such as those
between popular and classical music, rock and pop, the accessible and the
‘difficult,’ the canonical and the ‘minor,’ the present and the historical past, live
and recorded music.”
— Philip Auslander is Professor in the School of Literature, Media, and Communication at the Georgia Institute of Technology, USA
“As a scholar of popular culture, what excites me about this eclectic collection is
the way that it explodes any fixed conception of the relationship between elite
and popular music in favor of an exploration of the flexible borders between
music and lyrics, high and low, text and performance, art and commerce,
traditional and emergent, live and mediated, original and remix, spectatorship
and participation, and so much more. Each essay offers nuanced, intermedial
readings of specific sites of music production, each of which ask fundamental
questions about the nature of popular music, past, present, and future.”
— Henry Jenkins is Provost Professor of Communication, Journalism,
Cinematic Arts and Education at the University of Southern California, USA
This collection of essays explores the relation of words and music to issues of the
popular. It asks: What is popularity or ‘the’ popular and what role(s) does music
play in it? What is the function of the popular, and is ‘pop’ a system? How can
popularity be explained in certain historical and political contexts? How do class,
gender, race, and ethnicity contribute to and complicate an understanding of the
popular? What of the popularity of verbal art forms? How do they interact with
music at particular times and throughout different media?
Thomas Gurke is Lecturer for English and Cultural Studies at the University of
Koblenz-Landau, Germany.
Susan Winnett is Professor of American Studies and Transcultural Studies at the
Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf, Germany.
“Brick Lane (2007)”. Kevin A. Morrison (ed.). London’s East End: A Short Encyclopedia. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co. 2023, 39
“German Catholic Church”. Kevin A. Morrison (ed.). London’s East End: A Short Encyclopedia. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co. 2023, 90
“Gilbert and George”. Kevin A. Morrison (ed.). London’s East End: A Short Encyclopedia. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co. 2023, 91-92
“Millennium Dome”. Kevin A. Morrison (ed.). London’s East End: A Short Encyclopedia. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co. 2023, 155-156
“Million-Peopled City, The”. Kevin A. Morrison (ed.). London’s East End: A Short Encyclopedia. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co. 2023, 156
“New Realism”. Kevin A. Morrison (ed.). London’s East End: A Short Encyclopedia. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co. 2023, 164-165
The East End is an iconic area of London, from the transient street art of Banksy and Pablo Delgado to the exhibitions of Doreen Fletcher and Gilbert and George. Located east of the Tower of London and north of the River Thames, it has experienced a number of developmental stages in its four-hundred-year history. Originating as a series of scattered villages, the area has been home to Europe’s worst slums and served as an affluent nodal point of the British Empire.
Through its evolution, the East End has been the birthplace of radical political and social movements and the social center for a variety of diasporic communities. This reference work, with its alphabetically organized cross-referenced entries and its original and historical photography, serves as a comprehensive guide to the social and cultural history of this global hub.
What processes and negotiations of identity-construction are taking place? What is at stake for popular culture and – indeed – literature? Which function does music fulfil in Cho’s ‘morphings’?
The following two projects illustrate our attempts to explore and utilise the relationships between participatory culture and the literary classroom as sketched above. Our first venture, "POP: Perspectives on Poetry", was tailored for the Sciencity Düsseldorf 2013 – an academic open-house event where we tried to bridge the gap between the classroom and 'the world out there'. The idea was to re-read classical poetics as a theory of the popular and vice-versa: that is, to 'mash up' perspectives on the contemporary media landscape and the literary canon in ways that demonstrate how our work need not rely on separating them in the first place. The second project, "Mapping the Mash-Up", was a graduate course at Heinrich-Heine University in 2016. Here too, we connected traditional and non-traditional approaches to literary studies. By emphasising the mash-up's characteristic trait of also being a "literary remix" (Voigts 2015, 150) we wished to provide a tool to introduce theories of adaptation and appropriation. Focussing on three contemporary examples of literary mash-ups allowed us to propose a simple typology of adaptation for the classroom: 'empowerment', 'resistance', and 'recontexualisation'
Please send abstracts of no longer than 250 words, with the subject “WMAF 2018” to: [email protected]. Individual paper presentations will be 20 minutes long to be followed by 10 minutes of discussion. The conference language will be English. More information about the Word and Music Association Forum and about this conference will be posted on the organization website: www.wmaforum.org.
Deadline for receiving abstracts: 31 May 2018 (Acceptance letters: 31 July 2018)
Any questions should be directed to the local Academic Committee:
Thomas Gurke & Susan Winnett at [email protected].