Christiane Arndt

Research interests: 19th century literature and culture, material culture and literature, photography (and/in literature), Medical Humanities

Education

Ph.D. German Literature, Johns Hopkins University, 2006
Staatsexamen Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn, 2000

About

Christiane Arndt's research encompasses literary, cultural, media studies, and the medical humanities in a predominantly German-language context.

Her research on materiality and literature emphasizes the role of practices like gardening and knitting in recent German-language literature. She explores how these practices are represented in reactions to societal crises and questions how literature responds to the demand for tangible change. This study includes the material potential of storytelling in drafting alternative futures. She has an upcoming article on gardening in literature for a volume on Literature and Agriculture and is compiling a special topics issue together with Karin Krauthausen. She conducted research on this topic at the Cluster of Excellence Matters of Activity at the Humboldt University Berlin, supported by a DAAD Research Fellowship.

Another project examines the use of visuals in medicine from the period around 1900. This research examines the literary and cultural engagement with microphotography, the application of statistics in popular media, the use of medical imagery in evidence production, and the development of medical mapping. Her articles discussing these individual media are published in Fotogeschichte, the Jahrbuch der Raabe Gesellschaft and The Germanic Review as well as an edited volume on scientific evidence production. This project includes a special focus on the visual rhetoric used by the historic anti-vaccine league. Her work on this project was supported by two Alexander von Humboldt Fellowships which provided her the opportunity to conduct research at the Humboldt University in Berlin and the Institute for the History of Medicine and Epistemology in Lübeck.

Beyond these focal research projects, Christiane Arndt's scholarly inquiries extend to the broader correlations between literature, medicine, and science. While the main focus lies on late 19^th-century literature and culture, her publications include Romantic Science, specifically Kleist, Novalis and a forthcoming article on Lorenz Oken. Her research also explores the interplay of photography and literature, most recently in an article on Annemarie Schwarzenbach’s photography. German literary Realism constitutes a focal research interest for Christiane Arndt. More details on her work and publications can be found in her CV.

For more further publications, academic background and public presentations, see Christiane Arndt’s Curriculum Vitae (updated: 23 July 2024).

Teaching

Professor Arndt teaches the following courses:

GRMN 101: Beginner’s German I
GRMN 308: Survey of German Cultural History I
GRMN 311: Culture Through Stories in the 18th and 19th Century
GRMN 312: Culture Through Stories in the 20th and 21st Century
LLCU 325:  Is Less More? Historic and Current Cultural Aspect of Minimalism and Reduction
LLCU 327/GRMN 427: Sickness and Health – Cultural Representations in Medical Discourse
LLCU 329/GRMN 429: Uncanny Encounters - Narrative Analysis of the Fantastic Genre
LLCU 403:  Stories that Matter. Connecting Languages, Literatures and Cultures