Dr. Kathrin Bethke

Research Interests

• Late Medieval and Early Modern Literature
• History and Theory of Poetry, Poetics, and Genre
• History and Theory of Emotions
• Literature and the History of Science and early Mathematics
• Literary and Cultural Theory
• Postcolonial and Transcultural Literary Studies

Career History

2022 – 2024 Assistant Professor at the English Department of the University of Göttingen
2016 – 2021 Assistent Professor at the English Department of Kiel University
2015 – 2016 Freelance Translator and German Teacher at Sprachenatelier Berlin
2013 Assistant Professor at the Peter Szondi-Institute of Comparative Literature at Freie Universität Berlin (Maternity Leave Replacement)
2011 Adjunct Lecturer at the Peter Szondi-Institute of Comparative Literature at FU Berlin

Education

2021 PhD in English at Freie Universität Berlin; Thesis: Affective Appraisals: Shakespearean Correlations of Emotions and the Concept of Valu
2009 – 2012 Graduate Student at the Cluster of Excellence Languages of Emotion, FU Berlin
2014 Visiting Researcher at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem
2011 Visiting Researcher at Stanford University
2009 M.A. in Comparative Literature, Philosophy and Theatre Studies at FU Berlin; Ma Thesis: “The Poetics of Pathological Grief in Early Modern England: On the Complaints of Chaucer, Spenser and Shakespeare”
2003 – 2004 Visiting Student at Yale University
2001– 2002 Visiting Student at the University of Edinburgh

Grants and Scholarships

2014 DAAD Global Humanities Junior Fellowship in the Research Network Principles of Cultural Dynamics at the Dahlem Humanities Center
2012 Conference Travel Grant of the DRS (Dahlem Research School)
2011 Research Grant of the DRS (Dahlem Research School)
2009 – 2012 Graduate Scholarship of the Cluster of Excellence “Languages of Emotion” at the FU Berlin
2003 – 2004 Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Visiting Fellowship, Graduate Fellowship of the Berlin Consortium of Germanic Studies, Fulbright Travel Grant
2001 – 2002 Socrates/ Erasmus Scholarship

Publications

2022 Protean Poetics in Shakespeare and Joyce.“ Shakespeare Seminar Online 19, Special Issue: Shakespeare’s Odysseys, hg. v. Lukas Lammers und Kirsten Sandrock. https://shakespeare-gesellschaft.de/publications-3/shakespeare-seminar-online/sso-issues/issue-15-2017-2-2-2/?lang=en

2021 “Love’s Accountants: Double-Entry Bookkeeping and the Sonnet Form in Early Modern England.” In: Forms at Work: New Formalist Approaches to the Study of Literature, Culture and Media. Ed. by Ansgar Nünning, Elisabeth, Kovach and Imke Polland.

2021 “Emotion Metaphors and Literary Texts: The Case of Shakespaere’s Sonnets.” In: The Rhetoric and Topics of Forms. Ed. by Gianna Zocco. Berlin and Boston: De Gruyter. 15-27. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110642032-002

2012 “‘I cannot heave my heart into my mouth.’ Embodiment und Sprachmaterial in King Lear und Richard II.“ In: Gefühle Sprechen: Emotionen an den Anfängen und Grenzen der Sprache. Ed. by Victoria Räuchle and Maria Römer. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann. 139-60.

2011 “Zwischenbericht: Der 3. Tag, die 3. Fahrt. Auf dem Karusell: Kathrin Bethke & Bastian Ronge.” In: Fühlt Weniger! Dialoge über Emotionen. Recherchen 78. Ed. by Irene Albers and Isabel Dziobek. Berlin: Theater der Zeit. 208-17.

2010 “‘Where I have lost, I softer tread’: Emily Dickinson und die Prosodie der Trauer.” In: Emotionale Grenzgänge: Konzeptualisierungen von Liebe, Trauer und Angst in Sprache und Literatur. Ed. By Lisanne Ebert et. al. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann. 133-51.

Guest Lectures and Conference Presentations

2025 Tiresias, Iphis, Hermaphroditus: Mythical Paradigms of Non-Binarity in Kae Tempest and Ali Smith (BritCult 2025: Re-Orientating Gender (Studies): Feminism, Queerness, Trans* in Cultural Studies Today, Bamberg)

2025 Measures of Value: Charlotte Smith’s Elegiac Sonnets and the Axiology of Poetic Genre (GER 2025: Conceptions of Value in the Romantic Age, Erlangen)

2023 Fear of the Future and the Future of Fear: On the Evolution and Degeneration of Emotions in Late Victorian Dystopias. (Victorian Affects, Online-Workshop des DACH Victorianists Network)

2022 Sad Recursions: Poetics of Grief and Consolation in Chaucer’s Book of the Duchess and the Early Modern Complaint Tradition (Liebesgeflüster und Wutgeschrei: Affektkommunikation in Antike, Mittelalter und Früher Neuzeit, Osnabrück).

2022 Protean Poetics in Shakespeare and Joyce (Shakespeare’s Odysseys, Frühjahrstagung der Deutschen Shakespearegesellschaft in Bochum).

2021 „When Love hath cast his utmost sum”: Economies of the Sonnet Form in Early Modern England (Vortrag auf Einladung der Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz).

2020 Emotion, Affect, and the ‘Folly of Evaluation’: Reading Shakespeare with Massumi (Value and its Other[s], Workshop Series at the University of Kiel).

2019 Forms in Conjunction: Double-Entry Bookkeping and the Sonnet Form in Early Modern England. (Invited Talk at the English Department of the University of Leipzig)

2018 Love’s Accountants: Double-Entry Bookkeeping and Literary Form in the Renaissance (Forms at Work: New Formalist approaches to Literary Studies, GCSC at the University of Gießen)

2016 Emotion Metaphors and Literary Texts: The Case of Shakespeare’s Sonnets. (21st Annual Meeting of the International Comparative Literature Association in Vienna)

2015 Love’s Appraisals: Poetic Numbers and Emotional Prosody in Shakespeare. (61st Annual Meeting of the Renaissance Society of America, Berlin)2012 “Nothings monstered”: Economies of Pride in Coriolanus and Troilus and Cressida. (40th Annual Convention of the Shakespeare Association of America Boston, USA).

2011 “I cannot heave my heart into my mouth”: Languages – and Silences – of Emotion in Shakespeare. (Gefühle Sprechen: Emotionen an den Grenzen der Sprache, Graduate Conference at the FU Berlin)

2010 Value Feelings: The Economy and Axiology of the Passions in Troilus and Cressida (Performing the Poetics of Passion – Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde and Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida, FU Berlin)

2009 “Where I have lost I softer tread”: Emily Dickinson’s Prosody of Grief (Language Talks – Konzeptualisierungen von Liebe, Trauer und Angst in Sprache und Literatur, Graduate Conference at LMU Munich)

Teaching