since 2021

Adjunct Research Fellow at Edith Cowan University, School of Arts and Humanities

2020

GASt dissertation prize for her PhD thesis "The Adolescent Country: Re-Imagining Youth and Coming of Age in Contemporary Australian Film” (Englisches Seminar, Universität zu Köln 2018)

since 2020
Research Assistant for Prof. Dr. Heinz Antor, University of Cologne & Assistant Editor of Anglistik: International Journal of English Studies

2018
PhD in English Literature (summa cum laude): The Adolescent Nation: Re-Imagining Youth and Coming of Age in Contemporary Australian Film

2014
DAAD Visiting Scholar, Monash University, Melbourne

2012-2020
Research Assistant for Prof. Dr. Beate Neumeier, University of Cologne

2012
M.A., Magister Artium in Theatre-, Film- and Television Studies, English Studies and German Studies, University of Cologne

Books:

• The Adolescent Nation: Re-Imagining Youth and Coming of Age in Contemporary Australian Film. Anglistische Forschungen. Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter, 2021.
  • Review: Xu, Daozhi. Anglistik: International Journal of English Studies vol. 33, no .2, 2022, pp. 276-277.
  • Review: Johnson, Benjamin T. Australian Studies Journal | Zeitschrift für Australienstudien, vol. 36, 2022, pp. 73-75.
  • Review: Morgan, Stephen. Journal of Australian, Canadian, and Aotearoa New Zealand Studies vol. 3, 2023, pp. 215-216.
• Nature and Environment in Australia (eds. with Boris Braun and Beate Neumeier). Trier: WVT, 2018.

Journal Articles / Articles in Edited Books:

• “‘Boat people’ in Australian Cinema: The Missing Boat in Khoa Do’s Mother Fish (2009).” Migrant Australia: From Botany Bay to Manus Island, edited by Katrin Althans et al. WVT, 2022, pp. 133-145.
• “Queering the Dreaming: Representations of the ‘Other’ in the Indigenous Australian Speculative Television Series Cleverman.” Gender Forum: Special Issue on Gender and Sexuality in Australian Speculative Fiction, edited by Bettina Burger, David Kern, and Lucas Mattila, no. 81, 2021, pp. 30-47.
• ““Listen to your tribal voice”: Embodying Locality in German-Australian Music Encounters. The Case of Peter Maffay and Yothu Yindi.” Australian Studies Journal | Zeitschrift für Australienstudien, vol. 35, 2021, pp. 145-155. DOI: 10.35515/zfa/asj.35/2021.12.

• “Narrating Lives – Telling (Hi)stories: Transcultural Readings: Essays In Memory of Kay Schaffer.” with Beate Neumeier. Australian Studies Journal | Zeitschrift für Australienstudien, vol. 35, 2021, pp. 7-12. DOI: 10.35515/zfa/asj.35/2021.01.

• “Environmental Violence in Australia: The Effects of Mining and Its Representation in the Indigenous Australian Film Satellite Boy.” Narrating Violence in the Postcolonial World, edited by Rebecca Romdhani and Daria Tunca, Routledge, Research in Postcolonial Literatures Series, 2021, 201-213. DOI: 10.4324/9781003110231-11.

• “Fatal Equilibrium: Air and the End of a Universe in Ted Chiang’s “Exhalation”.” with David Kern. Venti: Air, Experience, and Aesthetics, vol. 2, no. 1, Summer 2021, online access.

• “Corporate Interest and the Power of Mines in Indigenous Writing and Film: Alexis Wright’s Carpentaria (2006) and Ivan Sen’s Goldstone (2016).” with David Kern. Ecocritical Concerns and the Australian Continent, edited by Beate Neumeier and Helen Tiffin, Rowman&Littlefield, Ecocritical Theory and Practice-Series, 2019, pp. 235-249.

• “Reassessing Aboriginal Self‐Determination in Rolf De Heer’s Charlie’s Country (2014).” ... and there’ll be NO dancing: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Governmental Policy Impacting Indigenous Australia since 2007, edited by Barbara Schmidt-Haberkamp and Elisabeth Bähr. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars, 2017, pp. 228-242.

• “‘Rights of Passage’: Exploring the Liminal Position of Indigenous Australian Youth in Warwick Thornton’s Samson and Delilah (2009) and Ivan Sen’s Toomelah (2011).” Postcolonial Justice. Reassessing the Fair Go, edited by Gigi Adair and Anja Schwarz. Trier: WVT, 2016, pp. 151-162.

• “‘The Sapphires’ (2012) and ‘One Night the Moon’ (2001): Song, History and Australian Aboriginality.” gender forum - An Online Platform for Gender and Women's Studies, no. 46 (2013).

Reviews:

• Jennifer Debenham. Celluloid Subjects to Digital Directors: Changing Aboriginalities and Australian Documentary Film, 1901-2017. Oxford and New York: Peter Lang, 2020. Australian Studies Journal | Zeitschrift für Australienstudien, no. 33/34, 2019/20, pp. 167-171. DOI: 10.35515/zfa/asj.3334/201920.12.

Habilitation project: The Material Agency of the Migrant Boat

This study engages with the literary representation of migrant boats as carriers and agents of history, memory and meaning. Departing from insights in the environmental humanities and material ecocriticism this study engages with boats and their non-human material agency and material narrativity, thereby providing a transfer from theories predominantly discussed in the context of the Anthropocene to the study of migration, mobility and memory studies. In the study of migration in the Anglophone world, boats as heterotopia provide a framework to discuss human and non-human relationality in connection to colonisation, economic and ecological consequences, identity and alterity, crises and conflict, trauma and memory.

Research Network 'Energy and Literature'

(Dr. Victoria Herche, David Kern and Dr. Antonia Villinger, FAU Erlangen)

The central premise of the research network Energy and Literature, which is based in cultural studies and comparative literature, is that energy and literature are productively interrelated in ways that are, however, insufficiently theorized. Based on their respective fields of study (English Studies, American Studies, German Studies, Romance Studies, Scandinavian Studies), the members examine, in their projects, literary representations of energy in their cultural-historical contexts. They focus primarily on non-renewable resources such as gas, oil, coal, and uranium without neglecting, however, historical developments in energy production. For the theoretical and methodological orientation of the network the so-called Energy Humanities (a field of research that is dominantly shaped by work from the anglophone world) are foundational. However, our aim is not a mere import of the Energy Humanities into central European philologies. Rather, it is the network’s aim to strive for a methodological and theoretical expansion of this field of research. The network approaches this analytical goal through four thematic focal points, which particularly characterize the current engagement with energy in literary and cultural studies. 1. The network explores theories and histories of the concept of energy in order to discuss energy in a larger context of sustainability, climate, ecology, diversity, and identity following, but also distinguishing itself from contributions from Environmental, Postcolonial, and Material Studies. In order to adequately examine the various sources of energy from a literary studies perspective, it requires 2. research on different sites of energy, such as coal mines, pipelines, solar fields, nuclear power plants, and oil rigs, among others. 3. The network further considers energy in the context of Future Studies and analyzes how literature imagines non-extractive futures. 4. Finally, the network considers energy in the context of environmental ethics and climate justice.

International workshop organized by Jun.-Prof. Dr. Judith Rauscher (U of Cologne), Dr. Victoria Herche (U of Cologne), Verena Wurth (U of Cologne) in collaboration with the University of Oregon: “Energy and Popular Culture”, March 21, 2023 5-7 pm CET / 9-11 am PST, via Zoom.

Commemoration of War and Migration

(Dr. Victoria Herche and Prof. Dr. Noah Riseman, ACU Melbourne)

This project explores how war and immigration, which are often read independently, are remembered through narratives and cultural artefacts, and how such narratives have the power to include/exclude certain groups. It further explores how marginalised groups – LGBTIQ+ people, Muslims, Indigenous people, forced migrants, refugees – have used cultural products to challenge their exclusion from dominant narratives of national history.

International workshop organized by Dr. Victoria Herche and David Kern, together with Prof. Noah Riseman (ACU Melbourne) and Dr. Meggie Hutchison (ACU Brisbane): “Whom Do We Remember? Narratives of War and Migration”, 6 July 2022, University of Cologne.

Funding: DAAD exchange grant ‘PPP Australien’ 2020/21: “Whom do we remember? Exploring Cultural Narratives of War and Migration”, Prof. Beate Neumeier, Dr. Victoria Herche, David Kern (University of Cologne) & Prof. Noah Riseman, Dr. Margaret Hutchison (Australian Catholic University).

Edited volume: Victoria Herche and Noah Riseman, eds. Whom do we remember? Australian Cultural Narratives of War and Migration. Australian Studies: Interdisciplinary Perspectives. Peter Lang, forthcoming.

Narratives of Migration and the Digital Format

International collaboration with Prof. Paul Longley Arthur, Dr. Jamal Barnes, Isabel Smith (ECU Perth)

This research project focuses on perceptions and representations of migration and asylum seekers in Europe and Australia. The comparative study explores these issues from a range of interdisciplinary perspectives in the humanities and social sciences, including responses to migration and constructions of ‘migrant identities’ in social media, film, literature and more broadly in public discourse. The project’s aim is to explore how immigration provokes transnational reconsiderations of socio-cultural meanings and practices, including cultural resources and expressive practices that are used by individuals and groups to understand themselves and their place in the world, to structure social relations, to shape identities, and to develop actions.

Funding: DAAD exchange grant ‘PPP Australien’ 2018/19: “Migrant and transnational identity-formation: German and Australian responses to migration and asylum seekers in the media and public discourse”. http://centreforaustralianstudies.org/migrant-and-transnational-identity-formation-german-and-australian-responses-to-migration-and-asylum-seekers-in-the-media-and-public-discourse/

Workshop Series: Human Journeys in the Global Era, August 2018:

part 1: Human Journeys in the Global Era: Migrant Cultural Heritage, Sydney, 13-14 August 2018

part 2: Human Journeys in the Global Era II – Roundtable on International Engagement, ANU Canberra, 16 August 2018

part 3: Human Journeys in the Global Era III – Border Crossings, ECU Perth, 22 August 2018

Ted Chiang’s Speculative Short Fiction

(Dr. Victoria Herche and David Kern, University of Cologne)

This ongoing research project examines the work of American speculative fiction writer Ted Chiang from a variety of critical angles. Applying, for example, postcolonial theory to Chiang's work, we examine how his short fiction engages empire, power, and its 21st century manifestations. Furthermore, working at the intersection of postcolonial theory and environmental criticism, we study how Chiang's fiction refracts pressing contemporary issues like anthropogenic climate change, geophysical transformation, the ethics and politics of intervention, as well as the limits of human ingenuity. We also argue that recent developments in artificial intelligence and heated debates about what it means to be human in an unprecedented technological revolution call for in-depth readings of Chiang's oftentimes anticipatory and cautionary futurisms, interrogating the very role of science and discovery, human cognition and selfhood, as well as human-technology relations at a time where AI threatens to destabilize familiar economic, social, as well as intellectual orders. So far, two publications have come out of this project:

Victoria Herche and David Kern. “Scientists and their Discoveries: A Postcolonial Reading of Ted Chiang’s Science Fiction.” Science, Culture, and Postcolonial Narratives, edited by Karsten Levihn-Kutzler and Anton Kirchhofer. Heidelberg University Publishing, 2024, forthcoming.

Victoria Herche and David Kern. “Fatal Equilibrium: Air and the End of a Universe in Ted Chiang’s “Exhalation”.” Venti: Air, Experience, and Aesthetics, vol. 2, no. 1, Summer 2021, n.p. https://www.venti-journal.com/herche-and-kern.

• Narrating Postcolonial Australia (B-Seminar, SoSe 12)
• The Works of David Lynch: Exploring Film Theory (B-Seminar, WS 12/13)
• Coming of Age Stories (B-Seminar, SoSe 13)
• In the Wake of First Contact: Australian Postcolonial Narrative (B-Seminar, WS 13/14)
• Hitchcock's Place in Film Theory (B-Seminar, SoSe 14)
• Australian Cultural Studies (co-teaching, eLearning seminar, University of Potsdam, SoSe 14)
• Youth and Identity - Introduction to Postcolonial Studies (B-Seminar, WS 14/15: taught as Blockseminar in Jan/Feb 2015)
• Formative Landscapes – the Shaping of Australian Culture (B-Seminar, SoSe 15)
• Lost Highways – Road Movies and their cultural contexts (B-Seminar, SoSe 15)
• Film Theory in Practice: The Works of David Lynch (B-Seminar, WS 15/16)
• Surfers, Soldiers, Bushrangers: Concepts of Masculinity in Australian Narrative (Proseminar SP/B-Seminar, SoSe 16)
• Psychoanalytic Film Theory (Proseminar SP/B-Seminar, SoSe 16)
• Australian Studies: Nature and Environment (co-teaching, Prof. Dr. Beate Neumeier, SoSe 16)
• Narratives of the Desert (Proseminar SP/B-Seminar, WS 16/17)
• Concepts of Youth and Identity in a Postcolonial Context (Proseminar MP/Übung, SoSe 17)
• Techno-Somatics: Human-Machine-Hybrids in Literature and Film (Proseminar SP/B-Seminar, SoSe 17)
• Film Theory in Practice: Reading the Classics (Proseminar SP/B-Seminar, WS 17/18)
• Postcolonial Science Fiction (Proseminar SP, SoSe 18)
• Stories of Migration, Settlement and First Contact (Proseminar SP, SoSe 18)
• The Cinematic Unconscious: Psychoanalytic Film Theory (Proseminar MP, WS 18/19)
• Stories of Migration (Proseminar SP, SoSe 19)
• Film Theory in Practice: David Lynch (Mittelseminar, SoSe 19)
• Decolonizing the Future: Introduction to Postcolonial Science Fiction (Proseminar SP, WS 19/20)
• Introduction to Australian Cinema - Onlineseminar (Proseminar SP, SoSe 20)
• Narratives of Migration (Mittelseminar, SoSe 20)
• Hitchcock's Place in Film Theory (Proseminar, WiSe 20/21)
• Memories of Migration (Mittelseminar, WiSe 20/21)
• Gendering the Nation: Australian Masculinities (Proseminar, SoSe 21)
• Narratives of Deserts and Oceans: Ecocritical Concerns (Mittelseminar, SoSe 21)
• Unreliable Narration in Literature and Film (Proseminar, WiSe 21/22)
• Global Frankenstein (Mittelseminar, WiSe 21/22)
• Indigenous Australian Theatre and Performance (Proseminar, SoSe 22)
• Going Underground: The Extractive Industries in Literature and Film (Mittelseminar, SoSe 22)
• Introduction to Australian Cinema (Proseminar WiSe 22/23)
• Border Narratives (Mittelseminar WiSe 22/23)
• Stories of Memory and Trauma (Mittelseminar SoSe 23)
• Narratives of the Atmospheric (Hauptseminar SoSe 23)
• The Male Gaze in Cinema (Proseminar WiSe 23/24)
• MS: Boat Narratives (Mittelseminar WiSe 23/24)

During the semester:

Tuesdays, 12-13pm.

Please sign up using Scheduler.

Philosophikum, First Floor, Room 1.106

Memberships:

• On the Editorial Board of Peter Lang Series: Australian Studies: Interdisciplinary Perspectives (editor: Anne Brewster)
• On the Executive Board of InASA  - International Australian Studies Association
• Public Relations Coordinator at the Centre for Australian Studies
• EACLALS - The European Association for Commonwealth Literature and Language Studies
• Deutscher Anglistenverband
• GAPS - Association for Anglophone Postcolonial Studies
• GASt - Gesellschaft für Australienstudien / Australian Studies Association