Professor Barry Murnane

I am responsible for German in St. John’s College and St. Catherine’s College where I teach German literature and culture (post-1730) and translation. I also teach lectures and seminars in the German Sub-Faculty on literature, theory and cultural studies.

My main areas of research are the literature and culture of the ‘threshold period’ between 1780 and 1830, modernism, contemporary drama and popular culture. I am especially interested in modernization theory, the medical humanities and the figures of the ghost and the monstrous. My first book was a monograph on Franz Kafka (2008) and I co-edited two volumes on the German Schauerroman, or gothic novel (2011 and 2012) with Andrew Cusack. I am currently working on a monograph exploring the relationship between literature and pharmacy and preparing two edited volumes on 18^th-century nationalism and popular literature around 1900 respectively.