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For the academic year 2012/13, I have temporarily taken over the function of chair of the department's literature group.

On May 11 and 12, 2012, together with two colleagues from Louisville and Minneapolis, I organized a conference titled 'Generation M: Resetting Modernist Time'. Our keynote speakers were Profs. Chris Baldick from London and Siegfried Zielinski from Berlin. 

Current Research Interests

I am currently working on various smaller projects, including an interpretation of  a poem by Weldon Kees, some remaining issues regarding Nietzsche's philosophy of language, and a collaborative essay on George Eliot's Middlemarch . My primary and long-term interest, however, is in the politics and literary constructions of generational and age group identities, with regard to which I would naturally love to hear from fellow scholars in the field. 

Thesis Supervision

I am happy to offer thesis supervision on most post-1500 English literature but am particularly interested in topics involving Victorian and twentieth-century novels, poetry (any period), scientific discourse, sociological theory and its relation to literature, and questions from analytical philosophy.

Academic Background

Although I began my studies in Heidelberg and Berlin, my degrees are from Cambridge (MPhil in European Literature at King's College) and Oxford (MSt and DPhil in English Literature at Corpus), where I spent most of my student life and ended up doing my doctoral research. Then, from 2005-2007, I worked at Harlaxton College, the British study abroad campus of the American University of Evansville, where I taught a variety of literature and interdisciplinary courses and also helped to set up a new Centre for British Studies. Since the winter semester of 2007, I have been university lecturer of English Literature and Interdisciplinary Studies here at the University of Amsterdam, and since 2010 director of the English Literature MA programme. 

• Website of the UvA English Department

Monograph

Rudolph Glitz. Writing the Victorians: The Early Twentieth-Century Family Chronicle . Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter, 2009

Cover Description
The early twentieth-century reaction against everything Victorian is not unique to experimental Modernism. The fictional genre of the family chronicle or saga can be argued to have an equally significant share in the retrospective construction of, and critical onslaught on, what is now regularly compartmentalised as the Victorian age. Apart from some historiographical and genre-critical reflections on the concepts involved, this study concentrates on the most lastingly successful family chronicles of the time - by John Galsworthy, Arnold Bennett, D. H. Lawrence, and Virginia Woolf. Guided by the governing themes, in these texts, of the family home, Victorian housewife, paterfamilias, and rebellious child, it traces by means of historically informed close readings the authors' critical but complex engagement with nineteenth-century culture and society.

Critical Response

In the  Virginia Woolf Miscellany of Fall 2010, Katherine C. Hill-Miller describes the book as 'an excellent work of criticism that draws together a great deal of historic and genre material, that offers good close readings of texts, and that presents Lawrence and Woolf in a new and unexpected grouping.' Click below for the full review, which also raises a point of disagreement, namely with regard to my reading of Woolf's 'Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Brown'...

• VWM Review of Writing the Victorians

Edited Volume

Jan Bloemendal, Carla Dauven-van Knippenberg, Rudolph Glitz (eds). Von Maria bis Madonna. Von Mutter bis Magd. Vorlesungen im Rahmen des Europäischen Masters Deutsche Literatur des Mittelalters und der Frühen Neuzeit / From Mary to Madonna. From Mother to Maiden. Lectures Presented as Part of the European Master German Literature of the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Period . Amersfort: Florivallis, 2010

Cover Description
This volume contains a selection of lectures delivered at the University  of Amsterdam in Spring 2008. There they formed part of the European Education and Culture DG Erasmus Mundus Master Course German Literature in the European Middle Ages (GLITEMA). This course started from the conviction that medieval culture needs to be examined within its broader European context in order for researchers to explore the ways in which present national cultures in Europe have their roots in a common, medieval past.

Articles, Reviews, Notes, and Encyclopedia Entries

The following items are listed by publication date and in reverse chronological order. If you are an academic and have endorsed, challenged, or otherwise engaged with any of my claims or arguments in your own work, I would love to hear from you. 

Magazine Article

'The Fertile Fields of the Unpoetic' in La traductière: revue franco-anglaise de poésie et art visuel , no. 29 (May 2011). 134-144.
This commissioned non-academic piece in a Paris-based bi-lingual poetry magazine is related to my research in that it contains some reflections about poetry and its relation to its own other, i.e. the 'unpoetic' as discussed during the Amsterdam conference I organised with Diederik Oostdijk from the VU in May 2011.

• Read this article

Encyclopedia Entry

' The Old Wives Tale ' '. In Robert Clark et al. (eds). The Literary Encyclopedia (online). 2011.
An outline of Arnold Bennett's most acclaimed novel and its critical reception.

• Read this entry

Article

'Making Worlds Historical: The Politics and Aesthetics of Sid Meier's Civilization Series'. In Ansgar Nünning et al. (eds). The Aesthetics and Politics of Cultural Worldmaking . Trier: WVT, 2010: 161-180.
Written from a constructivist perspective, this essay addresses the question of whether and to what extent a world-builder computer game such as Civilization can be seen as a form of historiography.

• Read this article

Encyclopedia Entry

'Samuel Butler'. InRobert Clark et al. (eds). The Literary Encyclopedia (online). 2010.
This biographical essay outlines the life and works of the late nineteenth-century polymath Samuel Butler. 

• Read this entry

Review

'Down from the Attic: The Violent Madwoman in Victorian Sensation Fiction'. Review of: Andrew Mangham. Violent Women and Sensation Fiction: Crime, Medicine and Victorian Popular Culture . Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan 2007. In: IASLonline. 2008

• Read this review

Article

'A Chance to Live Forever? Cloning and Personal Survival in The 6th Day '. In T. Chandler Haliburton and Caroline Edwards (eds). Mortality, Dying and Death: Global Interdisciplinary Perspectives . Oxford: Interdisciplinary Press, 2008.
In this piece, I look at how personal identity is represented in a pre-gubernatorial Arnold Schwarzenegger movie and also highlight the film's anti-Postmodernist bias. 

• Read this paper

Two Encyclopedia Entries

 'I'm Not Stiller' and 'A Wilderness of Mirrors'. In Michael D. Sollars (ed.). The Facts-on-File Companion to the World Novel . New York: Facts on File, 2008.
These entries are on the novels originally titled, respectively,  Stiller and Mein Name sei Gantenbein by the Swiss author Max Frisch.

• Read the entry on INS

• Read the entry on AWoM

Article

'Horrifying Ho(l)mes: Conan Doyle's Bachelor Detective and the Aesthetics of Domestic Realism'. In Paul Fox and Koray Melikoglu (eds). Formal Investigations: Aesthetic Style in Late-Victorian and Edwardian Detective Fiction . Stuttgart: Ibidem, 2007. 1-28.

• Read this article

• ReadAnne Witchard's review of it inEnglish Literature in Transition (p. 448)

• Read Roger Johnson's Holmesian response in The District Messenger

Review

Review of:Gregory Moore andThomasH. Brobjer(eds). Nietzsche and Science . Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004. Logical Analysis and History of Philosophy / Philosophiegeschichte und Logische Analyse  9 (2006): 254-259.
This review contains comments on every contribution to the book. Although I am not a professional philosopher, I am keen on interdisciplinary dialogue, especially with regard to Nietzsche.

• Read this review

Note

'Young Rose Pargiter's Eminently Victorian Adventure'. Virginia Woolf Miscellany 68 (Fall 2005/Winter 2006): 10 and 15.
Thisnote is about aninteresting passage from the first chapter of Virginia Woolf's The Years . 

• Read this note

Conferences and Other Academic Activities in 2010

In November, I presented a paper titled 'Rejuvenating the Queen: Woolf and Strachey's Two Victorias' inVictoria, BC (Canada). This formed partof a panel on'Generation M' at 'MSA 12: Modernist Networks', the annual international conference of the Modernist Studies Association.
In September, I organised and introduced a panel discussion on the subject of 'Literature intoMusic, Music into Literature' that took place at Spui 25 in Amsterdam and featured the Australian novelist James Cowan, the Dutch composer Richard Rijnvos, and the UvA Professor Emeritus of Comparative Literature John Neubauer.
The month of January, I spent on a one-month residential research fellowship by theStiftung Weimarer Klassik that allowed me to work on my small research project on Nietzsche's language philosophy.

Earlier Activities

In March 2009, I presented a paper at an international conference on 'IanMcEwan: Aesthetics and Politics (in the Age of Terrorism)' at the Humboldt University in Berlin. During and since the summer of 2008, I also spoke at the international conference 'The Novel and Its Borders' in Aberdeen, chaired a one-week presentations-and-discussion workshop during the European Summer School in Cultural Studies (on 'Forms of Life'), and also a panel of the international 'Literature on Screen' conference (both here in Amsterdam).

Current Course Offerings

In 2012/13, I am teaching a section of our MA core course 'Critical Approaches to Literature and Culture' as well as the first, poetry-centred half of the course 'Self and Agency'. On the BA level, I am further teaching Literature 1: Genres, Texts, and Contexts', and the elective 'Shakespeare in Focus'.

Previous Teaching

In 2011/12, I taught improved versions of all my courses of 2010/11 as well as two classes of a new course entitled 'Literature in Theory'.

In 2010/11, I taught an MA course on 'Poetry and the Self' followed by another one on 'Globalizationand Narrative'. On the undergraduate level, I taught the interdisciplinary BA course 'Encountering Borders: Cultural Conflicts and Negotiations in Literature, Art, and Film' and also participated in 'British and American Culture 2'. Like almost every year since I have come to Amsterdam, I contributed two guest lectures on Shakespeare's Hamlet to Dr Marco de Waard's course 'Big Books' at Amsterdam University College. In the summer of 2011, I further  delivered a paper entitled '"Young Men Must Live": Hal, Harry, Henry, and Shakespeare's Politics of Age' at the Ruhr-University, Bochum in Germany.
In 09/10, I taught and co-ordinated the BA course modules 'British and American Culture 1 and 2', an MA course on 'Versions of Love in Modern English Poetry', and the general section of the interdisciplinary 'minor' course on 'Cultural Conflicts and Negotiations in Literature, Art, and Film'. I also delivered two guest lectures on Shakespeare's Hamlet as part of the core course 'Big Books' at Amsterdam University College (AUC).
In 08/09, I taught and co-ordinated the BA course modules 'Literature in Theory', 'Wetenschapsfilosofie', and 'British and American Culture 2' as well as the MA courses 'Representations of the Past in Contemporary British Fiction' and 'Gothic Fiction' (the latter in our 'tutorial' format). I also participated in the course 'Zeven Meesterwerken' for which I delivererd two lectures on Shakespeare's Hamlet , and, in March 2009, gave a Studium Generale lecture on 'Edgar Allan Poe's Gothic Horror Stories' at the Technical University of Delft.
In 07/08, my firstyear at the UvA, I taught and co-ordinated an earlier version of the BAC 2 course titled 'From Romanticism to Postmodernism', 'Wetenschapsfilosofie', as well as two MA courses on, respectively, Victorian realism and Virginia Woolf.
Earlier, at Harlaxton College, I taught 'Shakespeare', 'The English Novel', and 'British Studies' (a team-taught interdisciplinary course drawing on history, politics, art history, literature, and cultural studies). During my doctoral studies at Oxford, furthermore, I gave several undergraduate tutorials on various modernist novels.

Extra-Curricular Teaching Activities

In April 2011, I introduced and interviewed the Pulitzer-prize-winning poet Philip Schultz at Spui 25.

In May 2010, outside the regular UvA schedule, I once again helped my colleague Imogen Cohen to organise and prepare with our students a special seminar- this time on poetry and translation and conducted by the Nobel-prize-winning poet Seamus Heaney (last time, again largely thanks to Imogen, we managed to get former poet laureate Andrew Motion to speak to our students - see the links below for how it went).
In addition, I continue to be involved in the occasional poetry competitions of our department's student magazine, The Writer's Block , and, in previous years, organised two noteworthy because highly enjoyable events. These were a student drama production by the Merchants of Menace, staged in May 08, that was based on Chaucer's 'The Reeve's Tale' and a three-day field trip to the UK with my MA tutorial group 'Gothic Fiction' in May 09. Click below for what students thought of these.

• Seamus Heaney Event

• Gothic Fiction Field Trip

• Student Drama Production

• Andrew Motion Event

• Philip Schultz Event

English Department Lecture Series

From 2008 to 2011, on behalf of our English department, I used to organize a series of guest lectures (usually around two per month) given by established and high-profile as well as promising early-career academics. See below for the various speakers and topics we got to hear from and about in that time. The series is currently continued by my colleagues Dr Tara  MacDonald and Dr Dan Hassler-Forest. If you are a potential speaker travelling to or through Amsterdam, please get in touch with them.

Past lectures (from October 2008 to December 2010):

October 2008:
'An Englishwoman in a Turkish Harem: (Un)Veiling and Nationalism' by Dr Teresa Heffernan (St Mary's University, Halifax)
November 2008:
'Flirting with Disaster: Hollywood Film and the Shock Doctrine'
by Dr Joyce Goggin (UvA and Amsterdam UniversityCollege)
December 2008:
'Shattered: Some Conceptual Artists' Photographs in a Mirror'
by Dr Elizabeth Legge (University of Toronto)
February 2009:
'The Politics and Polemics of Piracy, 1580-1650'
by Professor Claire Jowitt (Nottingham Trent University)
March 2009:
'From Adventure to Everquest: Narrative Strategies in Computer Games Now and Then'
by Dr Julian Kuecklich (University of the Arts, London)
March 2009:
'Imagine a Nation: Maps and the Making of Britain, 1745-1800'
by Dr Rachel Hewitt (University of Glamorgan, Cardiff)
April 2009:
'Blood Brothers: Male Grouping in Bram Stoker's Dracula'
by Dr Murat Aydemir (UvA and Royal Netherlands Academy of the Arts and Sciences)
May 2009
Informal Q&A seminar on Science Fiction Studies
with Professor Darko Suvin (McGill University , Montreal)
May2009:
'The Paradoxes of Power in the Early Novels of J. M. Coetzee'
by Professor Robert. B. Pippin (University of Chicago)
October 2009:
'Shakespeare's Williams'
by Professor David Pascoe (University of Utrecht)
October 2009:
'Not Just "Broken English": First Nations English Dialects in Western Canada'
by Dr Inge Genee (University of Lethbridge, Alberta)
November 2009:
'The Time and the Place: Music, Costume, and the 'Affect' of History in the New Zealand Films of Jane Campion'
by Dr Estella Tincknell (University of the West of England, Bristol)
November 2009:
'Policing Literature in Apartheid South Africa'
by Dr Peter D. McDonald (St Hugh's College, University of Oxford)
December 2009:
'Windrush and After: Black British History and Popular Culture'
by Professor Barbara Korte (Albert Ludwigs University, Freiburg)
February 2010:
'The Unpleasant Profession of Varian Fry: Modernism, Cultural Value, and Administration'
by Dr Aaron Jaffe (University of Louisville)
April 2010:
'Manhattan Projects: The Culture of Urban Renewal in Cold War New York'
by Dr Samuel Zipp (Brown University)
April 2010
'Shakespeare and Republicanism'
by Professor Andrew Hadfield (University of Sussex)
April 2010:
'Media Scandals and the Economics of Discourse'
by Dr Martin Zierold (Justus Liebig University, Giessen)
May 2010:
'Desire and Disease in the Speculative Economy: a Critique of the Language of Crisis'
by Dr Nicky Marsh (University of Southampton)
May 2010:
'Optics and the Role of Wonder: Doyle and Houdini,Text and Performance'
by Dr Martin Willis (University of Glamorgan, Cardiff)
September 2010:
'The Victorian New Man and the Retreat to the Domestic'
by Dr Tara MacDonald (University College London and UvA)
October 2010:
'Post-Racial Othello'
by Professor Douglas Lanier (University of New Hampshire)
October 2010:
'"History, Memory and Indigenous HD": Ironic Self-Reflexivity and the Auto-Ethnographic Gaze in The Journals of Knud Rasmussen'
by Dr Russell Kilbourn (Wilfrid Laurier University)
November 2010:
'Ivanhoe Undead: or, Why Do Some Stories Keep Coming Back?'
by Professor Ann Rigney (Utrecht University)
November 2010:
'9/11: The Discursive Responses'
by Professor Kristiaan Versluys (University of Ghent)
November 2010:
'Hamlet, Metaphor, and Memory'
by Dr Rhodri Lewis (St Hugh's College, Oxford)
November 2010:
'Joyce Cinéaste, Godard Auteur'
by Dr Louis Armand (Charles University, Prague)
December 2010:
'Money Talks: The History of Wampum in New France'
by Dr Andreas Motsch (University of Toronto)
February 2011:
'Intermediality, Interculturalism, and Contemporary Practices in Education'
by Professor Steven Tötösy de Zepetnek (University of Halle-Wittenberg)
February2011:
'The Bible, the Pilgrims, and the Catechist: An Anecdote Taken from History'
by Dr Bill Bell (University of Edinburgh)
March 2011:
'"I Could a Tale Unfold": Narrating Death in Shakespeare's Tragedies'
by Professor Roland Weidle (Ruhr-University Bochum)
March 2011:
'"Like a Flood or an Earthquake": Trauma and the Representation of Financial Crises'
by Dr Paul Crosthwaite (University of Wales, Cardiff)
April 2011:
'"Becoming Colonial': Grief and Embodiment in Early American Elegies'
by Dr Joanne van der Woude (Harvard University)
April 2011:
'Christina Rossetti and the Economics of Publication: Macmillan's Magazine and Beyond'
by Dr Marianne van Remoortel (University of Ghent)
May 2011:
'"Our poor Colonel loved him as if he had been his own son": Soldierly Sentiment and Battlefield Adoptions in Victorian Culture'
by Dr Holly Furneaux (University of Leicester)

• No ancillary activities