Biography
Mary Cosgrove (FTCD, MRIA) is a graduate of University College Dublin where she was Lecturer in German from 2002-2004. She was appointed Lecturer in German at the University of Edinburgh in 2005 and was promoted to Reader in German in 2012. In 2014 she was appointed Professor of German at the University of Warwick. In 2015 she was appointed Professor in German at Trinity College Dublin. Her publications include Born under Auschwitz: Melancholy Traditions in Postwar German Literature (2014, Choice recommended title); (with Anna Richards, ed.), 'Sadness and Melancholy in German-Language Literature and Culture,' Edinburgh German Yearbook VI (2012); (with Anne Fuchs and Georg Grote, eds.), German Memory Contests: The Quest for Identity in German Literature, Film and Discourse since 1990 (2006, paperback 2010; winner Choice Outstanding Academic Title, 2007); Grotesque Ambivalence: Melancholy and Mourning in the Prose Work of Albert Drach (2004). Research and teaching interests include representations of neoliberal culture in contemporary German-language literature and film, pathologies of the modern subject in fin-de-siècle culture, German-Jewish literature from the 19th century to the present, post-1945 and contemporary German literature, German memory debates since the 1960s, Holocaust historiography, psychoanalysis, trauma theory, and European melancholy traditions, and Medical Humanities. Current projects include'Framing Ageing', a collaboration between TCD Medical Humanities and UCD's Humanities Institute, and 'The Aesthetics and Politics of Relationality in Contemporary German Culture'. Professor Cosgrove is interested to discuss postgraduate supervisions on any of the above topics. Her various research projects have attracted funding from the IRCHSS (IRC), the AHRC, the British Academy, the DAAD, the ÖAD, the Wellcome Trust, and the Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland. In 2011 and 2012 she organised and hosted public engagement events on the topics of melancholy and sleep under the auspices of the Scottish Mental Health Arts and Film Festival, continuing this impact work at TCD through the collaborative project (with TCIN) 'Melancholia and the Brain' (TLRH, March 2019). From 2011-2013 she led the University of Edinburgh Modern Languages REF 2014 submission. In 2014 she was Visiting Fellow in the Centre for the History of Emotions at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Berlin. From January 2016-2020 she was Germanic Editor of the Modern Language Review, from 2011-2021 a member of the German Monitor's Editorial Board; since 2020 she is Co-Editor of new Camden House book series 'Culture and Power in German-Speaking Europe, 1918-1989'.
Publications and Further Research Outputs
Peer-Reviewed Publications
Ode to the Secret Atomic Flow of the World: Mein Hiddensee (2015) in, editor(s)Karen Leeder, Lyn Marven , Ulrike Draesner: A Companion, Berlin, De Gruyter, 2023, pp217 - 233, pp16 , [Mary Cosgrove]
'Cultural Responses to the Crisis of Democracy in Germany: The Center for Political Beauty and "Sucht nach uns!"' in, editor(s)Laura Zuntini de Izzara, Thiago Moyano , Transatlantic Crises of Democracy: Cultural Approaches, São Paulo, Editora FFLCH, 2022, pp156 - 182, pp26 , [Mary Cosgrove]
Mary Cosgrove, The Slothful Protest: Acedia in Terézia Mora's Darius-Kopp Trilogy and Iris Hanika's Das Eigentliche Das , German Life and Letters, 74, (1), 2021, p47 - 66
'"Never an Innocent Game": The Center for Political Beauty and "Search for us!"' in, editor(s)Frauke Matthes, Dora Osborne, Katya Krylova, Myrto Aspioti , Politics and Culture in Germany and Austria Today, Rochester NY, Camden House (Boydell & Brewer), 2021, pp58 - 74, [Mary Cosgrove]
Mary Cosgrove, Veronica O'Keane et al., Mood Matters: A National Survey on Attitudes to Depression, Irish Journal of Medical Science, 2019, p13
Mary Cosgrove, The Time of Sloth in Terezia Mora's Der einzige Mann auf dem Kontinent, Oxford German Studies, 46, (4), 2017
The Temporality of Boredom in the Age of Acceleration: The Car Crash in Contemporary German Literature in, editor(s)Anne Fuchs, J. J. Long , Time in German Literature and Culture, 1900-2015: Between Slowness and Acceleration, Basingstoke, Palgrave, 2016, pp204-217 - [Mary Cosgrove]
Mary Cosgrove, Born under Auschwitz: Melancholy Traditions in Postwar German Literature, Rochester, NY, Camden House, 2014
Reinventing Invented Tradition: Vergangenheitsbewältigung and the Literature of Melancholy in, editor(s)Peter Davies, Andrea Hammel , Edinburgh German Yearbook VIII: New Literary and Linguistic Perspectives on the German Language, National Socialism, and the Shoah , Rochester, NY, Camden House, 2014, pp107 - 123, [Mary Cosgrove]
Sadness and Melancholy in German-Language Literature from the Seventeenth Century to the Present in, editor(s)Mary Cosgrove, Anna Richardson , Edinburgh German Yearbook VI: Sadness and Melancholy in German-Language Literature from the Seventeenth Century to the Present, Rochester, NY, Camden House, 2012, pp1 - 17, [Mary Cosgrove]
Mary Cosgrove, Heimat as Non-Place and Terrain Vague in Jenny Erpenbeck's Heimsuchung and Julia Schoch's Mit der Geschwindigkeit des Sommers, New German Critique, 116, (Summer), 2012, p63 - 86
Mary Cosgrove, Anna Richardson (eds), Edinburgh German Yearbook VI: Sadness and Melancholy in German-Language Literature and Culture from the Seventeenth Century to the Present, Rochester, NY, Camden House, 2012
From Nobility to Sloth: Melancholy Self-Fashioning and the Hamlet Motif in Wolfgang Hildesheimer's Tynset and Masante in, editor(s)Rüdiger Görner, Isabel Wagner , Jahrbuch für Internationale Germanistik: Wolfgang Hildesheimer und England: Zur Topologie eines literarischen Transfers, Bern, Peter Lang, 2012, pp79 - 101, [Mary Cosgrove]
W. G. Sebald's Austerlitz in, editor(s)Stuart Taberner , The Cambridge Companion to the German Novel since 1990, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2011, pp195 - 210, [Mary Cosgrove]
Staatliche Körper, verkörperter Staat: Biopolitik in Albert Drachs >>Z.Z. Das ist die Zwischenzeit<< in, editor(s)Dietrich von Engelhardt, Juergen Barkhoff , Körperkult - Körperzwang - Körperstörung im Spiegel von Psychopathologie, Literatur und Kultur, Heidelberg, Matthes Verlag, 2010, pp258 - 270, [Mary Cosgrove]
Erinnerungsethik und 'Dürer-Diskurs' im Werk W. G. Sebalds, Peter Weiss, Günter Grass und Jean Améry in, editor(s)Irene Heidelberger-Leonard, Mireille Tabah , W. G. Sebald: Intertexualität und Topographie, Berlin, LIT , 2009, pp153 - 166, [Mary Cosgrove]
Narrating German Suffering in the Shadow of Holocaust Victimology: W. G. Sebald, Contemporary Trauma Theory and Dieter Forte's Air Raids Epic in, editor(s)Stuart Taberner, Karina Berger , Germans as Victims in the Literary Fiction of the Berlin Republic, Rochester, NY, Camden House, 2009, pp162 - 176, [Mary Cosgrove]
W. G. Sebald for our Time: The Politics of Melancholy in his Work in, editor(s)Anne Fuchs, J. J. Long , W. G. Sebald and the Writing of History, Würzburg, Königshausen & Neumann, 2007, pp91 - 110, [Mary Cosgrove]
Mary Cosgrove, Melancholy Competitions: W. G. Sebald reads Günter Grass and Wolfgang Hildesheimer, German Life and Letters, special issue: 'Memory Contests - Cultural Memory, Hybridity, and Identity in German Discourses since 1990', 2006, p217 - 232
German Memory Contests and the Management of the Past in, editor(s)Mary Cosgrove, Anne Fuchs , German Memory Contests: The Quest for Identity in Literature, Film, and Discourse since 1990, Rochester, NY, Camden House, 2006, pp1 - 21, [Mary Cosgrove, Anne Fuchs]
German Life and Letters, special issue: 'Memory Contests - Cultural Memory, Hybridity, and Identity in German Discourses since 1990', 59, April, (2006), Mary Cosgrove, Anne Fuchs, [eds.]
The Anxiety of German Influence: Affiliation, Rejection, and Jewish Identity in W. G. Sebald's Work in, editor(s)Mary Cosgrove, Anne Fuchs , German Memory Contests: The Quest for Identity in Literature, Film, and Discourse since 1990, Rochester, NY, Camden House, 2006, pp229 - 252, [Mary Cosgrove]
Mary Cosgrove, Boudoir Society: Violence and Biopolitics in Albert Drach's Protocol Novels, Krieg und Literatur, 19, 2006, p145 - 161
Mary Cosgrove, Anne Fuchs (eds), German Memory Contests: The Quest for Identity in Literature, Film, and Discourse since 1990, Rochester, NY, Camden House, 2006
Bodies of Violence, Violated Bodies: The Victimised Victimiser in Albert Drach's Holocaust Autobiography in, editor(s)Helen Chambers , Violence, Culture and identity: Essays on German and Austrian Literature, Politics and Society, Oxford, Berlin, New York, Peter Lang, 2005, pp259 - 270, [Mary Cosgrove]
Mary Cosgrove, Grotesque Ambivalence: Melancholy and Mourning in the Prose Work of Albert Drach, Germany, Niemeyer / de Gruyter, 2004
Netzwerk und Erinnerung in Wolfgang Hildesheimers Tynset in, editor(s)Hartmut Boehme, Juergen Barkhoff, Jeanne Riou , Netzwerke: Aesthetiken und Techniken der Vernetzung - 1800, 1900, 2000, Cologne, Böhlau, 2004, pp251 - 261, [Mary Cosgrove]
Melancholisches Leiden im Sex Getto der Zwischenzeit: Spuren des Affektiven im autobiographischen Werk von Albert Drach in, editor(s)Anne Fuchs, Sabine Stumper-Krobb , Sentiment, Gefühle, Empfindungen: Zur Geschichte und Literatur des Affektiven von 1770 bis heute, Würzburg, Königshausen & Neumann, 2003, pp213 - 223, [Mary Cosgrove]
Melancholisches Leiden im Sex Getto der Zwischenzeit: Spuren des Affektiven im autobiographischen Werk von Albert Drach in, editor(s)Anne Fuchs, Sabine Stumper-Krobb , Sentimente, Gefühle, Empfindungen: Zur Geschichte und Literatur des Affektiven von 1770 bis heute, Würzburg, Königshausen & Neumann, 2003, pp213 - 223, [Mary Cosgrove]
Recognition
Memberships
Committee member and trustee: Modern Humanities Research Association (MHRA) Association of German Studies in Great Britain and Ireland (AGS) German Studies Association (North America) (GSA) German Studies Association of Ireland (GSAI)