Doctoral Candidate Nadja Fraenkel

My PhD thesis is on "Self-dissoultion and self-encounter in contemporary Jewish fiction in Germany, Israel and the U.S. Comparative perspectives on the literary travel motif." Hereby, I am broadening my Master's thesis on German Jewish contemporary fiction to an international comparison to examine how different national contexts affect minority literature. In my thesis I am researching how German/American/Israeli-Jewish identities become hybrid or even ecstatic in categories like nationality, language, religion, but also sexuality, gender identity, grief, trauma and many more. The literary travel motif functions as the major catalyst of these categories/mobilities. I view literature through a double lens of aesthetics and politics to examine how literature can also contribute to the emancipation of the Jewish minority of each country. 

I am part of the Faculty of Modern Languages at the University of Heidelberg and my PhD supervisor is apl. Prof. Dr. Julia Bohnengel. From April on my PhD studies will be supported by a scholarship of the Ernst-Ludwig-Ehrlich Studienwerk.

I graduated from High School in Stuttgart, Germany (2016) while I also spent a year in Port Elizabeth, South Africa during my time at school. I studied German language and literature as well as media, communication and cultural studies at the University of Mannheim from 2017 to 2020. I completed my Master's degree in 2023 at the University of Heidelberg in "German studies in intercultural comparison - Literary studies." During this time I spent six months in my Erasmus semester at the Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest, Hungary. I also had the chance to gain insights into cultural and literary professions during five different internships.