Professor Sarah Colvin
Sarah Colvin is the Schröder Professor of German and a Fellow of Jesus College.
Academic interests
Sarah Colvin's academic interests include:
- Cultural production and social justice
- Literary aesthetics and the political novel
- Critical race theory
- Epistemic injustice
- Narrative theory and narrative ethics; narrative criminology
- Prisoner writing and arts in prisons.
Degrees obtained
- BA, Oxford.
- MA, Oxford.
- DPhil, Oxford.
Awards and prizes
- Senior Prize Fellowship, Bayreuth Humboldt Centre, 2020-21
- Leverhulme Research Fellow, 2007-8.
- Humboldt Fellow, 2000-2001.
- Senior Scholar, Christ Church, Oxford, 1992-95.
- Hanseatic Scholar, 1990-92.
- Heath Harrison Scholar, 1987.
- Stevenson Scholar, Exeter College, Oxford, 1986-90.
Biography
Sarah Colvin studied German language and literature at the Universities of Oxford and Hamburg. She was a Junior Research Fellow at St John’s College, Oxford; a Humboldt Fellow at Potsdam University; Lecturer, Reader, and Eudo C. Mason Professor of German at the University of Edinburgh, and she held chairs at the universities of Birmingham and Warwick before becoming Schröder Professor of German at Cambridge in 2014.
Sarah leads the research group Cultural Production and Social Justice with Dr Stephanie Galasso and Dr Tara Talwar Windsor, and co-convenes the related projects “Fictions of the Rechtsstaat”, a collaboration with the LMU Munich, and “Towards a Politics of Fiction” with the University of Bayreuth (Dr Kyung-Ho Cha).
She is an Advisory Group member for the National Criminal Justice Arts Alliance.
PhD supervision
Recent PhD supervisions have been on the politics of women’s friendship; public intellectuals and political violence; citizenship and the novel; conflict and normalization in German literature; women and leadership; politics and theatre; prison writing by women; and Herta Müller.
Other interests
Cultural production and social justice.
Department link
http://www.mml.cam.ac.ukPublications, links and resources
- Colvin, S., ed. with Tara Talwar Windsor (2024) The Literary and Essayistic Writing of Sharon Dodua Otoo. German Life and Letters special issue
- Colvin, S., ed with Stephanie Galasso (2023) Epistemic Injustice and Creative Agency. Perspectives on Global Literature and Film, ed. with Stephanie Galasso. London: Routledge 2023
- Colvin, S. (2023) ‘Narrative Pilgrimage and Chiastic Justice in Olivia Wenzel’s 1000 Serpentinen Angst and Sharon Dodua Otoo’s Adas Raum’, in Sarah Colvin and Stephanie Galasso (eds), Epistemic Injustice and Creative Agency. Global Perspectives on Literature and Film. New York: Routledge 2023, 176-97
- Colvin, S. (2022) Shadowland: The Story of Germany Told by its Prisoners. London: Reaktion. (Podcast: https://newbooksnetwork.com/shadowland)
- Colvin, S. (2022) ‘May Ayim and Subversive Laughter: The Aesthetics of Epistemic Change’. German Studies Review 45/1 (2022), 81-103
- Colvin, S. (2022) ‘Freedom time: Temporal Insurrections in Olivia Wenzel’s 1000 Serpentinen Angst and Sharon Dodua Otoo’s Adas Raum’. German Life and Letters 75, 138-65
- Colvin, S. (2021) ‘Doing drag in blackface: hermeneutical challenges and infelicitous subjectivity in Courasche, or is Grimmelshausen still worth reading?’ Daphnis, 1-27
- Colvin, S. (2021) ‘Words that might save necks: Philipp Khabo Koepsell, epistemic murder and poetic justice’. German Life and Letters 74, 511-56
- Colvin, S. (2020) ‘Talking Back: Sharon Dodua Otoo’s Herr Gröttrup setzt sich hin and the Epistemology of Resistance’. German Life and Letters.
- Colvin, S. (2020) ‘"The credibility of elves": narrative exclusion and prison writing’, in Kelly, M. and Westall, C. (eds), Prison Writing and the Literary World. London: Routledge, 21-38.
- Colvin, S. and Sandberg, S. (2020) ‘“ISIS is not Islam”: Epistemic Injustice, Everyday Religion, and Young Muslims’ Narrative Resistance’. British Journal of Criminology.
- Colvin, S. and Pisoiu, D. (2020) ‘When Being Bad is Good? Bringing Neutralization Theory to Subcultural Narratives of Right-Wing Violence’. Studies in Conflict & Terrorism 43, 493-508.
- Colvin, S., ed. with Katharina Karcher (2019) Women, Global Protest Movements and Political Agency: Rethinking the Legacy of 1968 [Vol 1]. London: Routledge 2019
- Colvin, S., ed. with Katharina Karcher (2019) Gender, Emancipation, and Political Violence: Rethinking the Legacy of 1968 [Vol 2]. London: Routledge 2019
- Colvin, S. ed. (2015) The Routledge Handbook of German Politics and Culture. London: Routledge
- Colvin, S., ed. with Isabelle Hertner and Joanne Sayner (2015) Narratives and Identities in the Berlin Republic. German Politics and Society Special Issue, Spring/Summer
- Colvin, S., ed. with Charlotte Woodford (2014) The Feminine in German Culture, ed. with Charlotte Woodford. German Life and Letters Special Issue, October 2014
- Colvin, S. (2009) Ulrike Meinhof and West German Terrorism: Language, Violence and Identity. Rochester, NY: Camden House
- Women and Death: Warlike Women in the German Literary and Cultural Imagination, ed. with Helen Watanabe-O’Kelly. Rochester, NY: Camden House 2009
- Masculinities in German Culture, ed. with Peter Davies. Edinburgh German Yearbook 2008
- Myths and Mythmaking, ed. with Laura Martin, Alison Phipps, Christl Reissenberger. German Life and Letters Special Issue 2004
- Colvin, S. (2003) Women and German Drama: Playwrights and their Texts. Rochester, NY: Camden House
- Colvin, S. (1999) The Rhetorical Feminine: Gender and Orient on the German Stage. Oxford: Clarendon
