Elena Kletter, M.A.

Studium und akademischer Werdegang
04/2012-05/2015: Stipendiatin des Graduiertenkollegs "Alter(n) als kulturelle Konzeption und Praxis", Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf
seit 2009: Lehraufträge am Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik der Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf
seit 10/2008: Wissenschaftliche Hilfskraft am Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik, Lehrstuhl V: Anglophone Literaturen und Literaturübersetzung an der Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf
2007-2009: Masterstudium in Englisch mit dem Schwerpunkt: Anglophone Literaturen und Kulturen an der Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf
2005-2008: Masterstudium in Deutsch als Fremdsprache an der Universität Kassel
2002-2005: Bachelorstudium in Anglistik und Germanistik mit dem Schwerpunkt: Philologie, Dolmetschen und Fremdsprachenunterricht an der USM Staatl. Universität von R. Moldau, Chisinau

Thema des Dissertationsprojektes
Postcolonial Literatures: Belated Originality

Abstract
The starting point of my research is the provocative claim that everything coming from the “Third World” is fated to unoriginality and is a mimicry of the dominant (and therefore supreme) Western pattern. The postcolonial literatures, accused of belated development, are treated as late bloomers or late comers: they are the descendents, offspring, children who are on their way to maturity, experience, and wisdom. Like children, such literatures have to look up to their benevolent guardians, their progenitors - the mature and adult Western literatures from whom they can learn, borrow and imitate. My research hypothesis is that the concept of age has been historically used as a rhetorical device to communicate cultural differences. Its particularly adaptive and flexible framing allowed not only identification of differences, but also their measuring, classification and corresponding ranking of cultures, that is, i.e. cultural difference was conveyed in terms of the tripartite structure of human age (childhood, adulthood, old age). By exploring the methods postcolonial writers use to extend the frontiers of dominant culture’s givens and thus produce work of genuine creativity my dissertation will not only show that the constant accusation of the Third World of its imitative, mimicking nature is based on the cultural phantasms and implied binaries of youth and old age; but it will also contribute to a reconceptualization of World literature in the framework of a paradigm in which a beginning is at the same time a return.

Konferenzbeiträge

 "The Aging Individual in Cross-cultural Contexts: Issues of Elder Care and Family in the Novels of Jonathan Franzen and Rohinton Mistry" (Zusammen mit Meike Dackweiler). Tagung Prozesse des Alterns. Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz - Max-Planck-Institut, 2014

"Art vs. Science in M. Atwood's Novel Oryx and Crake". Student Conference at English Department, Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf, 2009

"Kurzfristige Strategien: The Evolution of Human Mating: Trade-offs Strategies". Sommerakademie Rot an der Rot: AG Evolutionäre Persönlichkeitspsychologie, 2006

"Russischer Anarchist und Deutsche Idealistin: Alexander Herzen und Malwida von Meysenburg". Deutsch-Russische Gesellschaft Kassel, 2006

"Etymological Typology of Phraseological Units in English". Language, Literature and Translation Policies - English Studies Conference at Soros Foundation Moldova, Chsinau, 2005

Kontakt: kletter ( at )phil.hhu.de