Department of English

Academic Staff

Dr. Nicole Nyffenegger-Staub

Dozentin für Medieval English Studies und Modern English Literature

Medieval and Early Modern Literature and Culture

E-Mail
nicole.nyffenegger@unibe.ch
Office
D 208 (new wing in the Department of English)
Postal Address
Department of English
Unitobler
Länggassstr. 49
CH – 3012 Bern
Consultation Hour
Every Wednesday 8.30-10.00

On Zoom for students presently abroad: https://unibe-ch.zoom.us/j/93319027896

Nicole Nyffenegger teaches medieval and early modern English literature and culture. In her research, she focuses on representations of human skin in medieval and early modern English literature and in particular on the relationships of skin to text and to narrative. Further research interests include the representation of pain in literature and on stage, discourses of the human body, human-animal studies, medievalisms, constructions and performativity of gender and identity, concepts of authorship. Apart from these topics and the ever-present literature-history connection (as a trained medieval historian, she feels she has a certain bias), Nicole's teaching has covered a wide range of topics (see list below) connected to literary theory, methodology, the history of the the English language, cultural studies, gender studies, materiality studies, and new materalism. She has received several teaching awards. Since 2012, she has also been the Matura Head Expert for English in the Kantonale Maturitätskommission KMK.

She may be contacted with questions on:

Teaching

I teach the literature and culture of medieval and early modern England on both BA and MA level. My workshops are often aimed at covering a lot of material in relatively short time (e.g. “Reading the Bible”). For BA courses I try to vary between those that focus on one author or work (e.g., “Chaucer’s Women”) and those that approach a specific topic through a variety of works from different eras and genres (e.g. “Animals in Premodern Literature and Culture”). MA seminars tend to be more theoretical and are geared towards further refining core academic skills in paper writing, discussions, and presentations. I also teach beginner courses such as “Analysing Literature” and “Introduction to Literature” and regularly (co-)organise excursions.

 

SOME COURSES TAUGHT IN THE PAST FEW YEARS:

  • King Arthur's Best Knight: Tales and Romances of Sir Gawain
  • “Has not a Jew Eyes?” Medieval and Early Modern Antisemitism (MA seminar with Annette Kern-Stähler)
  • Reading and Acting Shakespeare's Roman Plays
  • "Eternal Lines" - Early Modern Sonnets
  • "This Wooden O" - Dramatic Conventions in Early Modern plays.
  • The Body and the Senses in Medieval and Early Modern Literature. (Co-Taught with Prof. Annette Kern-Stähler)
  • Early Modern City Comedies
  • Romances of England
  • Nature into Poetry: Late medieval and early modern animals, plants, and landscapes
  • Early Modern Utopias
  • Money Matters in Medieval Literature
  • Christ’s Passion, Mary’s Pain
  • Chaucer and Gower Sharing Tales
  • Gender in (some of) Shakespeare’s Comedies
  • Will to Power: Christopher Marlowe’s Tamburlaine, Doctor Faustus, and the Jew of Malta
  • Shakespeare at the Movies
  • Hot Topics in Medieval Studies (lecture with Annette Kern-Stähler)
  • Reading (some of) Shakespeare’s Greatest Plays
  • Blood, Wounds, Scars: Inscribed Bodies in Medieval and Early Modern Literature
  • Violence in Medieval and Early Modern Literature and Culture (lecture)

EXCURSIONS

  • 2019: Commerce, Crafts, Chapels (Suffolk and Norfolk, with medieval historians)
  • 2018: The Age of Sutton Hoo
  • 2018: Marlowe and Shakespeare in London
  • 2017: Northern England (with medieval historians)
  • 2017: Shakespeare in London
  • 2016: London “In the footsteps of Gower and Chaucer”
  • 2014: St Gallen Stiftsbibliothek “From Skin to Book”
  • 2014: Paris, St. Denis (with students from Kent University)
  • 2013: Canterbury “Exploring Medieval Artefacts”
  • 2011: York

AWARDS

  • “Credit Suisse Award for Best Teaching” 2009
  • Faculty commendations for “Ausgezeichnete Lehre” in FS 2017, AS 2017, FS 2018, AS 2019 (2 courses), FS 2020 (2 courses), HS 2020

  • Lehrpreis der Phil.-hist.Fakultät FS20

 

Publications

BOOKS

Secrecy and Surveillance in Medieval and Early Modern England. SPELL 37. Tübingen: Narr, 2019. [with Annette Kern-Stähler]

Writing on Skin in the Age of Chaucer. Anglia Series 60. Berlin and Boston: De Gruyter, 2018. [with Katrin Rupp]

Authorising History. Gestures of Authorship in Fourteenth Century English Historiography. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2013.

Marginalisierung und Funktionen des Randes im Mittelalter. Das Mittelalter. Perspektiven mediävistischer Forschung = Zeitschrift des Mediävistenverbandes (15/2), Berlin 2011. [with Moritz Wedell and Thomas Schmid]

Fleshly Things and Spiritual Matters: Studies on the Medieval Body in Honour of Margaret Bridges. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2011. [with Katrin Rupp]

 

ARTICLES, BOOK CHAPTERS, AND REVIEWS

“The Illicit Touch: Theorising Narratives of Abused Human Skin.” Touch. Ed. Caterina Nirta, Danilo Mandic, Andrea Pavoni, and Andreas Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos. London: Westminster University Press, 2020. (https://doi.org/10.16997/book37)

Review of Dumitrescu, Irina and Eric Weiskott. The Shape of English Poetry, in Das Mittelalter 25 (2020), 112-13.

Review of Hopkins, Lisa. From the Romans to the Normans on the English Renaissance Stage. In: The Medieval Review TMR, September 2019.

“Introduction: Secrecy and Surveillance in Medieval and Early Modern England” [with Annette Kern-Stähler]. Secrecy and Surveillance in Medieval and Early Modern England, ed. Annette Kern-Stähler and Nicole Nyffenegger. Tübingen: Narr, 2019, 11-21.

“Blushing, Paling, Turning Green.” Writing on Skin in the Age of Chaucer, ed. Nicole Nyffenegger and Katrin Rupp, Anglia 60, Berlin and Boston: De Gruyter, 2018: 145-165.

“Introduction: Writing on Skin in the Age of Chaucer.” [with Katrin Rupp] Writing on Skin in the Age of Chaucer, ed. Nicole Nyffenegger and Katrin Rupp, Anglia 60, Berlin and Boston: De Gruyter, 2018: 1-15.

Review of Edwards, Suzanne, Afterlives of Rape in Medieval English Literature. In: Medieval Feminist Forum, Fall 2018

Review of Schäfer-Althaus, The Gendered Body. In: Anglia 2018.

"Engaging with the Past: Reinventing the Middle Ages." Anglistentag 2016 Hamburg. Proceedings. Ed. Ute Berns and Jolene Mathieson. Trier: wvt, 2017, 85-147. [with Eva von Contzen and Annette Kern-Stähler]

"Introduction: Engaging with the Past: Reinventing the Middle Ages." Anglistentag 2016 Hamburg. Proceedings. Ed. Ute Berns and Jolene Mathieson. Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier, 2017. 87-91. [with Eva von Contzen and Annette Kern-Stähler]

Review of Fisher, Matthew. Scribal Authorship and the Writing of History in Medieval England, In: The Medieval Review TMR, March 2014.

“Saint Margaret’s Tattoos. Empowering Marks on White Skin.” Exemplaria: A Journal of Theory in Medieval & Renaissance Studies 25.4 (2013): 267-83.

 

OTHER MEDIA

Radio interview on (short!) cultural history of tattoos “DRadio Wissen” 13.10.2014 (Interview_Mitschnitt (MP3, 6.5 MB))

 

Research

Human skin in literature, discourses of the human body, representation of pain in literature and on stage, constructions and performativity of gender and identity, animals in literature, concepts of authorship. Gender studies, human-animal studies, cultural studies, materiality studies, new materialisms.

Personal profile

I am a member of the following professional organizations:

COMMITTEE WORK

  • Head expert (Hauptexperte) for English in the Kantonale Maturitätskommission KMK and as such involved in several committees concerned with, e.g., revisions of the “Lehrplan” at Gymnasium level
  • Mid-level faculty representative in the “Fakultäre Gleichstellungskommission”