{"id":1395,"date":"2022-04-22T10:23:16","date_gmt":"2022-04-22T10:23:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.readingthebeach.unibe.ch\/?page_id=1395"},"modified":"2026-03-17T10:47:53","modified_gmt":"2026-03-17T10:47:53","slug":"fabienne-blaser-2","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/readingthebeach.unibe.ch\/?page_id=1395","title":{"rendered":"Marion Troxler, from 2023"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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MA Marion Troxler <\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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Marion Troxler has joined the SNSF funded research project The Beach in the Long Twentieth Century at the University of Bern as a PhD candidate in December 2022.<\/p>\n

Whenever there is a chance to leave her home country of Switzerland to visit the sea, Marion experiences the beach as a place to feel longing and belonging. The ever-fluid interplay of weather, water and shifting grounds sparks the imagination for otherworldly encounters to become tangible.<\/p>\n

Marion\u2019s PhD project explores <\/span>how reading the beach with merfolk and vice-versa provides insights about the interconnectedness of hegemonic dualistic hierarchies. <\/span>As a place of metamorphosis and encounter, the littoral is crucial to understanding mermaids and selkies with their intriguing combination of femininity, monstrosity and fluidity, and highlights the potential for embodied resistance in the hybridity and transformability it shares with them.<\/span><\/p>\n

Reach out to Marion via marion.troxler@unibe.ch<\/a><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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Half a Human, Fully a Woman: Female Hybrid Creatures of the Seascape.<\/span><\/strong><\/div>\n
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Long, shiny hair, a beautiful voice, a naked torso with barely covered breasts \u2013 seamlessly transitioning into an animal body, with scales, fur, feathers or claws, mixing seduction with threat, crossing seemingly clear-cut boundaries between species. Mermaids, Selkies, Sirens and other female hybrid creatures have populated the imaginative seascape for centuries and are still popular in contemporary fiction. The beach is where these merfolk bodies become visible, where the hybridity of the landscape reflects the hybridity of the body. Drawing on the Blue Humanities, Animal, Gender and Critical Body Studies, this project hopes to contribute to understanding how embodied hybridity in merfolk literature serves as a means of resistance and engenders possible counter-narratives to hegemonic patriarchal power structures. These sustain narratives of dominance not only within relationships between humans, but also with the more-than-human. Tales of merfolk alienate the naturalised hierarchies between gender and species and muddle up the persistent nature\/culture divide. Ultimately, they may envision alternative conceptions of co-living in a world where current power structures threaten the existence of all beings.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Key words:\u00a0<\/strong>critical body studies, gender studies, mythologies, monstrosities, hybridity.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Publications in the Field of the Environmental and Blue Humanities<\/span><\/strong><\/div>\n
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Troxler, Marion. \u201cTidal Retreat\u201d in\u00a0In Defence of Open-Ended Retreats in the Interdisciplinary Fields: A Compendium Demonstration by ECRs<\/em>, eds. Erdosi, Eszter, Felix Clarke, Ellie Ballantine and Matthew Lear (submitted).<\/p>\n

\u00a0-2023-<\/p>\n

Troxler, Marion. \u201c<\/span>Resisting Domination: Merfolk and the Beach in Amy Sackville\u2019s <\/span>Orkney.<\/span>\u201d<\/span> Litteraria Pragensia: Studies in Literature and Culture <\/em>33.66 (2023): 87-103. https:\/\/doi.org\/10.14712\/2571452X.2023.66.6<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Conference Papers<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0-2025-<\/p>\n

Troxler, Marion. \u201cMerfolk and the beach: Resisting dualisms with tooth and scales\u201d Sea Changes, OGOM Conference, British Library, 6-8 September 2025.<\/p>\n

Troxler, Marion. \u201cOceanic depth and shallow rockpools: Speculating the Atlantic in The Deep (2019)\u201d Listening to Africa, SAUTE Conference, University of Bern, 6-7 June, 2025.<\/p>\n

\u00a0-2024-<\/p>\n

Troxler, Marion. \u201cShifting Shores and Metamorphic Merfolk\u201d ESSE Doctoral Symposium, University of Lausanne, 27-28 August 2024.<\/p>\n

Troxler, Marion. \u201cSealskins, Scales and Silken Hair: Transformability as Resistance in Merfolk Literature.\u201d\u00a0Sea More Blue \u2013 approches \u00e9copo\u00e9tiques et interdisciplinaires des mers et des oc\u00e9ans,\u00a0<\/i>UPVD \u2013 Campus Moulin-\u00e0-Vent, 17 June 2024.<\/p>\n

Troxler, Marion. \u201cMaking Head\u00a0and<\/em>\u00a0Tail of Merfolk Literature.\u201d \u2018A million atoms of soft blue\u2019 Rethinking Water and Littoral Space in the Humanities<\/em>, Symposium in honour of Virginia Richter. University of Bern, 6-7 June 2024.<\/p>\n

\u00a0-2023-<\/p>\n

Troxler, Marion. \u201cMake a Myth Come True: Epistemological Narratives of \u201cScience\u201d and \u201cMyth\u201d in Amy Sackville\u2019s\u00a0Orkney.<\/i>\u201d\u00a0BSLS 2023<\/em>, Edinburgh Napier University, 13-15 April 2023.<\/p>\n

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MA Marion Troxler Marion Troxler has joined the SNSF funded research project The Beach in the Long Twentieth Century at the University of Bern as a PhD candidate in December 2022. Whenever there is a chance to leave her home country of Switzerland to visit the sea, Marion experiences the beach as a place to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-1395","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/readingthebeach.unibe.ch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1395","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/readingthebeach.unibe.ch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/readingthebeach.unibe.ch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/readingthebeach.unibe.ch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/readingthebeach.unibe.ch\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1395"}],"version-history":[{"count":42,"href":"https:\/\/readingthebeach.unibe.ch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1395\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2250,"href":"https:\/\/readingthebeach.unibe.ch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1395\/revisions\/2250"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/readingthebeach.unibe.ch\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1395"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}