{"id":344,"date":"2021-08-20T16:01:04","date_gmt":"2021-08-20T16:01:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.readingthebeach.unibe.ch\/?page_id=344"},"modified":"2024-09-28T18:36:37","modified_gmt":"2024-09-28T18:36:37","slug":"virginia-richter","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/readingthebeach.unibe.ch\/?page_id=344","title":{"rendered":"Virginia Richter"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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Prof. Dr. Virginia Richter (PI)<\/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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Virginia Richter was born in a country that famously has no coasts (Bohemia), and today lives in a landlocked country that is sometimes referred to as an island (Switzerland). Perhaps because of this lack of proximity, her relationship to the beach is one of longing, nostalgia, and projections of elegance and dolce vita. However, her intellectual interest in littoral space is directed at exploring its contradictions: the beach as a vacation site and a danger zone, a space of liberation, not least for women, and a heavily regulated area, a site of social mixing and of segregation, an erotic space and a thanatoscape. In a long-standing collaborative partnership with Ursula Kluwick and in her own research, Virginia Richter has contributed since 2008 to the emerging fields of maritime and littoral studies. Ursula and Virginia co-edited the volume The Beach in Anglophone Literatures and Cultures (Ashgate 2015) and, more recently, published a chapter on the beach as heterotopia (\u201cOf Tourists and Refugees: The Global Beach in the Twenty-First Century\u201d, 2020). During her stay as Visiting Research Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities (IASH), University of Edinburgh, in 2018, Virginia conducted research \u2013 also in the shape of long walks along the Firth of Forth and the North Sea shore \u2013 into littoral space, resulting in several articles and the current project The Beach in the Long Twentieth Century.<\/p>\n


Research Interests<\/strong>
British literature and culture in the 19th and 20th centuries; maritime and littoral studies; literature and science; literary animal studies<\/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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Beach, Shore, and Coast: A Field Guide to Littoral Studies<\/strong><\/p>\n


<\/em>White sand, blue sea, holidays \u2013 but also sand theft, plastic garbage, and rising sea levels: the beach has become a highly contradictory and contested site. As a fragile ecotone, a contact zone between different social groups, and a culturally liminal but dynamic space, the beach has received increasing critical attention in recent literary and cultural studies. The aim of this short monograph is to offer a \u2018field guide\u2019 to the new, burgeoning field of Littoral Studies: a survey of the most important theories, methods, and concepts as a starting point for researchers and advanced students. The field guide will propose three main routes through the shifting and transformative terrain of the beach and shore: hydrocriticism<\/em>, new epistemological concepts based on New Materialism and Material Ecocriticism; the ecogothic<\/em>, a conjunction of environmental and aesthetic approaches to the dangerous and endangered shore; and the beach as a vacationscape<\/em>, tracing historical and contemporary constellations of the seaside. Each of these theoretical chapters will be followed by a case study of a contemporary novel, showing the relevance and applicability of the proposed approaches.<\/p>\n

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The Beach in Modernist Literature: Embodied Practices and Banal Geopolitics<\/strong><\/p>

If human character changed in or about December 1910, as Virginia Woolf famously claimed, one of the sites where this change took place and became most conspicuously visible was the seaside. In modernism the seaside became a privileged space for experimental practices that marked a break with the preceding era. Changing social conventions put gender relations and views of sexuality on a new footing. The seaside became a laboratory of this transformation: as a heterotopia in which the rules of everyday life were temporarily suspended, it enabled new modes of physical pleasure and different technologies of the self. Swimming, beach sports, sunbathing and nudism were devices of performative identity construction which contributed to a new view of the human body. Material objects, such as changing bathing fashions and beachwear, postcards and souvenirs, shaped the affects invested in the seaside and thus constituted its \u2018politics of value\u2019. As artists, writers, youth groups, but also middle-class families flocked to the beach and interacted with the local, labouring population, the sense of living in a new era found expression in artworks and literary texts that broke with the aesthetic regimes of the nineteenth century. In my monograph, it is my aim to analyse the seaside as an important meta-geography and heterotopia of European modernism. The corpus will include novels, tales, diaries, letters and memoirs by authors from the modernist canon \u2013 James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, Christopher Isherwood, Thomas Mann, Eduard von Keyserling, and others \u2013 but also by authors with a wider popular appeal, such as Daphne Du Maurier, Dorothy Sayers and Agatha Christie. These authors chose the seaside as a recurring setting to explore a specifically modernist mobility that is both literal and figurative, encompassing bodily movement, travel, the erosion of class and gender boundaries, sexual transgression and violence, and modern (wo)man\u2019s \u2018metaphysical homelessness\u2019 (Lukacz). The seaside is also a setting that encapsulates creativity and transformation, as well as aesthetic innovation. However, my study will also include the dark side of littoral space: the transformation of the seaside, in the late 1930s, from a site of pleasure to a fortified border area, an endangered departure zone \u2013 for the refugees desperately waiting for their transit visa in Marseille and other ports \u2013 and, ultimately, a potential site of invasion on the eve of the Second World War.<\/p>

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Publications in Littoral Studies<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Edited Volume<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Beach in Anglophone Literatures and Cultures: Reading Littoral Space<\/em>. Ed. with Ursula Kluwick. Farnham\/Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2015.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Articles and book chapters<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cSalt Taste of the Sea: The Multisensorial Beach in Kate Chopin\u2019s The Awakening<\/em> and Charles Simmons\u2019s Salt Water<\/em>\u201d, Literature and the Senses. Oxford Twenty-First Century Approaches to Literature<\/em>, ed. Annette Kern-St\u00e4hler and Elizabeth Robertson. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2023, 493-508.<\/p>\n

“A Grave for Fish: The Haunted Shore in Wyl Menmuir\u2019s The Many.” Gothic Nature<\/em> 3 (2022), 93-116. https:\/\/boris.unibe.ch\/id\/eprint\/172248.<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cSeaside Resort Blues: The English Seaside in the 1930s\u201d, Hungarian Journal of English and American Studies<\/em> (HJEAS) 27.1 (Spring 2021), 33-48. https:\/\/doi.org\/10.30608\/HJEAS\/2021\/27\/1\/4<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2018The whole China Sea had climbed on the bridge\u2019: Oceanic Agency in Joseph Conrad\u2019s Typhoon<\/em>\u201d. The Conradian <\/em>45.1 (Spring 2020): 21-37. https:\/\/boris.unibe.ch\/134720\/<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cStranded. The Beach as Ultimate Destination in Joseph Conrad’s \u2018Amy Foster\u2019 and Thomas Mann\u2019s \u2018Death in Venice\u2019\u201d. Narrating and Constructing the Beach<\/em>. Ed. Carina Breidenbach, Tamara Fr\u00f6hler et al. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2020, 57-81. http:\/\/dx.doi.org\/10.1515\/9783110672244-003<\/a>.<\/p>\n

With Ursula Kluwick: \u201cOf Tourists and Refugees: The Global Beach in the Twenty-First Century.\u201d Heterotopia and Globalisation in the Twenty-First Century<\/em>. Ed. Simon Ferdinand, Irina Souch and Daan Wesselman. London: Routledge, 2020, 116-130. https:\/\/doi.org\/10.4324\/9780429290732<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2018Where things meet in the world between sea and land\u2019: Human-Whale Encounters in Littoral Space.\u201d\u00a0The Beach in Anglophone Literatures and Cultures: Reading Littoral Space<\/em>. Ed. with Ursula Kluwick. Farnham\/Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2015, 155-173. https:\/\/doi.org\/10.4324\/9781315613932<\/a>.<\/p>\n

With Ursula Kluwick: \u201cIntroduction: \u2018Twixt Land and Sea: Approaches to Littoral Studies\u201d. The Beach in Anglophone Literatures and Cultures: Reading Littoral Space<\/em>. Ed. with Ursula Kluwick. Farnham\/Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2015, 1-20. https:\/\/doi.org\/10.4324\/9781315613932<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cDystopia of Isolation: William Golding, Lord of the Flies<\/em> (1954) and Alex Garland, The Beach<\/em> (1996)\u201d.\u00a0Dystopia, Science Fiction, Post-Apocalypse. Classics \u2013 New Tendencies \u2013 Model Interpretations<\/em>. Eds. Eckart Voigts, Alessandra Boller. Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier, 2015, 269-282. https:\/\/www.boris.unibe.ch\/64556\/<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cStrandurlauberin\u201d.\u00a0What Can a Body Do? <\/em>Figuration des K\u00f6rpers in den Kulturwissenschaften<\/em>. Ed.\u00a0Netzwerk K\u00f6rper. Frankfurt\/New York: Campus, 2012, 211-216. https:\/\/boris.unibe.ch\/id\/eprint\/40940<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cUnder Cover. Victorians on the Beach\u201d.\u00a0Victorian Visual Culture<\/em>. Ed.\u00a0Renate Brosch. Heidelberg: Winter, 2008, 99-113. https:\/\/boris.unibe.ch\/id\/eprint\/35808<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Forthcoming<\/strong><\/p>\n

TBA<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Lectures and conference papers<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cDead End: Apocalypse and Regeneration on the Beach\u201d, Sea more Blue: Interdiscipliniary Approaches to Blue Ecopoetics<\/em>, Tenth EASLCE symposium, Universit\u00e9 de Perpignan Via Domitia, Perpignan, 17-20 June 2024.<\/p>\n

\u201cAfter Beaches: A Swan Song\u201d, A Million Atoms of Soft Blue: Rethinking Water and Littoral Space in the Humanities<\/em>, honorary symposium for Prof. Dr Virginia Richter, University of Bern, Bern, 6-7 June 2024.<\/p>\n

\u201cBanal Geopolitics on the Beach\u201d. Invited Lecture. University of Zurich, 27 March 2024.<\/p>\n

\u201cReading the Beach: Forensics and Epistemology in Littoral Detective Fiction\u201d, The British Society for Literature and Science (BSLS), Eighteenth Annual Conference. Edinburgh Napier University, Edinburgh, 13-15 April 2023. https:\/\/www.bsls.ac.uk\/2023-conference-edinburgh-napier\/<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201e\u2019Magnificent, yet most dreadful objects of nature\u2019: Sir Walter Scotts gef\u00e4hrliche K\u00fcsten\u201d, Wasser\/Landschaften. \u00d6kologien des Fluiden um 1800<\/em>, Rhein-Main Universit\u00e4ten, Forschungskolleg Humanwissenschaften, Bad Homburg, Villa Reimers, 07.\u201309.07.2022.<\/p>\n

with Ursula Kluwick: \u201cExperiencing Aquatic Spaces\u201d, 15th<\/sup> ESSE Conference, Lyon 2-3 September 2021, online (http:\/\/www.esse2020lyon.fr\/en\/pages\/esse-2021-home<\/a>).<\/p>\n

\u201cThe display of decay: the aesthetics of zoology in Jim Crace\u2019s Being Dead<\/em>\u201d. GAPS 2021 \u2013 Science, Culture, and Postcolonial Narratives<\/em>, Oldenburg, 13-15 May, online (https:\/\/gaps2021.uni-oldenburg.de\/<\/a>).<\/p>\n

\u201cA Grave for Fish: the Haunted Shore in Wyl Menmuir\u2019s The Many<\/em>\u201d, Haunted Shores: Coastlands, Coastal Waters, and the Littoral Gothic<\/em>, online symposium, 2021.<\/p>\n

With Ursula Kluwick: \u201cThe Beach in the Long Twentieth Century.\u201d Invited Paper. The Ecological Imperative<\/em>. University of Bern 2020 (online).<\/p>\n

\u201cSpiel und Tod am Strand\u201d. Invited lecture, SFB 1015 Mu\u00dfe<\/em>, Freiburg 2019.<\/p>\n

\u201cSpiel \u2013 Sand \u2013 Strand: Kindheit im Paradies\u201d, Sprache Prep Paradies<\/em>, K\u00f6ln 2019.<\/p>\n

\u201cBad Behaviour on the Beach\u201d, Troublesome Modernism<\/em>, BAMS-Conference, London 2019.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u201cThe whole China Sea had climbed on the bridge\u201d: Oceanic Agency in Joseph Conrad\u2019s Typhoon<\/em>\u201d, Postcolonial Oceans. Contradictions and Heterogeneities in the Epistemes of Salt Water<\/em>, joint GAPS and IACPL conference, Bremen 2019.<\/p>\n

\u201cCrime, Coastal Anxiety and Archaeology in Anthony Rolls\u2019s Scarweather<\/em>\u201d, 14th<\/sup> BSLS conference, Royal Holloway 2019.<\/p>\n

\u201cBanal Geopolitics: The Beach in Modernist Literature\u201d, IASH, Edinburgh 2018.<\/p>\n

\u201cBanal Geopolitics. The Construction of the Seaside through Everyday Practices\u201d, The Sea in the Twentieth Century<\/em>, Lisbon 2018.<\/p>\n

\u201cSandcastles and Beach Chairs: Banal Geopolitics in Modernist Literature\u201d, keynote (parallel) lecture, 14th<\/sup> ESSE Conference, Brno 2018.<\/p>\n

\u201cStranded. The Beach as Ultimate Destination\u201d, keynote lecture, interdisciplinary conference Narrating and Constructing the Beach<\/em>, Munich 2018.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Prof. Dr. Virginia Richter (PI) Virginia Richter was born in a country that famously has no coasts (Bohemia), and today lives in a landlocked country that is sometimes referred to as an island (Switzerland). Perhaps because of this lack of proximity, her relationship to the beach is one of longing, nostalgia, and projections of elegance […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-344","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/readingthebeach.unibe.ch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/344","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\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/readingthebeach.unibe.ch\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=344"}],"version-history":[{"count":55,"href":"https:\/\/readingthebeach.unibe.ch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/344\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2141,"href":"https:\/\/readingthebeach.unibe.ch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/344\/revisions\/2141"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/readingthebeach.unibe.ch\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=344"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}