Brigitte Johanna Glaser is Professor of British Literature and Cultural Studies at the University of Göttingen, Germany. Since her research focus for the 15 years has been Postcolonial Studies, Globalization and Transcultural Writing, much of her work has centered on migration and cultural mobility. Among her early publications in the field is the co-edited volume on The Canadian Mosaic in the Age of Transnationalism (2010) and the article “The Influence of Globalisation and Transnationalism on Anglophone Canadian Literature” (2012). Over the past few years she has also acquired expertise in the area of graphic media (see the co-edited volume on Convergence Culture Reconsidered (2017) and the article on “Mediating Postcolonial Issues through Graphic Biofiction” (2016)). She has recently organized a transatlantic graduate student conference on the topic of “Literary and Cultural Discourses of Mobility” (October 2019, Göttingen). The workshop explored mobilities in any cultural, historical, and (trans-)medial scene and configuration, and followed the dynamics of ideas, texts, images, affects, styles, things and objects, and people on the move over real and imaginary spaces and boundaries. It was especially concerned with representations and discourses of mobility across different periods, cultures, genres, and media and the techniques that render the aesthetic object mobile in all kinds of translations, adaptations, and networks of transfer and transformation.
Selected Publications
Ernst, Jutta, and Brigitte Johanna Glaser, eds. Shifting Grounds: Cultural Tectonics along the Pacific Rim. Heidelberg: Winter, 2020.
Glaser, Brigitte Johanna. “Mediating Postcolonial Issues through Graphic Biofiction: Comics as a New Frontier in the Study of Literatures in English.” Literatures in English: New Frontiers of Research. Eds. Michael Kenneally and Wolfgang Zach. Tübingen: Stauffenburg, 2016. 145-159.
Claudia Georgi and Brigitte Johanna Glaser, eds. Convergence Culture Reconsidered: Media – Participation – Environments. Göttingen: Universitätsverlag Göttingen, 2015.
Both volumes address issues of aesthetic mobility and media mobility (e.g. multimodality) => needed to tackle to topic of graphic art
the article furthermore has a strong focus on how migration and aspects of cultural mobility are mediated through graphic art (one example explored in it being Shaun Tan’s Arrival), a graphic narrative that mergers the migration to an imaginary place with former arrivals (especially that of late 19th-century/early 20th-century migrants in New York)
Glaser, Brigitte Johanna. “The Influence of Globalisation and Transnationalism on Anglophone Canadian Literature.” Literatures in English. New Ethical, Cultural and Transnational Perspectives. Eds. Michael Kenneally, Rhona Richman Kenneally and Wolfgang Zach. Tübingen: Stauffenburg, 2014. 123-138.
At the centre of this exploration are globalisation-induced phenomena like nomadism, cultural hybridity and transcultural identities, while among the literary texts explored are novels like Michael Ondaatje’s Anil’s Ghostand Dionne Brand’s What We All Long For
Jutta Ernst and Brigitte Glaser, eds. The Canadian Mosaic in the Age of Transnationalism. Heidelberg: Winter, 2010.
The concept of the Canadian mosaic is based on Canada’s heterogeneous composition resulting from migration
the volume features articles contesting the positive perception of Canadian multiculturalism, contrasting it with the notion of the ‘vertical mosaic’ on the one hand and the tendency of thinking beyond the nation, for example by constructing transcultural identities
by the way, Jutta and I wrote an introduction to this volume which addresses some of these issues.