Marlene Gärtner

Junior Member

Academic career

Marlene Gärtner has been a Ph.D. candidate in General Literature Studies and a scholarship holder of the Cusanuswerk since early 2018. Building on her bachelor’s degree in German Literature, she pursued Cultural Studies at the University of Konstanz and the University of Pretoria. In her master’s thesis, she examined the Imaginary of Europe and its Master Narratives with the example of Cameroon. Following this, she worked as an academic coordinator for the M.A. Programme European Cultural Studies. She co-founded the German-South African organization Bridging Gaps e.V., which brings political education and creative learning together: she regularly develops and conducts workshops on everyday racism, othering, and gender roles.

Interests

  • Empirical methods in narrative research
  • Narratology in Cultural Studies
  • Migration and imagination
  • Processes of Othering

Dissertation Project

Narrating Migration at Home: Global Power Dynamics and their Master Narratives in Cameroon and the Cameroonian Diaspora (Working Title)

The dissertation concerts itself with the question of how Cameroonians narrativize or can narrativize migration in their everyday lives and in the diaspora. Powerful narratives of a better life elsewhere convey inclusive promises for the future and are based on the visual and narrative omnipresence of migration in Cameroonian life. These affected, historically-rooted notions influence the perspective on their own lived reality and global horizons of possibility. Beside dominant narrative threads, we must also take into consideration the practical, political and social consequences created through the performative power of narrative. Master narratives about migration are constantly situated within a global web of shows of power, asymmetries, and belonging. The empirical narratology is based on interviews conducted during three research trips in Yaoundé and with the Cameroonian diaspora in Germany and South Africa.

Courses

Summer Semester 2019: Proseminar “Narrating Migration. An Introduction in Applied Narratology”

Winter Semester 2018/2019: “Europe from a Cultural Studies Perspective. Discourses, Narratives, and Imaginations” (Salem College Überlingen)

Summer Semester 2017: “European Parliament”: Focus on Decolonialization and Methodology of Cultural Studies (with Prof. Dr. Kirsten Mahlke)