Biographical Information

After finishing an apprenticeship, living in Southern California for some time and working in the media business for several years, Stefanie Caeners (née Albers) studied English and German Literature at the University of Duisburg-Essen (2003-2007). During her studies she worked as a journalist and also as both a student assistant and a tutor in the English department. In March 2007, she finished her degree with an MA thesis on literary theory in David Lodge's campus novels. In October 2010, she completed her PhD with a thesis entitled Verbal Visuality - The Visual Arts in Contemporary Anglophone Fiction. She's been working as a lecturer for the literary studies section since 2007.

Geisteswissenschaften/Anglistik/Amerikanistik

Address
Universitätsstr. 12
45141 Essen
Room
R12 S04 H97
Office hours
nach Vereinbarung

Functions

  • Wissenschaftliche/r Mitarbeiter/in, Anglistik: Britische und Anglophone Kultur- und Literaturwissenschaft - British and Anglophone Literature and Culture

Stefanie Caeners mainly teaches in the fields of Modernist literature, Postmodernism, Literary Theory, Intermediality Studies and Popular Culture. She was involved in the "Literature Online" project, designing an online version of an introductory course to English literature and the "E-Bibliotheksschein" project, developing an online course in database research techniques.  

In previous years, and in collaboration with Claudia Drawe, Stefanie Caeners has organised several excursions to the Edinburgh International Book Festival: Link to the Edinburgh Book Festival Excursions 

In November 2023, Stefanie Caeners was interviewed by Mandy Jackson-Beverly for The Bookshop Podcast: The Literary Path| The Bookshop Podcast. She is also very active on social media with her book-related Instagram account The Constant Reader

Monographs:

Stefanie Albers. Verbal Visuality - The Visual Arts in Contemporary Anglophone Fiction. Trier: WVT, 2011.


Co-edited volumes:

Stefanie Caeners, Michael Eisinger, Jens Martin Gurr and J. Alexander Schmidt (eds.). Healthy and Liveable Cities: Selected Papers from the Essen Conference / Gesunde und lebenswerte Städte: Ausgewählte Beiträge der Essener Tagung. Ludwigsburg: avedition, 2013.

*In preparation:

with Torsten Caeners. Into the Marvel-ous. Charting 15 Years of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Bristol: Intellect, 2025.
 

Essays and articles:

Stefanie Caeners. "Kate Atkinson". In: KLfG Kritisches Lexikon zur fremdsprachigen Gegenwartsliteratur, 2018.

Stefanie Caeners. "When Style Meets Content - Identity, Metafiction and the Cultural Symbolism of Language in Ali Smith’s There But For The". In: LWU XLVI: 4 (2013/ published 2015). 289-298.

with Michael Eisinger, Jens Gurr and J. Alexander Schmidt. "Introduction / Einleitung." Healthy and Liveable Cities: Selected Papers from the Essen Conference / Gesunde und lebenswerte Städte: Ausgewählte Beiträge der Essener Tagung. Ed. Stefanie Caeners, Michael Eisinger, Jens Martin Gurr, J. Alexander Schmidt. Ludwigsburg: avedition, 2013. 6-13.

Stefanie Caeners. "Eine Frage der Fragmentierung? Paul Auster und die Dichotomie des Privaten und Öffentlichen". In: Simone Sauer/Christian Bachmann (eds.). Paul Auster - Werk und Poetik. Bochum: Ch. A. Bachmann Verlag, 2012. 117-127.

Stefanie Caeners and Torsten Caeners. "The Locus Amoenus in Audrey Niffenegger's The Time Traveler's Wife". In: LWU. XLIV: 4 (2011). 265-276.

Stefanie Albers and Torsten Caeners. "The Poetics and Aesthetics of Ian McEwan’s Atonement". In: English Studies - A Journal of English Language and Literature. 90:6 (2009). 707-720.

Stefanie Albers. "'But who is to say what is fake and what is real?' – Spectral and Textual Haunting in Peter Ackroyd’s Chatterton". In: FORUM - The University of Edinburgh Postgraduate Journal of Culture and the Arts. 7:2 (2008).

* Accepted for publication:

"The idylls of small town America – Strategies of overcoming trauma and grief in WandaVision"In: Torsten Caeners and Danny Graydon (eds.). SuperCultures. Bristol: Intellect, 2024.


Selected reviews:

Birgit Neumann and Gabriele Rippl. Verbal-Visual Configurations in Postcolonial Literature: Intermedial Aesthetics. Routledge Research in Postcolonial Literatures. in: Anglia 140.2 (2022). 281-85.

Philipp Schweighauser. Beautiful Deceptions - European Aesthetics, The Early American Novel, and Illusionist Art. in: Anglia 137.2 (2019).369-73.

Johanna Hartmann. Literary Visuality in Siri Hustvedt's Work. in: Anglistik – International Journal of English Studies 29.1 (2018). 167-9.

Oliver Simons. Literaturtheorien zur Einführung. in: Monatshefte. 102:2 (2010). 228-29.

Sarah Dillon. Palimpsest: Literature, Criticism, Theory. in: Anglistik – International Journal of English Studies. 20:2 (2009). 228-229.

Klaus Benesch/Ulla Haselstein. The Power and Politics of the Aesthetic in American Culture. in: Anglistik – International Journal of English Studies. 20:1 (2009). 219-221.


Other publications:

with Dorothee Graf, Melanie Borchers, Margit Hempel. E-Bibliotheksschein Anglophone Studien - Einführung in die fachwissenschaftliche Recherche auf Moodle Basis. 2012-2018. www.uni-due.de/ub/schulung/anglistik_e-schein
 

Miscellaneous:

Personal blog (book reviews, etc.): www.theconstantreader.net/blog (currently on hiatus)

Bookstagram 


Selected conference papers:

"The Iconography of the Novel: Siri Hustvedt's What I Loved". at the British Association for American Studies Annual Conference. University of Central Lancashire, UK. 14-17 April 2011.

"Identity, Aesthetics and the Visual Arts: Constructions of 'Self' in Salman Rushdie's The Moor's Last Sigh and Zadie Smith's On Beauty" at the Identity and Form in Twentieth- and Twenty-First Century Literature Conference. Sheffield Hallam University, UK. 3-4 July 2009.

"A Matter of Fragmentation? - The Private and the Public in Selected Works by Paul Auster" at the British Association for American Studies Annual Conference. University of Nottingham, UK. 16-19 April 2009.


Other talks:

"Let's read together: George Orwell's 1984." VHS Moers. Summer 2014.

"Let's read together: Téa Obreht's The Tiger's Wife." VHS Moers. Summer 2015.

"Short Fiction Reading Circle". Weekly Book Club, VHS Moers. from 2013-2016.


Conference organisation:

Gesellschaft für Englische Romantik, 2011 Annual Conference, Duisburg/Germany - organised with Prof. J.M. Gurr and Prof. F.-E. Pointner

Bulletin Board

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(Last updated: 12th June 2024)
 

* OFFICE HOUR: During term I will be available to talk with students of my current seminars before or after class. I will also be offering a regular office hour by appointment or virtual office hours via Zoom. Please consider the following:

  1. Before taking the next step, please ask yourself whether an appointment is really necessary and your request cannot be dealt with via a simple email. I am usually available via email and will respond quickly.
  2. If you feel a face-to-face consultation is necessary, do the following:
    1. Send me an email with the subject line: “Office Hour”
    2. In your mail, let me know when you wish to talk. I work by appointments and mornings always work best for me.
    3. I will then respond to you and suggest a day/timeIf we've arranged for a Zoom call, you'll also get the call details from me. 
    4. Call me on the assigned day and time on Zoom!

Please send me an email, if you have any further questions.

Until then: Keep calm and carry on. And remember, the answer is always "42".   ;-)

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General Updates:


General Info on Term Papers:

LABA and BA students now need to declare their intend to write a term paper by signing up via HiS during the official registration period (usually the fifth and sixth week of the semester)! You can then register in person or in a Zoom call with me anytime during the lecture period, i.e. clarify formalities, set a topic, etc., up to one month before the submission deadline. My submission deadline for the winter term is 31 March, for the summer term it is 30 September. Should these dates fall on a weekend or holiday, the deadline moves to the following working day.

There will be no extensions! Deregistration is no longer possible once a topic has been assigned. Please come to one of my office hours to talk about a topic and please feel free to contact me with any questions during the writing process.

 

How to hand in your paper:

- Make sure your paper is properly proof-read and formatted, that you've got all necessary details on your cover page and that you attach a signed statement of authorship/originality (info on plagiarism).
- Please hand in both an electronic file (pdf) and a printed copy. You may send the electronic file by email (no CD ROMs or USB sticks, please).
- Hand in or post the printed copy to me or Ms Cangemi (our office manager), or drop it in my pigeon hole across the corridor from the 'Dekanat'.