Davina Höll

BACKGROUND:

I studied European and German Literature at the University of Marburg. Since the beginning of my studies I have been fascinated by the complex relation between Medicine and Literature as a symbol of the dynamic exchange between the Natural Sciences and the Humanities. Within this exceptionally international and interdisciplinary scope I worked i.a. on questions of mental illness and processes of art production. Recently I focused on the connection of collective memory, trauma, and epidemics as individual and collective borderline experiences. During my university years I had the chance to gain not only substantial experience in scientific research but also engaged in teaching, organization, administration and student advisory service.

THE GRK IS...

…an outstanding opportunity to innovatively evolve projects within the exciting and challenging field of interdisciplinary research. Consisting of a personally and professionally highly diverse working and research environment, the GRK offers the unique possibility to receive inspiring impulses from the enthusiasm and expertise both of the faculty members and fellow PhD students.

MY GOAL IS...

…to fruitfully participate in an intensive dialogue between i.a. biomedical, sociological, psychological and anthropological approaches to human borderline experiences. By applying an access that is decidedly related to literary studies I hope to emphasize the specific potential of literature when it comes to e.g. traumatic events. It is particularly important to me helping to establish interdisciplinary applicable methods and terminology and in doing so not only theoretically think the convergence of the “two cultures” but actively performing it.

MY PROJECT...

…„Politics and Poetics of Cholera in 19th-Century European Literature“ is a multi-perspective approach towards the discursive manifestation of Cholera as an extreme human and medical borderline experience that impresses collective memory of entire generations throughout the 19th Century and thus becomes a scientific driving force, a political factor of destabilization and a poetical provocation.

By involving fields of research such as medical history, psychology, cultural, and literary studies in the analysis of fictious texts as well as of documents of life writing my project aims at deepening the understanding of the complex processes of interchange between science, lifeworld and narration.

 

Contact: hoell@uni-mainz.de