Staff Profile

Introduction & Background

Dr Beate Müller is Professor of German Studies and Cultural History. Before joining Newcastle University in 1997, she worked at the universities of Flensburg, Cambridge, and Bochum.

Her areas of expertise include parody, censorship studies, literary theory, modernism, postmodernism, modern German literature, as well as representations of the Holocaust and World War II, with a particular interest in memories of war children's autobiographical writings.

Beate Müller

Professor of German Studies and Cultural History

Director of Research in SML

School of Modern Languages

Old Library Building

Newcastle University

Newcastle upon Tyne  NE1 7RU

https://www.ncl.ac.uk/sml/our-people/profile/beatemuller.html

https://newcastle.academia.edu/BeateM%C3%BCller 

http://orcid.org/0000-0003-3173-8879

President of the British and Irish Association for Holocaust Studies

Curator of the exhibition 'Children under the Nazis' 

Roles and Responsibilities

a) at Newcastle University

• Director of Research in SML
• Member of Faculty Promotions Committee
• PDR Reviewer and Research Mentor
• IQA Reviewer
• Personal Tutor

b) elsewhere

• President of the British and Irish Association for Holocaust Studies (2022/23)

Qualifications

• First degree from Bochum University, Germany (1988);
• MA from Bochum University (1988);
• PhD from Bochum University (1993)

Previous Positions

• Research Assistant in English Dpt of Bochum University (1988-92);
• DAAD Lektorin for German at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge (1992-95);
• Assistant Professor at Flensburg University, Germany (1995-97)

Memberships

Modern Humanities Research Association (MHRA); Women in German Studies (WIGS); Association for German Studies (AGS); German History Society (GHS); British and Irish Association for Holocaust Studies (BIAHS); British Association for Jewish Studies (BAJS).

Honours and Awards

• Research Fellowship Award, 9/2019-8/2020 (Leverhulme Trust)
• Research Stays for University Academics and Scientists, 2018 (German Academic Exchange Service - DAAD)
• Two consecutive FIF (Faculty Impact Fund) awards for undertaking impact and engagement work with Holocaust Centres in South Africa
• EHRI (European Holocaust Research Infrastructure) fellowship for the Institute for Contemporary History in Munich
• BA Small Research Grant for a joint project on representations of the German war child (with Debbie Pinfold, Bristol, and Ute Wölfel, Reading)
• BA Small Research Grant for archival work in Israel and London on child voices in Holocaust narratives
• Visiting Scholarship at the Bucerius Institute, Haifa University, Israel
• AHRB Research Leave Award for a monograph project on the censorship of Jurek Becker
• Prize for PhD thesis from Bochum University

Languages

German, English, French, Latin, modern Hebrew

Teaching (UG)

• SML1018 - Introduction to Literature
• GER2011/2111 - M for Murder
• GER4014 - German Representations of the Holocaust

Teaching and Research Training (PG)

• The Art of Connecting: Intertextuality
• Speaking to Different Audiences
• Working in Archives Abroad: Germany and Israel
• Routes to Impact

Research Supervision

Prof. Müller is happy to supervise research students on modern German literature and on Holocaust-related topics. 

ORCID: Click here.

Details of my work on Academia Edu

Research Interests

Prof. Müller's expertise lies in censorship studies; GDR literature (esp. Jurek Becker); parody; modernism (Kafka; Thomas Mann); as well as postmodernism, literary theory, and comparative literature. She is particularly interested in narrative representations of the Holocaust (in fictional and non-fictional texts), esp. the role of child figures in Holocaust narratives and war children's testimonies.

Current Major Projects

• "West German Student Essays on the Nazi Era: War Children's Voices from the 1950s" [book project]

Postgraduate Supervision

I'm happy to supervise research students on modern German literature, censorship, and on topics related to the Holocaust and World War II.

Recent PHD students have completed doctoral theses on the juvenalia of Judith Kerr and Tomi Ungerer and on filmic representations of the Holocaust in German, Israeli, and Hollywood cinemas since 1990.

Esteem Indicators & Impact

assessor of grant applications for the Österreichischer Wissenschaftsfond FWF (since 2013) and the Fonds National de la Recherche Luxembourg FNR (since 2016);

member of AHRC Peer Review College (2007-10);

member of AHRC Peer Review Panel D (2009);

reader for Berghahn,  Camden House, Politics, Philosophy and Economics (Australia), and Critical, Cultural and Communications Press;

radio feature interview for programme on parodies of academic writing for Deutschlandradio Kultur, Sept. 2009;

podcast for German website of Yad Vashem, Israel's leading research institution on the Holocaust (2013);

interview for BBC 4 TV documentary on metamorphosis (initial broadcast in March 2013) 

repeated invitations to speak publicly about my research in the context of Newcastle City Council's activities for Holocaust Remembrance Day (2012, 2014, 2015, 2016)

invitation to deliver a training session for the Holocaust Education Trust's CPD workshop on the Holocaust (Leicester, February 2017)

Curator of exhibitions on "Child Holocaust Testimonies" and "Children under Hitler", displayed in Newcastle's City Library in the autumn of 2015 and in the context of Newcastle City Council's Holocaust Memorial Day programme (January 2016), as well as for a larger exhibition on "Children under the Nazis", which was shown at the South African Holocaust and Genocide Foundation's centres in Cape Town and Johannesburg in June 2017

External Funding

AHRB Research Leave Award to support monograph on the censorship of Jurek Becker (2001/02)

British Academy Small Grant Award to support archival research on child Holocaust narratives in Yad Vashem (Jerusalem) and the Wiener Library (London) (2009/10)

visiting scholarship at Haifa University's Bucerius Institute (2009/10);

British Academy / Leverhulme Small Grant Award for a project on "Children in German War (Con)-Texts 1945-1949" (with Dr Debbie Pinfold, Bristol, and Dr Ute Wölfel, Reading, 2014-2016)

Fellowship from EHRI, the European Holocaust Research Infrastructure, for a project on "Fine Young Democrats? German Youth in OMGUS Surveys, 1945-49" (2016, for a research trip to the Institute for Contemporary History in Munich)

Research Stay award from DAAD, for a research trip to the Roessler Archive in Hagen, Germany, August 2018

Research Fellowship Award, Leverhulme Trust, for a book project on "West German Student Essays on the Nazi Era: War Children's Voices from the 1950s", 9/2019 - 8/2020

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Undergraduate Teaching

SML1018 - Introduction to Literature

GER2011 - M for Murder

GER4014 - German Representations of the Holocaust

GER3052 - Translation for Erasmus students

GER4081 - German General Language (translation)

Postgraduate Teaching

Mlitt and PhD supervisions:

• Gary Jenkins (PhD): Mediation in Repression and Remembrance. Post-Holocaust Generation Cinema and the Construction of Collective Memory (completed)

• Elise Bath (Mlitt): Female Victims of the Holocaust (2013-14) (completed)

• Lucy Stone (PhD): The Juvenalia of Judith Kerr and Tomi Ungerer (completed)

Research training programme for postgraduates:

• The Art of Connecting: Intertextuality (for Faculty Research Training programme)

• Speaking to Different Audiences (for SML)

• What does Impact Mean in the Academic World? (for SML)

• Working in Archives Abroad: Germany and Israel (for NBDTP)

• Muller B. Historiographia be hakesher shel trauma: eduiyot shoah shel yeladim le-akhar ha-milkhama. [=The Historiography of Trauma: Early Post-War Child Holocaust Testimonies in Context. In Hebrew]. In: Cohen B, ed. Was their Voice Heard? Early Holocaust Testimonies of Child Survivors. Jerusalem: The Hebrew University Magnes Press, 2016, pp.95-109.
• Müller B. 'Der Mann, den ich vergötterte, hat uns ins Unglück geführt': The Post-war Crisis of Consciousness as Mirrored in Essays and Questionnaires by Nuremberg's Schoolchildren in 1946. German Life and Letters 2016, 69(4), 453-467.
• Müller B, Pinfold D, Wölfel U. Cradle and Crucible of 'Vergangenheitsbewältigung': Representations of the War Child in the Occupation Period (1945-49). An Introduction. German Life and Letters 2016, 69(4), 417-436.
• Cohen B, Müller B. A Teacher and His Students: Child Holocaust Testimonies from Early Postwar Polish Bytom. East European Jewish Affairs 2016, 46(1), 68-115.
• Biddle I, Müller B. "and all of a sudden, in the middle of it, they began singing...": Languages and Commemoration in Arnold Schoenberg's Cantata A Survivor from Warsaw (Op. 46). In: Peter Davies & Andrea Hammel, ed. Edinburgh German Yearbook 8: New Literary and Linguistic Perspectives on the German Language, National Socialism, and the Shoah. Rochester, New York: Camden House, 2014, pp.199-216.
• Muller B. Translating Trauma: David Boder's 1946 Interviews with Holocaust Survivors. Translation and Literature 2014, 23(2), 257-271.
• Muller B. Kinder berichten über die Shoah: zeitgenössische Zeugnisse. Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 2013. Podcast.
• Cohen B, Müller B. The 1945 Bytom Notebook: Searching for the Lost Voices of Child Holocaust Survivors . In: Boeling, R., Urban, S., Bienert, R, ed. Freilegungen: Überlebende – Erinnerungen – Transformationen. Göttingen: Wallstein, 2013, pp.122-137.
• Muller B. Cultures of Discontent: Jurek Becker's 'Irreführung der Behörden'. German Life and Letters 2012, 65(4), 472-488.
• Muller B, Baer B J, St-Pierre P, Ó Cuilleanáin C. Translation Studies Forum: Translation and Censorship. Translation Studies 2012, 5(1), 95-110.
• Müller B. Trauma, Historiography and Polyphony: Adult Voices in the CJHC's Early Post-War Child Holocaust Testimonies. History and Memory 2012, 24(2), 157-195.
• Müller B. Agency, Ethics and Responsibility in Holocaust Fiction: Child Figures as Catalysts in Bruno Apitz's Nackt unter Wölfen (1958) and Edgar Hilsenrath's Nacht (1964). Internationales Archiv für Sozialgeschichte der deutschen Literatur 2011, 36(1), 85-114.
• Müller B. Zensurforschung: Paradigmen, Konzepte, Theorien. In: Rautenberg, U, ed. Buchwissenschaft in Deutschland: Ein Handbuch. Berlin and New York: De Gruyter Saur, 2010, pp.321-360.
• Muller B. Cenzura a kulturni regulace: mapovani terenu. Ceska literatura 2009, 57(4), 503-530.
• Muller B. La censura y la regulacion cultural: Cartografiando el territorio. Criterios. Revista internacional de teoria de la literatura las artes, y la cultura 2009, 36, 18-51.
• Müller B. Jurek Becker im Visier des MfS: Textsorten und Textwelten im OV 'Lügner'. In: Barker, P; Ohse, M-D; Tate, D, ed. Views from Abroad: Die DDR aus britischer Perspektive. Bielefeld: Bertelsmann, 2007, pp.199-210.
• Müller B. Stasi - Zensur - Machtdiskurse : Publikationsgeschichten und Materialien zu Jurek Beckers Werk. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 2006.
• Müller B. 'Zeit der Nichtübereinstimmung': Censorship Discourses about and in Jurek Becker's Schlaflose Tage. German Life and Letters 2005, 58(1), 55-74.
• Müller B, ed. Censorship & Cultural Regulation in the Modern Age. Amsterdam, New York: Rodopi, 2004.
• Müller B. Censorship and Cultural Regulation: Mapping the Territory. In: Müller, B, ed. Censorship & Cultural Regulation in the Modern Age. Amsterdam, New York: Rodopi, 2004, pp.1-31.
• Müller B. Hinter verschlossenen Türen auf der Bühne deutsch-deutscher Öffentlichkeit: Publikationsgeschichten über Jurek Beckers 'Schlaflose Tage'. In: Müller, B, ed. Zensur im modernen deutschen Kulturraum. Tübingen: Niemeyer, 2003.
• Müller B. Über Zensur: Wort, Öffentlichkeit und Macht. Eine Einführung. In: Müller, B, ed. Zensur im modernen deutschen Kulturraum. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 2003, pp.1-30.
• Müller B, ed. Zensur im modernen deutschen Kulturraum. Tübingen: Niemeyer, 2003.
• Müller B. Spannung durch Zensur: Zur Phänomenologie eines Motivs der Gegenwartsprosa in Ost und West. In: Borgmeier, R; Wenzel, P, ed. Spannung: Studien zur englischsprachigen Literatur : für Ulrich Suerbaum zum 75. Geburtstag. Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier, 2001, pp.213-233.
• Muller BS. Die grausame Schrift: Zur Ästhetik der Zensur in Kafkas 'Strafkolonie' (The cruel Scripture: The Aesthetics of censorship in Kafka's "Penal Colony). Neophilologus 2000, 84(1), 107-125.
• Müller B. Sea Voyages into Time and Space: Postmodern Topographies in Umberto Eco's 'L'isola del giorno prima' and Christoph Ransmayr's 'Die Schrecken des Eises und der Finsternis'. Modern Language Review 2000, 95(1), 1-17.
• Müller B. Academia Pranca: Die Wissenschaftsparodie als Provokation der Wissenschaft? Zum Beispiel die Sokal-Affäre. In: Böhn, A, ed. Formzitate, Gattungsparodien, ironische Formverwendung: Gattungsformen jenseits von Gattungsgrenzen. St. Ingbert: Röhrig, 1999, pp.135-173.
• Müller B. Hamlet at the Dentist's: Parodies of Shakespeare. In: Müller, B, ed. Parody: Dimensions and Perspectives. Amsterdam, Atlanta/GA: Rodopi, 1997, pp.127-153.
• Müller B, ed. Parody: Dimensions and Perspectives. Amsterdam, Atlanta/GA: Rodopi, 1997.
• Müller B. '...über den Sprachen ist die Sprache': Mythogene narrative Strukturen in Thomas Manns Roman 'Der Erwählte'. Weimarer Beiträge 1996, 42(2), 207-230.
• Müller B. Komische Intertextualität: Die literarische Parodie. Trier: WVT Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier, 1994.
• Müller B. 'See how it's done?' Zur Funktionsweise von Lyrikparodien. In: Koch, WA, ed. Die Welt der Lyrik. Bochum: Brockmeyer, 1994, pp.170-192.
• Muller B. 'Es war nicht richtig, daß Hitler die Juden ausstieß': Judenverfolgung im Spiegel Nürnberger Schüleraufsätze von 1946. In: Francesca Weil, André Postert and Alfons Kenkmann, ed. Kindheiten im Zweiten Weltkrieg. Halle: Mitteldeutscher Verlag, 2018, pp.318-336.