Shows
New Books in German StudiesCarolin Duttlinger, "Attention and Distraction in Modern German Literature, Thought, and Culture" (Oxford UP, 2022)
Attention is fundamental to how we experience reality, and yet this notion has been understood and practised in very different ways across history. This interdisciplinary study explores the dynamic relationship between attention and its supposed opposite, distraction, as it unfolds from the eighteenth century to the present day. Its primary focus is on twentieth-century Germany and Austria, where matters of (in)attention gained a unique urgency during a period of social change and political crisis.Building on Enlightenment practices of self-observation, nineteenth-century Germany was the birthplace of experimental psychology, a discipline which sought to measure...2025-06-1758 min
New Books in Western European StudiesCarolin Duttlinger, "Attention and Distraction in Modern German Literature, Thought, and Culture" (Oxford UP, 2022)Carolin Duttlinger is Professor of German Literature and Culture at the University of Oxford (UK) and Co-Director of the Oxford Kafka Research Centre, where she is currently leading a three-year UKRI-funded research project,Kafka's Transformative Communities. She has published widely on German literature from the eighteenth century to the present; on Walter Benjamin and the Frankfurt School; the history of psychology; and on photography and visual culture. Selected publications: Kafka and Photography (Oxford University Press, 2007); ed., with Ben Morgan and Anthony Phelan, Walter Benjamins anthropologisches Denken (Rombach, 2012); The Cambridge Introduction to Franz Kafka (Cambridge University Press, 2013); ed., Franz Kafka in Conte...2025-06-171h 02
New Books in Literary StudiesCarolin Duttlinger, "Attention and Distraction in Modern German Literature, Thought, and Culture" (Oxford UP, 2022)Carolin Duttlinger is Professor of German Literature and Culture at the University of Oxford (UK) and Co-Director of the Oxford Kafka Research Centre, where she is currently leading a three-year UKRI-funded research project,Kafka's Transformative Communities. She has published widely on German literature from the eighteenth century to the present; on Walter Benjamin and the Frankfurt School; the history of psychology; and on photography and visual culture. Selected publications: Kafka and Photography (Oxford University Press, 2007); ed., with Ben Morgan and Anthony Phelan, Walter Benjamins anthropologisches Denken (Rombach, 2012); The Cambridge Introduction to Franz Kafka (Cambridge University Press, 2013); ed., Franz Kafka in Conte...2025-06-171h 02
In Conversation: An OUP PodcastCarolin Duttlinger, "Attention and Distraction in Modern German Literature, Thought, and Culture" (Oxford UP, 2022)Carolin Duttlinger is Professor of German Literature and Culture at the University of Oxford (UK) and Co-Director of the Oxford Kafka Research Centre, where she is currently leading a three-year UKRI-funded research project,Kafka's Transformative Communities. She has published widely on German literature from the eighteenth century to the present; on Walter Benjamin and the Frankfurt School; the history of psychology; and on photography and visual culture. Selected publications: Kafka and Photography (Oxford University Press, 2007); ed., with Ben Morgan and Anthony Phelan, Walter Benjamins anthropologisches Denken (Rombach, 2012); The Cambridge Introduction to Franz Kafka (Cambridge University Press, 2013); ed., Franz Kafka in Conte...2025-06-171h 02
Kristin Scott Thomas Reads Kafka1. 'Kristin Scott Thomas reads Kafka' IntroductionProfessor Carolin Duttlinger introduces 'Of Children, Animals, and Hunger Artists: Kristin Scott Thomas reads Kafka,' a live reading of Kafka short stories by Dame Kristin Scott Thomas.2025-06-1103 min
HarshaneeyamCarolin Duttlinger on 'Kafka in Context'The guest for this Episode is Carolin Duttlinger. She spoke about Kafka's allure, Kafka as a reader and Kafka Oxford Research Center.Carolin Duttlinger a Professor and tutor in German at Wadham College, Oxford. She teaches German literature, film and culture from the eighteenth century to the present, as well as translation. A particular focus of Carolin’s research is the writer Franz Kafka. She is co-director of the Oxford Kafka Research Centre, which hosts conferences, and workshops and works closely with the Bodleian Library, where the majority of Kafka’s manuscripts are kept. Ca...2024-07-3131 min
Opening LinesOrwell vs Kafka: The Man Who DisappearedJohn Yorke explores Franz Kafka's first and unfinished novel The Man Who Disappeared. Kafka's re-imagining of an innocent's arrival and adventures in New York is, at first glance. the classic tale of rags to riches. Teenage Karl Rossman has been exiled by his parents to a fate unknown across the ocean with just a trunk of mementoes and a slowly smelling sausage. Millions of Kafka's fellow Czechs had also made that journey but Kafka only ever made his voyage of exploration on the page and in his head. It is a strange America he gives us at...2024-06-1614 minOpening LinesOrwell vs. Kafka: The TrialJohn Yorke explores the enduring mystery and power of Franz Kafka's novel The Trial. All Joseph K was expecting when he awoke was breakfast. Instead he is arrested for a nameless crime and finds his life gradually, utterly consumed by the process. Set in a nameless city very like the twisting alleyways and cramped confines of Kafka’s Prague, the book was only published after the writer’s death. Since then, it has become a world famous tale of unending, indefinable bureaucratic unease. John Yorke has worked in television and radio for 30 years, and he shar...2024-06-0914 min
Front RowBernard Butler, Kafka, Benedict CumberbatchHollywood star Benedict Cumberbatch talks about his new series Eric, where he plays a troubled puppeteer in 80s New York whose life and marriage unravel when his young son disappears and the only help he has to find him is from a giant imaginary monster who follows him everywhere. Created by British screenwriter Abi Morgan, the show opens on Netflix on Thursday.Bernard Butler's first solo album in 25 years - Good Grief - is released on 31st May. He plays his latest single and reflects on a career that has involved highly successful collaborations with an eclectic...2024-05-2842 min
In Our TimeWalter BenjaminMelvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of the most celebrated thinkers of the twentieth century. Walter Benjamin (1892-1940) was a German Jewish philosopher, critic, historian, an investigator of culture, a maker of radio programmes and more. Notably, in his Arcades Project, he looked into the past of Paris to understand the modern age and, in The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, examined how the new media of film and photography enabled art to be politicised, and politics to become a form of art. The rise of the Nazis in Germany forced him into exile, and he...2022-02-1051 min
In Our Time: PhilosophyWalter BenjaminMelvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of the most celebrated thinkers of the twentieth century. Walter Benjamin (1892-1940) was a German Jewish philosopher, critic, historian, an investigator of culture, a maker of radio programmes and more. Notably, in his Arcades Project, he looked into the past of Paris to understand the modern age and, in The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, examined how the new media of film and photography enabled art to be politicised, and politics to become a form of art. The rise of the Nazis in Germany forced him into exile, and...2022-02-1050 min
In Our TimeWalter BenjaminMelvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of the most celebrated thinkers of the twentieth century. Walter Benjamin (1892-1940) was a German Jewish philosopher, critic, historian, an investigator of culture, a maker of radio programmes and more. Notably, in his Arcades Project, he looked into the past of Paris to understand the modern age and, in The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, examined how the new media of film and photography enabled art to be politicised, and politics to become a form of art. The rise of the Nazis in Germany forced him into exile, and...2022-02-1050 min
RSDS RADIO SOCIETÀ DEI SOGNIWalter BenjaminMelvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of the most celebrated thinkers of the twentieth century. Walter Benjamin (1892-1940) was a German Jewish philosopher, critic, historian, an investigator of culture, a maker of radio programmes and more. Notably, in his Arcades Project, he looked into the past of Paris to understand the modern age and, in The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, examined how the new media of film and photography enabled art to be politicised, and politics to become a form of art. The rise of the Nazis in Germany forced him into exile, and he...2022-02-1050 min
LiterateEpisode 4: The Metamorphosis by Franz KafkaThis week we're putting Franz Kafka's slim novella, The Metamorphosis, under the microscope. It's a famous story about one character, Gregor Samsa, transforming from a human into something decidedly not-human. An insect, or a "vermin", some kind of bug! As it turns out, the question of what he has become is even trickier to narrow down in the original German than it seems in English, so we compare several translations. We also discuss Gregor's wretched family, and their response to his metamorphosis. They may be the characters with human bodies, throughout the story, but they act in shockingly inhumane...2020-10-1558 min
Europe's Stories Project10th Anniversary Dahrendorf Lecture and Colloquium 3. The power and perils of narrativeWhat Stories Dos Europe Tell? Contested Narratives, Complex Histories, Conflicted Union. With Andrew Hurrell (Oxford), Kalypso Nicolaidis (Oxford), Carolin Duttlinger (Oxford) Chair: Rasmus Nielsen (Oxford). Held in St Antony's College, Oxford 2nd and 3rd May 20192020-06-1039 minEurope's Stories Project10th Anniversary Dahrendorf Lecture and Colloquium 3. The power and perils of narrativeWhat Stories Does Europe Tell? Contested Narratives, Complex Histories, Conflicted Union. With Andrew Hurrell (Oxford), Kalypso Nicolaidis (Oxford), Carolin Duttlinger (Oxford) Chair: Rasmus Nielsen (Oxford). Held in St Antony's College, Oxford 2nd and 3rd May 20192020-06-1039 minEurope's Stories Project10th Anniversary Dahrendorf Lecture and Colloquium 3. The power and perils of narrativeWhat Stories Does Europe Tell? Contested Narratives, Complex Histories, Conflicted Union. With Andrew Hurrell (Oxford), Kalypso Nicolaidis (Oxford), Carolin Duttlinger (Oxford) Chair: Rasmus Nielsen (Oxford). Held in St Antony's College, Oxford 2nd and 3rd May 20192020-06-1039 min
The ForumKafka's The Metamorphosis: A man turns into a monstrous bugA man wakes up in the body of a verminous insect – this is the plot of one of the most celebrated short stories of all time – Franz Kafka’s 1915 novella The Metamorphosis. Dealing with the isolation and absurdity of modern existence, it has fascinated readers all over the world in its openness to varying interpretations, and the way it questions the very norms of society as well as literary form.Joining Rajan Datar to explore this most enigmatic work is Dr Carolin Duttlinger, the author of four books on Kafka and co-director of the Oxford Kafka research centre...2019-07-1140 min
TORCH | The Oxford Research Centre in the HumanitiesRescue in the Face of Danger: Benjamin, Goethe, SebaldSpeaker: Carolin Duttlinger (University of Oxford) The TORCH Crisis, Extremes, and Apocalypse network hosted on 'Crises of Meaning and Political Theology'. This talk on ''Rescue in the Face of Danger: Benjamin, Goethe, Sebald'' was delivered by Carolin Duttlinger (University of Oxford).2017-06-1937 min