An Evening with Thomas Meinecke
Monday, 19th January 2015 from 5.00 in Frances Bancroft 3.15, Queen Mary University of London
Thomas Meinecke, the current Writer in Residence at the Centre for Anglo-German Cultural Relations at Queen Mary University of London has been described as the intellectual, or the theorist, among the German practitioners of Pop Literature. Alongside a very successful career as a musician and DJ, he is one of the foremost cultural commentators in Germany. He first came to literary prominence with the novel Tomboy, which, as the title suggests, embodies in a particular kind of docufiction the theories of postmodern gender studies. His second Novel, Hellblau, Pale Blue, pursues the intersectional discourse into a brilliant dissection of race. Both have been translated into American English by Daniel Bowles. His third novel, called Musik, Music is a brilliant example of a queer novel, which uses historical anecdote and an astonishingly wide and deep knowledge of popular music to deconstruct a wide variety of identity discourses and to demonstrate that this work of deconstruction has been going on in a variety of surprising places for much longer than one might imagine.
To celebrate Thomas Meinecke’s Residence, Queen Mary will be holding a four part evening event. It will start with a discussion between Meinecke and second year translation students about translation issues, focusing mainly on the opening of Tomboy, and will continue with a bilingual reading of passages from and Pale Blue. This will be followed by a contextualization of Meinecke’s work by Dr Charis Goer of the University of Bielefeld and an appreciation of Musik by Dr Robert Gillett of Queen Mary University of London, and the evening will end with Meinecke himself playing selected tracks to illustrate the uses he makes of music in the novel.
The event is part of the programme of the literature and cultural transfer sections of the Centre for Anglo-German Cultural Relations, but is also part of the German Department’s Research Seminar series. It should be of particular interest to comparative literature students, gender studies students, and anybody interested in the history of popular music in the 20th century.
ALL WELCOME
Enquires to Robert Gillett: [log in to unmask]
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