Faculty of Modern and Medieval Languages and Linguistics Raised Faculty Building University of Cambridge Sidgwick Avenue Cambridge CB3 9DA United Kingdom
Dr Elizabeth Ramsey is the Donnelly Early Career Research Fellow at Corpus Christi. She received her PhD in German Literature from the University of Chicago in 2024 for a project concerning concepts of play in German literary texts from the long nineteenth century, including Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Clemens Brentano, E.T.A Hoffmann, and Franz Kafka. Elizabeth previously studied at the University of Oxford, where her research on the Brothers Grimm, their collection of fairy tales, and the translation of these texts into English was funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, and at the University of Warwick, where she completed her BA in German with Italian Studies. She has also spent two years doing research in Berlin, at the Humboldt-Universität and at the Freie Universität. She was the winner of the Publications of the English Goethe Society Essay Prize in 2024 for her essay ‘Wie ich euch ein Beispiel gebe: Goethe’s Egmont, theatricality and myth’ (forthcoming).
- German Language ab initio first-year sequence (three courses, GER 101, GER 102 and GER 103): sole instructor, Chicago, 2019-2020. Beginner German course with self-designed grammar, writing and speaking exercises
- ‘German Monsters’ (Erzählen/Kurzprosa): self-designed; sole instructor, Chicago, 2021. Advanced course for undergraduates focusing on prose works by the Brothers Grimm, Tieck, Hoffmann, Kafka and Schnitzler
- ‘Growing Up’ (Erziehen): self-designed; sole instructor, Chicago, 2022. Intermediate course focusing on works by Klopstock, Goethe, Kafka, Rilke, Wedekind, and Fritz Lang to provide case studies of German film, theater, prose, poetry and journalism.
- Comparative Fairy Tale: TA and co-assessor, Chicago, 222
- Modern German literature and culture from the Enlightenment to the present
- Play theories and praxis
- Goethe Studies
- Anglo-German cultural transfer, especially in the nineteenth century
- Romanticism and its reception
- Fairytale and folklore
- Children’s literature
- Literary modernism, especially the works of Franz Kafka and Arthur Schnitzler
Elizabeth’s research for her doctoral dissertation (‘Play Objects, Play-Things: The Role of Spiel in Goethe, Hoffmann, Brentano and Kafka’) concerned concepts of play in German literary texts from the long nineteenth century, including Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Clemens Brentano, E.T.A Hoffmann, and Franz Kafka. She is interested in how scenes of literary play can have structural significance for the narratives in which they are to be found, and the link between play and agency in literature.
She is currently working on a book project based on her dissertation, as well as a new project examining the work of the Austrian writer Arthur Schnitzler using the Cambridge Schnitzler Archive, which houses a large portion of the writer’s papers. She is particularly interested in Schnitzler’s reception of other German writers, especially as this relates to the depiction of female figures in his writings.
'Wie ich euch ein Beispiel gebe: Goethe’s Egmont, theatricality and myth’ in Publications of the English Goethe Society (forthcoming in 2025).
