Congratulations to our incoming PhD student Alrik Daldrup, who has won the German Quarterly Graduate Student Paper Award for his essay "Affektive Entgleisungen. Queerer Vandalismus in Grimmelshausens Courasche".

Each year, the award recognises the best essay by a graduate student in German Studies to be published in the journal The German Quarterly. The essay was written as part of an MA seminar at Kiel University under the supervision of Assistant Professor Margit Dahm.

With his essay, Alrik finds a new approach to Grimmelshausen's extensively researched novel Courasche (1670). Current approaches from queer and affect studies are combined to argue that Grimmelshausen's willful protagonist Courasche, seeking to assert herself in a chaotic and violent world at the time of the 30 Years' War, articulates subversive feelings that seem odd to the pre-modern dominant society.

This gives her the freedoms and possibilities of other ways of being – but not without suffering traumatic violence. The award will be presented at a virtual ceremony by the American Association of Teachers of German on 12th November 2023.

Alrik was previously awarded the Prize for Gender-Sensitive Research of Kiel University.