Clara Busch

Email:  cb2317@cam.ac.uk

Supervisor: Prof Sarah Colvin

Research Topic: Autotheory and the Politics of Writing in Contemporary German Literature 

Clara joined Cambridge in 2024 to research contemporary German literature and theory, funded by a Schröder Scholarship. Before coming to Cambridge, Clara received an MSt in Modern Languages from Oxford and studied Comparative Literature and Communication Studies in Erfurt and Limerick. At Oxford, she was research assistant for the Modern Languages ‘Policy Engagement’ project. Beyond academia, Clara has worked and interned across the cultural industries, including at Goethe-Institute Denmark, Ullstein, Deutsches Literaturarchiv Marbach, internationales literaturfestival berlin, and the Thuringian State Parliament. 

Research

For her PhD, Clara researches autotheory as a genre and a critical practice in contemporary German-language texts. Her project explores the politics and aesthetics of autotheory, a feminist practice that fuses forms of the autotextual with theory, and its emergence across different genres such as poetics lectures, essays and experimental pieces, novels, and anthologies. Literary writing is considered for its potential to generate alternative theoretical knowledge, which is both grounded in lived experience and made more complicated through aesthetic experimentation. At the same time, engaging with autotheoretical texts enables a reconsideration of established modes of academic and institutionalised criticism and the ways in which we, as writers, readers, and researchers, might reflect on our own epistemic habits. 

Publications

‘Get in looser, we’re going theorising: eine Pöbelei’, Undercurrents Forum für linke Literaturwissenschaft, forthcoming 2026

‘Ökologien der Autotheorie bei Judith Schalansky’, Literatur in Wissenschaft und Unterricht Special Issue ‘Verflochtene Ökologien. Utopische und transformative Potenziale der Literatur‘, edited by Reto Rössler and Anna Schwarzinger, forthcoming 2026

with Christiane Schönfeld, ‘Affective Communication and the Dialectics of Anger in Shida Bazyar’s Drei Kameradinnen(2021), Oxford German Studies Special Issue ‘Poetics and Politics of Emotion’, edited by Gillian Pye and Katherine Calvert, forthcoming 2026

‘“Human Stain at Heinrich Heine University, Germany”: Patterns of Gossip and the Negotiation of Identity in Mithu Sanyal’s Identitti (2021)’, MHRA Working Papers in the Humanities ‘Scandal and Infamy’, 20 (2025), edited by Caitlin Sturrock and Agnes Fanning, pp. 52–61, doi:10.59860/wph.a054b91

Conference papers 

‘“Der Sud ist bereit”: Liquids in Kim de l’Horizon’s Blutbuch (2022)’, Trilateral Colloquium Cambridge-Berlin-Chicago, Cambridge, 13-15 July 2026

‘Autotheory and Its Shapes: The Conditions of Literary Practice’, PhD Symposium in Modern European History and German Literature and Culture „Fact and Fiction: Life Writing and Narrativity“, Cambridge, 16 June 2026

‘Generative Proximities as Autotheoretical Methodology in Sharon Dodua Otoo’s and Mithu Sanyal’s Writings’, American Comparative Literature Association, Montreal, 26 February – 1 March 2026

‘Autotheorie als literaturwissenschaftliches Transfermoment’, 28. Deutscher Germanistentag, Braunschweig, 14-17 September 2026

‘Entangled Methodologies and Seismic Writing in Judith Schalansky’s Servus Versus and Schwankende Kanarien’, Association for German Studies Conference, 1-3 September 2025

‘Refusing Poetics?: Autotheory and the Poetics Lecture’, German Graduate Research Seminar, Cambridge, 11 June 2025

‘Autotheory and the Politics of Writing (About Writing) ’, Interdisciplinary Symposium
Acts of Writing: Cultural Practices, Knowledge Construction, Authorship, Gießen, 4-6 June 2025

‘“Was das wirklich nötig, du gottverdammter, beschissener Kack-Tropfen?“ – Feeling Politics in Shida Bazyar’s Drei Kameradinnen’, W+IGS Open Conference, Cork, 4-6 July 2024

‘Hating Women, Women Hating – Affect and Political Action in Shida Bazyar and Elfriede Jelinek’, MML Graduate Network Conference, Oxford, 20 June 2024

Other activities and roles 

Clara is part of Class Act Cambridge, a society that advocates for students from underrepresented backgrounds at the University, and is a mentor at Project Access. Anyone wanting to chat about these things, please get in touch!