Syamala’s doctoral research, carried out under the supervision of Prof. Lucia Ruprecht, was submitted in September 2022. Titled ‘Conceptions of Hearing in German Modernist Writing’, it traces the emergence of an ‘aural imaginary’ in German-language writing of the early twentieth century. Drawing on a wide range of material from canonical writers (Rilke; Kafka; Thomas Mann) and figures less known outside German Studies (Robert Walser; Paula Modersohn-Becker), the thesis examines how hearing and listening were conceptualised, represented and enacted in the medium of text. 

As part of a research fellowship at Emmanuel College, Syamala will also pursue postdoctoral research on Indo-German cultural production in the twentieth century. The project will consider the shifting uses and perceptions of Indian and South Asian culture during a period of transition and turmoil in German history, as well as the place of German culture in pre-independent India. Particular attention is paid to the literary and artistic output of German, Swiss and Austrian intellectuals who imagined, wrote about, and travelled to India after 1900, as well as of Indians who visited or worked in Germany. The decades around and between the two world wars saw a genuine cross-fertilisation of Indian and German cultures, and attending to this reciprocity will be at the core of Syamala’s research.