Univ.-Prof. Dr. Sylvia Mieszkowski

Professor of British Literature

Humans are semiotic creatures. Exploring literary – sometimes historically or culturally foreign, sometimes challenging – texts, genres, traditions, innovations as well as their social and ideological contexts helps us ‘read’ and understand the world. I specialise in British literature and its interaction with cultural theories, non-literary discourses, as well as cultural, political and popular debates and audio-visual media.

Office hours in the summer term 2025:

Mondays, 14:00-15:00
Tuesdays, 16:00-17:00

Online meetings upon appointment.

Please make an appointment via sylvia.mieszkowski@univie.ac.at (cc ulrike.zillinger@univie.ac.at).

 

ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4251-9180

Web of Science researcher ID: GQB-2432-2022

Research interests

  • 19th and 20th century literature in English
  • Relation of Victorian and neo-Victorian narratives, neo-Victorian biofiction
  • Short Fiction
  • Gender studies
  • Queer theory, intersectional feminism, gender in-visibilities
  • Sound studies
  • Serial narration & theories of seriality
  • Life writing
  • Refugee tales

Talks:

Published as series co-editor:

CV

  • since 2024 — Deputy Head of Study Programme, Department of English and American Studies, University of Vienna
  • 2022-24 — Deputy Head of Department, Department of English and American Studies, University of Vienna
  • 2020-24 — Deputy Head of Research Platform GAIN (Gender: Ambivalent In_Visibilities)
  • 2020-24 — Member of Research Platform SOLE (The Stress of Life)
  • 2020-22 — Head of Department, Department of English and American Studies, University of Vienna
  • since 2020 — Book series Editor Dutch Quarterly Review (Brill Rodopi; together with Eva Zettelmann)
  • since 2020 — Book series Editor Literatur - Theater - Medien (Lit-Verlag; together with Ralph Poole)
  • 2018-20 — Deputy Head of Department, Department of English and American Studies, University of Vienna
  • 2018-20 — Spokesperson for Professorial Curia, University of Vienna
  • 2018-20 — Member of Faculty Conference of the Faculty of Philological and Cultural Studies, University of Vienna
  • since 2017 — Full Professor for "British Literature" at the University of Vienna
  • 2016/17 — Guest Professor for English Literature, University of Vienna
  • 2015/16 — Guest Professor for English Literature, University of Bayreuth
  • 2014/15 — Guest Professor for English Literature of the long Nineteenth Century, University of Zurich
  • 2013 — Associate Professor at Department of English and Comparative Literature, American University of Paris
  • 2012 — Guest Professor for English Literature, Humboldt University of Berlin
  • 2012 — Associate Professor at Department of English and Comparative Literature, American University of Paris
  • 2011/12 — Docent at Amsterdam University College
  • 2011 — Habilitation at Goethe University Frankfurt
  • 2004/05 — Postdoc at Goethe University Frankfurt
  • 2004 — Postdoc at Amsterdam School of Cultural Analysis
  • 2003 — Doctorate at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich
  • 1997 — Magistra Artium at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich
  • 1993/94 — Year abroad at Unversity of St. Andrews
  • 1991-97 — Studies at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich


International Experience 

Before coming to Vienna, I taught in Munich, Frankfurt, Amsterdam, Berlin, Paris, Zürich, Bayreuth and Salzburg.

 

Select Talks

up to 2018, for more see u:cris personal profile

"The Cosmopolitan Wife: Isabel Burton's Ghostwriting of The Life as Creative Self-Othering." International Conference "Transnational Lives and Cosmopolitan Biographies" (Centre for Life-Writing, Wolfson College, Oxford, UK): 17 March 2018.

"'What's this cheery singing all about?: Reading the Musical Episode in Buffy, the Vampire Slayer." International Conference "When the Music Takes Over. Musical Numbers in Film and Television" (University of Salzburg, 8-10 March 2018): 10 March 2018.

"Cultural Crossovers: Transmedial Adaptation and Activist Appropriation of The Handmaid's Tale." Annual Conference of the Austrian Association for American Studies (AAAS) (University of Salzburg, 3-5 Nov. 2017): 5 Nov. 2017.

"Acts of Resistance: Female Counter-Conduct in Transnational Dystopian Narratives." Invited talk (University of Salzburg): 5 May 2017.

"Making/s of the Self: Governmentality, Resistance and Subjectification in Dystopian Narratives." Invited talk (University of Zurich, Switzerland): 1 March 2017.

"Governmentality and Acts of Counter-Conduct in Kate Atkinson's 'The War on Women' (2009)." International Conference "Governance, Governmentality and the State: Postcolonial, Queer and Feminist Interventions" (University of Vienna, 17-18 Nov. 2016): 18 Nov. 2016.

"Un-gendering Voice and Re-genderinig Affect in AL Kennedy's Short Fiction." Contribution to Round Table 4 at ESSE Conference (Galway, Ireland, 22-26 Aug. 2016): 24 Aug. 2016.

"Angry Women, Crying Men - Representations of Gendered Affect in A.L. Kennedy's Short Fiction." Invited talk (Universidade de Santiago de Compostela, April 2016).

"Family Likeness & Bad Blood: Truth Discourses in Charles Dickens's Oliver Twist and Sarah Waters's Fingersmith." Lecture as part of an appointment procedure (Vienna): 18 March 2016.

"Emotion as the Organising Principle in ALK's All the Rage (2014)." Invited talk (University of Warwick, Feb. 2016).

  

Select Publications

up to 2015, for more see u:cris personal profile

Resonant Alterities: Sound, Desire and Anxiety in Non-Realist Fiction, Bielefeld: [transcript], 2014. 

Teasing Narratives: Europäische Verführungsgeschichten nach ihrem Goldenen Zeitalter. Berlin: Erich Schmidt Verlag, 2003.

Sound-Effects: The Object Voice in English Fiction. Hg. mit Jorge Sacido Romero. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2015.

Disturbing Bodies. Hg. mit Christine Vogt-William. Berlin: Trafo, 2008.

Sonic Interventions. Hg. Mit Joy Smith und Marijke de Valck. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2007.

Gendered Academia. Wissenschaft und Geschlechterdifferenz 1890-1940. Hg. mit Miriam Kauko und Alexandra Tischel. Göttingen: Wallstein Verlag, 2005. Rezensiert in: Zeitschrift für Germanistik Nr. 3 (2006)

“Transnational heterotopia and death-driven narcissism in A.L. Kennedy’s ‘Made over, made out’” in: Short Fiction in Theory and Practice 5.1/2, eds. Philip Coleman and Clare Hayes-Brady, 2016, S. 45-56.

"Kitsch als Kitt – preposterously? Mike Leighs Topsy-Turvy (1999) und Gilbert & Sullivans The Mikado (1885)”, in: Kitsch und Nation: Zur kulturellen Modellierung eines polemischen Begriffs, hg. von Kathrin Ackermann und Christopher F. Laferl; Bielefeld: [transcript], 2016, S. 271-303.

“‘That which cannot be said’: voice, desire and the uncanny in Armistead Maupin’s The Night Listener,” in: Sound Effects: The Object Voice in English Fiction. Hg. von Jorge Sacido Romero und Sylvia Mieszkowski, Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2015, S. 243-267.

“QueerIng Ads? Imagepflege (in) der heteronormativen Gesellschaft,” in: Jörn Ahrens, Lutz Hieber und York Kautt (Hg.), Kampf um Images: Visuelle Kommunikation in gesellschaftlichen Konfliktlagen, Wiesbaden: Springer VS, 2015, S. 117-136.

“Was war und ist Homosexualitätsforschung?” in: Was ist Homosexualität?: Forschungsgeschichte, gesellschaftliche Entwicklungen und Perspektiven, hg. von Jenniver Evans/Rüdiger Lautmann/Florian Mildenberger/Jakob Pastötter. Hamburg: Männerschwarm Verlag, 2014, S. 41-7

“Feudal Furies: Interpellation and Tragic Irony in Shakespeare’s Coriolanus”, in: Zeitsprünge 18 (2014), Heft 3/4, S. 333-348.

“Unauthorised Intercourse: Early Modern Bed Tricks and their Under-Lying Ideologies”, in: Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik 61.4 (2013), S. 319-340.

“Bruising Bodies, Crashing Cars: Cultural Inoculations of the ‘Death Drive’ in Ballard and Palahniuk” in: Hard Bodies. Hg. Ralph Poole et al. Berlin: LIT Verlag, 2011, S. 53-78.

“The CHILD – Reproductive Futurism and Queer Critique in Pearl Harbor and Breakfast on Pluto,” in: Queer Studies in Deutschland: Interdisziplinäre Beiträge zur Kritischen Heteronormativitätsforschung, hg. Andreas Kraß. Berlin: Trafo, 2009, S. 201-223.