christine.berberich@port.ac.uk

Department & University: University of Portsmouth, School of Area Studies, Sociology, History, Politics & Literature (SASSHPL)

Brief summary of research interests: My research started out with a focus on national identity (Englishness) and its cultural creation. I have published a monograph on The Image of the English Gentleman in 20th Century Literature, as well as a number of edited and co-edited collections focusing on Englishess. Most recently, this research has led me into looking into the new sub-genre of BrexLit. In addition to a number of articles and chapters I have edited a collection entitled Brexit and the Migrant Voice (2022). In recent years, however, the main emphasis of my research has shifted to Holocaust Literatures, Trauma Theory and cultural commemorations of the Holocaust with a particular emphasis on perpetrator writing. I am currently working on a monograph entitled Nazi Noir which examines the boom in contemporary crime writing across Europe that looks at the crimes of the Nazis through the lens of crime and detective writing.

Selected publications:

  • Complicity and ‘Coming to Terms with the Past’ in Contemporary ‘Nazi Noir’ Crime Fiction’. Submitted for Cornelia Wächter (ed), Complicity. Publication details tbc.
  • ‘Dealing with Suffering / Engaging with the Past: Problematic Vergangenheitsbewältigung in Philip Kerr’s Berlin Noir novels’ in Charles Ivan Armstrong & Martina Domines Veliki, Suffering in Anglophone Literatures. Forthcoming, November 2024. Lexington Books.
  • ‘Detecting the Past: Engaging with the Nazi past via contemporary crime novels’ in David Owen & Cristina Pividori, Beyond Post-memory: (Re)Writing War in Contemporary Literature and Culture. (Oxford: Routledge, 2024), pp. 249 – 59.
  • ‘PG Wodehouse and the Men of Tost’; 6,500-word chapter for Rachel Pistol & Gilly Carr (eds.), British Internment and the Internment of Britons: Second World War Camps, History and Heritage, Bloomsbury Academic, 2023, pp. 135 – 48.
  • ‘Philip Kerr, Berlin Noir and the (problematic) Presentation of History’, Central European History (Vol. 55, Issue 4, Dec 2022: 596 – 602). https://doi:10.1017/S0008938922000991  
  • Christine Berberich & Timothy Booker, ‘Taking Pupil and Student Holocaust Teaching into the Community’: A Case Study jointly conducted by the University of Portsmouth and Mayville High School, Southsea’. Holocaust Studies. A Journal of Culture and History. (Early online publication 26/04/2022.) https://doi.org/10.1080/17504902.2022.2058729
  • Christine Berberich (ed.). Trauma & Memory: the Holocaust in Contemporary Culture. (London: Routledge, 2021), ISBN: 978 – 0 – 367 – 70316 – 5. This includes my contributions ‘Introduction: The Holocaust in Contemporary Culture’ (5,000 words); ‘“I think I’m beginning to understand. What I’m writing is an infranovel”: Laurent Binet, HHhH and the Problem of Writing History’ (7,000 words); and ‘Conclusion: New Trends in Holocaust Representation’ (4,000 words).
  • C. Berberich, ‘Detecting the Past: Detective Novels, the Nazi Past, and Holocaust Impiety’ (7,500 words); Genealogy 3.4 (December 2019): 11 pages. DOI:10.3390/genealogy3040070.

Personal Website: https://researchportal.port.ac.uk/en/persons/christine-berberich/publications/(https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7983-7617)