Who we are

Jean Marie Carey - German/Art History

My project Prophet, Martyr, Muse, Myth: Franz Marc’s Fairy Tale, Fractured uses the concepts of Einfühlung and Nachträglichkeit as both frameworks and methods for re-evaluating the work of painter and writer Franz Marc in order to allow the artist a fuller presence in his own biography. Reframing Marc’s life gives us a fresh perspective on German Modernism’s "integrative personality” as a naturalist-pantheist and connects Marc’s practices to issues of perception and environment in our own time. My thesis implicitly investigates ideas about “the death of the author” and “the return of the real” and examines the role of historiography in art historical scholarship.

Balazs Kiglics - Asian Studies

Balazs Kiglics studied in Budapest, Hungary. He holds a B.A. in Physical Education, a B.A. in Business Administration, and a Postgraduate Diploma in International Economics. He was a founding member and then president of the Hungarian Foundation of Sports Philosophy (1999). He came to the University of Otago in 2009, to join the programme of Asian Studies. In 2012, Balazs Kiglics started a doctoral thesis on Japan-China political relations.

Research topic: ‘World, vision, values, and progressivity in Japanese elite perceptions of contemporary Japan-China relations: what comes after the cherry blossoms are over?’ The dissertation argues that today’s academic scholarship in Japan reveals a disturbing lack of self-reflexive and self-critical analyses of the political relations between China and Japan. The thesis proposes that, against this form of academic conservatism, progressive socio-cultural philosophies ought to be developed, which take into serious consideration the cultural values informing both nations. These theories would contribute to peaceful and constructive exchanges between Japan and China, bypassing the impasse produced by a focus on strictly political and economic interests on the one hand, and on the traumatic past. 

Marialuisa Risoli - German

Marialuisa Risoli studied Foreign Languages at the University of Turin where she graduated with an M.A. in German Studies in 2006. After her graduation, she worked as teaching assistant for the German Department at the University of Turin. She joined the German Programme at the University of Otago in 2012 for her doctoral studies. Her research interests are Comparative Literature and European Studies.

Research topic: "Voicing the Subaltern. Instances of subversion in Weimar Fairy Tales". Gramsci's theories of subalternity and hegemony have provided me with the framework for my research on Weimar fairy tales. Weimar fairy tale production provides an important insight of the struggles for hegemony after the collapse of the German Reich and reveal how groups with unequal access to power speak and act around divergent sets of power. Particularly important for my analysis of Weimar fairy tales is Raymond William's theoretical contribution relating to the notions of dominant, emergent and residual cultural elements. These notions allow me to shed light on the strategies at work in these narratives, whether allegedly subversive or not, but also on the conservative elements that permeated the subaltern fairy tale production and that put at risk their roles within the revolutionary Weimar politics.