Profile
Abstract
After a brief career in banking, in 2003 I enroled as a student at Leipzig University. Having spent a total of 16 months in Arras, France, and in Arbroath, Scotland, as a Foreign language assistant I returned to Leipzig and received a master's degree in German and Slavic philology. Shortly afterwards I started out as a project assistant at Leipzig's Moldova-Institut, a registered association initiating multilateral cooperations with states of the EaP. My primary focus has been and still is on subjects like self-government, civil society issues, and means of democratic participation. In 2011 I also became a research fellow to the chair of Slavic literary studies and cultural history at the Slvic department at Leipzig University. I have since been working as a lecturer on literary analysis as well as literary and cultural history of East Slavic cultures. My fields of interest are hermeneutics, Belarusian and Ukrainian cultural history. Since 2017, I hold a PhD (scl) in philosophy.
Professional career
- 08/2002 - 04/2003
Bank clerk at Eisenach savings bank - 10/2005 - 04/2006
Foreign Language Assistant in Arras, France - 05/2007 - 08/2007
Student assistant to Dr. Uwe Junghanns (linguistics, Slavic Department, Leipzig University) - 09/2007 - 05/2008
Foreign Language Assistant in Arbroath, Scotland - 10/2008 - 12/2008
Student assistant to Dr. Uwe Junghanns (linguistics, Slavic Department, Leipzig University) - since 04/2010
Project assistant at Moldova-Institut Leipzig - 05/2010 - 07/2010
Research assistant to full professor Birgit Harreß (Slavic literary studies and cultural history, Slavic department, Leipzig University) - since 10/2011
Research fellow and lecturer at the chair of Slavic literary studies and cultural history (Slavic department, Leipzig university)
Education
- 08/1999 - 06/2002
Trainee in banking at Nordhausen savings bank - 04/2003 - 09/2009
Student, master programme German and Slavic philology - 10/2011 - 07/2017
Doctoral dissertation (scl) on L. Tolstoy's portrayal of death in his fictional works.
Literary texts enable knowledge of the world in two ways: First, they are cultural representations of the worlds from which they originate. On the other hand, they are self-contained world designs. The desire to understand is the basis, the ability to understand the claim of the humanities, I am interested in the hermeneutical decoding of cultural and literary phenomena with regard to their ontological status for a text and its context. For their description I use formalistic and conceptual approaches and methods of the human sciences. Holistic understanding is a central matter of poetic anthropology.
Other research focuses are the past and present of Ukraine and Belarus. My focus here is on the tracing of identity constructions and the respective nation building processes. I am particularly interested in oppositions such as Romanticism vs. Humanism, Spirituality vs. Rationality, Exclusion vs. Inclusion, and especially Factuality vs. Fictionality.
The latter sparks my interest in the "pre-factual" phase of Russian literature in the Middle Ages and early modern times.
- show detailsStrauch, C.-D.Mehrfachbegabungen und RealismusIn: Mildenberger, H.; Seemann, A.; Dahme, S. (Eds.)„Die andere Seite“. Das Phänomen der Mehrfachbegabung in den Künsten. Frankfurt am Main: Edition Fichter. 2021. pp. 187–198.ISBN: 978-3-947313-12-9
- show detailsStrauch, C.-D.; Molderf, O. (Eds.)Zwischen Apokalypse und Aufbruch. Der Donbas-Krieg in ukrainischer KrisenliteraturLeipzig: Edition Hamouda. 2021.ISBN: 978-3958170605
- show detailsStrauch, C.-D.Unwahrheit als Möglichkeit – A-Faktizität in den ostslawischen KulturenIn: Khrushcheva, D.; Schwindt, M.; Zabirko, O. (Eds.)Figurationen des Ostens: Zwischen Literatur, Philosophie und Politik . Berlin: Frank & Timme. 2022. pp. 149–170.ISBN: 978-3-7329-0801-1
- show detailsStrauch, C.-D.; Menzel, N. (Eds.)Wanderjahre in Literatur und Leben: Ontologien des Wandel(n)sBerlin: Peter Lang. 2022.DOI: 10.3726/b19517
- show detailsSlawische Literaturwiss. u. Kulturgeschichte/Schwerpkt. OstslawischZwischen Apokalypse und Aufbruch. Zeitgenössische ukrainische Krisenliteratur im deutsch-ukrainischen TandemübersetzenStart Date of Collaboration: 01/01/2021External participating organisations: Nationale Ivan-Franko-Universität (Lviv, Ukraine)Involved persons: Strauch, Christian-Daniel; Molderf, Oksana
- show detailsHerbstschuleDer Umgang mit ethnischen Minderheiten im postsowjetischen Raum. Konfliktpotenziale erkennen, analysieren und entschärfen.Slawische Literaturwiss. u. Kulturgeschichte/Schwerpkt. OstslawischEvent Organiser: Dumbrava, Vasile; Strauch, Christian-Daniel13/09/2020 – 21/09/2020
- show detailsHerbstschuleGeschichtspolitik, Erinnerungskonflikte und Vergangenheitsbewältigung in Georgien, Russland, Belarus, Ukraine und in der Republik Moldau.Slawische Literaturwiss. u. Kulturgeschichte/Schwerpkt. OstslawischEvent Organiser: Dumbrava, Vasile; Strauch, Christian-Daniel15/09/2019 – 22/09/2019
- show detailsHerbstschuleErinnerungsorte und sowjetische Vergangenheit in der Erinnerungskultur in der Ukraine, Republik Moldau, Armenien, Georgien, Russland und Weißrussland.Slawische Literaturwiss. u. Kulturgeschichte/Schwerpkt. OstslawischEvent Organiser: Dumbrava, Vasile; Strauch, Christian-Daniel06/09/2018 – 14/09/2018
- show detailsSeminarVitalization of the social dialogue in UkraineSlawische Literaturwiss. u. Kulturgeschichte/Schwerpkt. OstslawischEvent Organiser: Dumbrava, Vasile; Strauch, Christian-Daniel24/09/2011 – 08/10/2011
- show detailsWorkshop (Leipzig, DE)Zwischen Apokalypse und Aufbruch. Zeitgenössische ukrainische Krisenliteratur im deutsch-ukrainischen TandemübersetzenSlawische Literaturwiss. u. Kulturgeschichte/Schwerpkt. OstslawischEvent Organiser: Strauch, Christian-Daniel; Molderf, Oksana04/09/2021 – 09/09/2021
-
Ukraine as a nation - A discovery
Ukraine, divided between the Habsburg monarchy and the Russian Empire, embarked on a search for her own national identity in the 19th century. What started out as a purely academic endeavor aiming at the emancipation of the Ukrainian language quickly developed into a political and finally a social quarrel.
The seminar therefore offers an overview of national and nationalist discourses in the past and present.
-
L. N. Tolstoy's "Sevastopol Sketches"
Along with the exercise Lev Tolstoj's epic nocel 'War and Peace' and the lecture Lev Tolstoy, the seminar takes a look at three earlier and shorter texts by Tolstoy that pave the way for the design and existential positioning of war in War and Peace. The primary objective is to impart techniques for the analysis of narrative texts. Using the example of F. Tjutčev's Silentium! the analysis of lyrical texts will also be discussed.
-
Belarusian/Ukrainian Cultural History
The road to state sovereignty is not just a process that starts with a revolution, is decided with a referendum, and is completed with international recognition. Rather, the nation seeks to be legitimize its existence through a sound literary language and a national literature in order to prove cultural independence. The seminar deals with works and artists that Belarus and Ukraine are referring to.
-
Analysis and interpretation of literary texts
As part of the exercise, the students are to be familiarized with basic working techniques in literary analysis. This will be demonstrated using Tjutčevs Silentium! , Gogol's Revizor (The Government Inspector) and Tolstoy's Smert 'Ivana Il'iča (The Death of Ivan Il’ič), well-known works of art representing all three literary "natural forms" (poetry, drama, epic), which still offer the opportunity for a variety of interpretations.
-
Literature in the Slavia orthodoxa
East and South Slavic literary history from 11th to 18th Century in Kievan Rus, in Moravia, in the First Bulgarian Empire, in the Grand Duchy of Moscow, and in Russia. The textual corpus includes hagiography as well as chronicles, byliny, panegyrics, sermons, and writings from the Renaissance period.
-
Vitalization of the Social Dialogue in Ukraine
Issues:
- Concepts for structural reforms in unions
- Development of standards for transparent action
- Development of a tradition of cooperation
- Strengthening role of unions as part of civil society
- Enforcement of information rights
- Good practice in employer's associations
-
Between Acopalypse and New Beginnings
The literarization of the war represents a means of conflict resolution. The current Ukrainian literature has a potential to overcome the traditions of Soviet depictions of the Second World War. The events are being shown in a way unsuitable for being used as an instrument for nation-building and “strengthening the home front”. They show that the national trauma of this war cannot be overcome through martial rhetoric and post-imperial reflexes, but rather through solidarity and cooperation.
-
Ukraine at War: Literature as a Theatre of War and Discursive Space (seminar)
The Russian attack on Ukraine on 24 February 2022 is not the beginning, but the escalation of a war that Russia has been covertly waging against its neighbour since 2014. The seminar will focus on literary representations of the Donbass war in eastern Ukraine that have appeared since 2014. In their texts, Ukrainian writers negotiate questions of nation and identity, create definitions of the own and the other.
-
Russian Literature in the 20th and 21st Centuries (seminar)
The 20th century in Russia, characterised by upheavals, is extremely diverse in literary terms. The chronologically organised seminar provides an overview of the most important currents and trends in Russian and Soviet literature of the 20th and 21st centuries, starting with "Russian modernism", the literature of the revolution and socialist realism, the "thaw period" through to the perestroika phase and the post-Soviet period.
-
Russian Literature in the 19th Century: The Ukrainian Element (lecture)
As a romantic projection surface for increasingly urban readers, Ukraine and its glorified past was a favoured subject of literary representations in the early 19th century, which did not begin with Pushkin's poem "Poltava" (1829). Ukrainian subjects and Ukrainian authors writing in Russian not only made a major contribution to the development of Russian literature in the 19th century, they also sometimes acted as a corrective to literary discourse itself.
-
Untruth as a possibility - Non-factuality in Russian culture (seminar)
The seminar is dedicated to the traditions of a culture in which for centuries facts and beliefs have stood in a sometimes competing, sometimes complementary relationship to each other and form the basis for a concept of truth that is not only based on facts, and which is not the end, but the starting point of an epistemological teleology. The aim of the seminar is to trace the process of the development of a culturally fixated non-factuality.