BA Hons (Vind), MA (Dal), PhD (Toronto)
Dr. Veronica Curran (She/Her) holds a BA (Hons)’12 in German and Early Modern Studies from the University of King’s College, an M.A. (2015) in German Studies from Dalhousie University, and a PhD (2024) in Germanic Literature, Culture and Theory from the University of Toronto. She spent the 2012-2013 academic year in Hessen, Germany with the Pädagogischer Austauschdienst (the Pedagogical Exchange Service) as an English teaching assistant in a German-speaking Gymnasium. She also spent two summers (2013 and 2014) studying as an exchange student at Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg, as well as a research year abroad doing archival work in Heidelberg, Berlin, and Weimar in 2019-2020. Her doctoral research focused on the “Storm and Stress” period writer, J.M.R. Lenz’s theatre-writing of the 1770s and the developments in increasingly socially oriented theatre that culminated in the radical careers of George Büchner in the 1830s and Bertolt Brecht in the 1920s-1950s. Within the area of theatre studies and European literature, she is particularly interested in the development of discussions of morality and questions of genre, such as the classic distinctions of “comedy” and “tragedy,” and the depiction of disadvantaged populations, such as members of the lowest classes and women.
Review of Zwischen Autonomie und Heteronomie: Bürgerliche Identitätsproblematik in Heinrich Leopold Wagners dramatischem Werk by Lise Wille, Goethe Yearbook, Vol. 32, Forthcoming Fall, 2024.
“What is Radical? Büchner and Brecht Read Lenz.” German Life & Letters, vol. 76, no. 1, 2023, pp. 88-109.
“War, Marriage, and the Economics of Morality in Brecht (through Kant).” FYP at 50: The End of The West. Halifax: University of King’s College. Edited by Susan Dodd & Neil Roberston, PEI: Underhill Books, 2023.
“Obedience and Freedom in the Plays of J.M.R. Lenz.” Oxford German Studies, vol. 50, no. 3, 2021, pp. 305–317.
“Brecht, Galileo, and the Scientific Imperative in Art.” Academic Musings, the legacy of the Euro-Méditerranée: Festschrift. Edited by Peter Bryson, et al. PEI: Underhill Books, 2019. pp. 181-199.
2022: “Women at Home and at Work: Moral and Social Implications of Female Characterisation in Drama.” Northeast Modern Language Association Annual Convention, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, March 11.
2021: “What is Radical? Büchner and Brecht Read Lenz.” German Studies Canada Graduate Student Research Colloquium, Online, November 12.
2021: “‘Ohne Freiheit geht das Leben bergab rückwärts’: On Freedom, Society, and Morality in J.M.R. Lenz’s Der Hofmeister.” Canadian Association of University Teachers of German Conference at the Congress of the Humanities & Social Sciences, May 29-June 1.
2020: “Gehorsamkeit und Freiheit in Die Soldaten von J.M.R. Lenz.” Internationales und Interdisziplinäres Doktorand*innenkolloquium [International and Interdisciplinary Doctoral Student Colloquium]. Universität Heidelberg, July 3-4.
2020: “Obedience and Freedom in the Plays of J.M.R. Lenz.” International Conference: “The Drama of Obedience.” University of Calgary, April 3-4.
2019: “Hero or Anti-hero?: Galileo’s deviating deviance in Brecht’s 1938 and 1945 plays.” German Graduate Conference: Deviance: ‘Am Rande Seiner Selbst.’ University of Toronto, September 28-29.
2017: “Aestheticism and Ethics, Friends or Foes? A discussion of the role of morality in Robert Musil’s Die Verwirrungen des Zöglings Törleß.” Canadian Association of University Teachers of German Conference at the Congress of the Humanities & Social Sciences. Ryerson University, Toronto, May 27-30.
17th-, 18th– and 19th-century European and German theatre, theatrical genres, moral philosophy, aesthetic theory, decolonial approaches, feminist literary theory
