Dr Malcolm Spencer M.A., Ph.D., PGCE, RSA Dip TEFL

Department of Modern Languages
Honorary Research Fellow

Contact details

Email
j.m.spencer@bham.ac.uk
Address
Ashley Building
University of Birmingham
Edgbaston
Birmingham
B15 2TT
UK

Qualifications

My first degree was in History & Modern Languages from the University of Oxford. I took a PhD in Modern German & Austrian Literature at the University of Birmingham from 2001-2004

Biography

I have worked as a teacher of French and German in secondary schools. I have also taught English for Academic Purposes at this university and at the University of Aberystwyth.

Research

My main research interests are in 20C German and Austrian literature, particularly in the work of Robert Musil. I gave a paper at the 2007 Robert Musil Conference at the University of Lancaster. I am currently preparing a paper on Matthew Arnold and Nietzsche and attitudes to education in the later 19th Century.

Other activities

  • I regularly attend events at the IGRS, London, Goethe-Institut and Austrian Cultural Forum.
  • I visit secondary schools to promote languages at the University of Birmingham.
  • My main leisure interest is playing the piano.

Publications

  • Book Review: H.G. Adler 1910 -1988, Privatgelehrter und freier Schriftsteller, Franz Hocheneder, Vienna, Cologne, Weimar, Böhlau 2009, in : Modern Austrian Literature, 2010
  • ‘Berlin: Twenty Years On’: Runner-Up in Daily Telegraph Competition to celebrate the Fall of the Wall (published on Daily Telegraph website), October 2009
  • In the Shadow of Empire: Austrian Experiences of Modernity in the Writings of Musil, Roth and Bachmann: Rochester NY, Camden House, 2008 (Paperback, 2010) (Monograph)
  • ‘Approaches to Robert Musil’s Die Verwirrungen des Zöglings Törleß’, co-authored with Philip Payne, in: The Text and its Context, Studies in Modern German Literature and Society, eds. Nigel Harris, Joanne Sayner, Oxford & Frankfurt, Peter Lang, 2007, pp. 221-240.
  • ‘Wieviel Heimat braucht der Mensch?: Die Suche nach der Heimat in Ingeborg Bachmanns „Drei Wege zum See“’ in: Kontinuitäten und Brüche, Österreichs literarischer Wiederaufbau nach 1945, eds. Heide Kunzelmann, Martin Liebscher, Thomas Eicher, Oberhausen, Athena-Verlag, 2006, pp. 189-204.
  • ‘Kulturelle Differenzierung in Robert Musils Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften: Die Stadt B.’, in: Eigene und andere Fremde: ‚Postkoloniale’ Konflikte im europäischen Kontext, eds. Wolfgang Mueller-Funk & Birgit Wagner, Vienna, Turia+Kant, 2005
  • ‘Vater, Landesvater, Gottvater’: Vaterfiguren bei Robert Musil und Joseph Roth’, in: Verflechtungsfiguren, eds. Endre Hárs & Magdolna Orosz, Frankfurt, 2003, pp. 113-120. (Budapester Studien zur Literaturwissenschaft, Vol. 3) 
  • Eine Einschaltung über Kakanien: Robert Musil und Österreich-Ungarn aus britischer Sicht’: in: Kakanien Revisited , eds. Wolfgang Mueller-Funk, Peter Plener & Clemens Ruthner, Tübingen, Francke, 2002, pp. 186-192.