Dr. Carolin Löher

Born in 1985 in Werl. Degree course in Scandinavian Studies (major) Modern German Literature and Business Administration (minor) in Freiburg and Reykjavik; December 2011. MA qualification with distinction, topic of Master's thesis: Matias Faldbakken's novel trilogy, Skandinavisk misantropi and the question as the status of popular literature. April 2010 to December 2011, research assistant at the Department of Scandinavian Studies of the University of Freiburg in the DFG project "Literary Practices in Scandinavia around 1900". June 2008 to October 2008, work experience at Literaturbüro Freiburg, and since this time regular participation in project work. January 2010 to March 2013 development and curation of the readings entitled "zwischen/miete. Junge Literatur in WGs" ("Rent in between. Young literature in flat-Shares") based in Freiburg. June 2011 to August 2012, leadership of the project "zwischen/brise. Festival für junge Literature" (between the breeze - a festival of youth literature) January 2013 - November 2013 coordination of the 27th Freiburger Literaturgespräch. From October 2013 to May 2016 member of the Research Training Group.



Project: The Umbrella brand of Literature. Houses of Literature in Germany and Scandinavia
Since the beginning of the Age of Digitalisation in the 1980s a renaissance of hearing and experiencing is manifesting itself under the byword "eventising" which has already been accepted as a tendency in society. Literature too has stepped out of the private space of silent, lonely reading and occurs more and more in a public space with extensive effects on literary dissemination. In this context an organisation is formed which gathers many aspects under one roof: the house of literature.
The first literature house originated in Berlin in 1986. Further houses were established in Germany, then in Austria then in the German speaking part of Switzerland and finally also in Scandinavia. Almost 30 years after the first opening the principle has by no means been revised. New establishments and restructurings stoked the discussions surrounding editions, concepts and goals of non-commercial literary dissemination. This project makes a successful contribution to academic reworkings. The starting point is the tense relationship to which the house of literature is exposed. On the one hand houses of literature offer digital formats, which rather stand for that which is fleeting and has no physical form, an opposing, direct, focussed debate and authenticity in a place expressly reserved for literature. On the other hand they take part in new developments and intermedial openings. If literature houses were to only concentrate on tried and trusted, exclusively literary practices they would not be able to compete and therefore survive. They have to interact and at the same time in order to legitimise their existence, underline their unique features as opposed to other cultural establishments, commercial literary promoters but also opposed to non-stationary dispositions such as online literary portals.
The PhD project examines the ambivalence between competition and coalition. As a result of an empirical comparison of selected literature houses in Germany and Scandinavia it is analysed how houses of literature portray themselves in the physical and digital realm and what these presentations say about the state of, as well as the work of literature and literary dissemination in the age of digitalisation.