Rebecca Hirt

	B13
	Modern German Literature Department of German Studies Telephone:  06221 543225 E-Mail:  rebecca.hirt@gs.uni-heidelberg.de

Address

Department of German Studies
Heidelberg University
Hauptstr. 207–209
D – 69117 Heidelberg

Education and Employment History

• March/April 2022: Research visit at the University of Bern at the department of Prof. Dr. Nicolas Detering
• Since 2019: Research associate and doctoral candidate at the CRC 933, subproject B13
• 2016–2019: Tutor/student research assistant for German Studies
• 2014–2020: Studies in German Studies and Philosophy at the University of Heidelberg (“1. Staatsxamen”)

Research Interests

• Calendars in the Early Modern Period
• Calendrical diaries and ego-documents
• (Auto-)Biography and self-concept
• Interaction of handwriting and print in the early modern period

PhD Project: Calendar and Literature in the Early Modern Period

Writing in calendars is one of the most important and prominent practices in regard to culture, everyday life and writing in the early modern period. Since the advent of printing in Europe, calendars have been a constant in workshop catalogues. Invented in 1539, the calendrical diary is one of the best-known and most widely used early modern periodicals. Calendrical diaries consist of a calendar of the twelve months, with each calendar page set against a mostly blank page for handwritten entries. The printed calendar pages comprise important astronomical, medical and everyday knowledge (botany, agriculture, housekeeping, contemporary history, curiosa etc.); the writing page gives the users room to record personal experiences and thoughts. In the calendars of the 16th and 17th centuries, people thus wrote and reflected about knowledge in specific ways.

This PhD-project is based on the hypothesis that calendars were such a fundamental principle of organising life and knowledge in the early modern period and that writing in calendars was such a prominent cultural practice that it reflected on contemporary literature and was made fruitful in various texts of different genres. In knowledge texts, narrative forms of prose and autobiographical texts, calendrical aspcets are investigated (e.g. calendrical principles of order, calendrical knowledge, calendrical reflection on time and life, calendrical writing practices, etc.) and the functions it adopts in the individual texts are analysed. In this way, a ‘poetics of the calendrical’ is developed for the literature of the early modern period.

Publications

Collective Volume

• in collaboration with Sylvia Brockstieger: Handschrift im Druck. Annotieren, Korrigieren, Weiterschreiben (1500 bis 1800) [will be published 2023].
• Sylvia Brockstieger/Paul Schweitzer-Martin, with the assistance of Rebecca Hirt and Radu Leca (Hgg.): Between Manuscript and Print. Transcultural Perspectives, ca. 1400–1800 (= Materiale Textkulturen 40), Berlin/Boston/München: de Gruyter 2023 [will be published 2023].
  

  Shorter publications

  • Conference Report: Handschrift im Druck. Annotieren, Kommentieren, Weiterschreiben (1500–1800), 23.09.2021 – 24.09.2021 hybrid (Heidelberg), in: H-Soz-Kult, 14.12.2021, www.hsozkult.de/conferencereport/id/tagungsberichte-9193, in cooperation with Paul Schweitzer-Martin.
  • Review: Kiening, Christian: Poetik des Kalenders in der Zeit des frühen Buchdrucks. Studien und Texte, in: Germanistik – Internationales Referatenorgan mit bibliographischen Hinweisen, Bd. 61 (2020), H. 3–4, S. 977.

  Presentations

  • 12. April 2022: Presentation of the PhD-project Calendrical aspects in the early modern literature (16th and 17th centuries) (Presentation in the research colloquium of Prof. Dr. Nicolas Detering at University of Bern)
  • 25. March 2022: Kalendarik 2.0.: Was bisher geschah (und was sich verändert hat) (PhD-colloquium of the CRC 933 in Heidelberg, 24.–25. February 2022).
  • 03.–04. December 2021, Rebecca Hirt: Layers of writing in bimaterial genres: the relationship between handwriting and print in early modern calendrical diaries.
  • (Workshop„Authority of Layers – Layers of Authority: On the Internal Dynamics of Multilayered Written Artefacts and their Cultural Contexts“ at the Center for the Study of Manuscript Cultures in Hamburg, 2.–3. December 2021).
  • 24. September 2021: Formen und Funktionen von Handschrift im (Selbst-)Korrekturprozess. Handschriftliche Korrekturen in Johann Colers Oeconomia.(Conference: „Handwriting in Print: Commenting, Correcting, Rewriting, 1500–1800” in Heidelberg, 23.-24. September 2021).
  • 24. March 2021: Kalendarik in der Literatur der Frühen Neuzeit
    (PhD-colloquium of the CRC 933 in Heidelberg, 24.–25. March 2021).
  • 12. November 2020, in collaboration with Dr. Sylvia Brockstieger: Rethinking the paratext between handwriting and print: the case of the calendaric diary
    (Workshop „Demarcations in Premodern Texts / Grenzen in vormodernen Texten“ des TP A06 des SFB 933 in Heidelberg, 12. November 2020).
  • 06. December 2019, in collaboration with Dr. Sylvia Brockstieger: Project presentation at the third annual meeting of the Research Association „Frühe Neuzeit Südwest“ in Tübingen.

  Organization of conferences, workshops and colloquia

  • 24.–25. February 2022, in collaboration with Hannah Mieger
    Organization as head of the second PhD-colloquium of the CRC 933 in Heidelberg.
  • 20.–23. February 2022, in collaboration with Dr. Sylvia Brockstieger and the subprojects A06, B04 and B14 of the CRC 933
    Organization as head of the conference „Between Manuscript and Print. Transitions, Simultaneities and the Question of Shifting Meanings“ in Heidelberg.
  • 23.–24. September 2021, in collaboration with Dr. Sylvia Brockstieger
    Organization as head of the conference „Handwriting in Print: Commenting, Correcting, Rewriting, 1500–1800“ in Heidelberg.
  • 24.–25. March 2021, in collaboration with Hannah Mieger and Mandy Telle
    Organization as head of the first PhD-colloquium of the CRC 933 in Heidelberg.

  Teaching

  • April – July 2023: Seminar „Friedrich Dürrenmatt“ at Germanistisches Seminar of Heidelberg University
  • October 2022 – February 2023: Seminar „Kalendergeschichte (17. bis 20. Jahrhundert)“ at Germanistisches Seminar of Heidelberg University
  • June 2022: Workshop: „Alltag im Kalender: Kalendarische Schreibpraktiken der Frühen Neuzeit" within the seminar „Poetiken des Tages in Literatur und Medien um 1800“ under the dircetion of Jonas Cantarella M.A. at Freie Universität Berlin
  • May 2022: Workshop „Kalendarische Schreibpraktiken“ within the seminar „Kalendergeschichten vom 17. bis zum 20. Jahrhundert“ under thedirection of Anita Martin M. A. at Bern University
  • April 2016 – July 2019: Tutorial for the Introduction to Medieval Studies at Germanistisches Seminar of Heidelberg University

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Subprojects

A01 A02 A03 A04 A05 A06 A08 A09 A10 A11 A12 B01 B02 B03 B04 B06 B07 B09 B10 B11 B12 B13 B14 B15 C01 C02 C03 C04 C05 C06 C07 C08 C09 C10 IGK INF Ö1 Ö2 Z