Profile
Dr Sophia Buck
Profile
I studied German Literature and Philosophy in Heidelberg, Prague, and Oxford. During my doctoral research at Merton College, I was a visiting researcher in Freiburg, at the ZfL in Berlin, as well as the ENS Paris. I published widely in English and German on intercultural transfer, disciplinary histories, and 20th century literary criticism in German, French and Russian. Since 2021, I serve as elected Member of the International Walter Benjamin Society.
At Oxford, I held stipendiary and non-stipendiary Lectureships at Lincoln, Somerville and Wadham, as well as a Junior Research Fellowship at Lady Margaret Hall, before joining Lincoln as Montgomery Fellow in 2025.
College Teaching
For prelims, I teach the whole breadth of the core course at Lincoln. I also teach the Literature overview paper VIII, prescribed authors for paper X of the 20th century (especially Kafka). I have taught MSt options on Walter Benjamin and interwar journalism, as well as questions about untranslatability in the CLCT course. I am happy to be approached about UG dissertation topics concerning travel writing, avantgarde and visual culture during the 20th century, East-West European literary entanglements and networks, as well as periodical cultures.
- Research
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My research interests cover literary and visual culture of the 20th century, entangled European history of ideas and literary theory, material research culture and intercultural histories of disciplines.
- Select publications
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Walter Benjamin in the European East: Networks, Conflicts, and Reception, co-editor, with Caroline Adler (forthcoming with Routledge in 2026).
British German Studies and the Two World Wars, Special Issue of ANGERMION, XV, 2022, guest editor, with Andreas Schmid.
‘Walter Benjamin’s Outsiders: Against ‘Optical Illusions’ of National Communities’, New Benjamin Studies 1 (forthcoming May 2025)
‘Walter Benjamin and Ssofia Fedortschenko: Intercultural and Intermedial Aspects of a “Failed Trans- fer”’, Walter Benjamin: The Journalist as Producer’, special issue of Monatshefte 115:2 2023, ed. by Car- olin Duttlinger and Daniel Weidner, 170–188
‘Moskau–Berlin–Paris: “Optische Täuschungen” und Walter Benjamins Kritik transkultureller Vermitt- lungsprozesse’, in Kulturen der Kritik und das Projekt der Moderne in Ostmitteleuropa, ed. by Sibylle Schönborn, (Bielefeld: Aisthesis, 2023), pp. 129–146.