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Research Interests

• Early North American Literature and Culture
• North American Modernism and Postmodernism (esp. poetry and ‘little magazines’)
• Film Adaptation
• Historiography

Completed Studies

Mapping Louis Dudek, Canadian Man of Letters

This study thoroughly maps the Canadian man of letters Louis Dudek with a ‘double-track’ approach: After attempting to compile the overall critical narrative of Dudek in Part I “Well-Charted Territory,” which surveys existent pertinent writing and thus allows a truly informed insight into current state of research, “Hitherto Uncharted Territory” is explored in Part II. Part I includes detailed discussions of the early 1940s Montreal magazines Preview and First Statement and of Dudek’s relations to the American poet Ezra Pound, for example; these chapters do not simply review research, but they rather revisit important debates, systematically debunk critical myths and arrive at revised insights on the basis of pioneering previous research and thorough reexaminations of primary materials. Part II studies Dudek’s radio work for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) between the mid-1950s and the early 1990s, which emerged as the most insufficiently investigated area of Dudek’s literary activism in Part I. Most of the pertinent materials being unavailable in print, this fruitful collaboration is examined on the basis of a plethora of archival documents held in the Louis Dudek Fonds at Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa, and the Radio Archives of the CBC, Toronto. The most comprehensive Louis Dudek Bibliography to date as well as further materials including a Louis Dudek Chronology and an index to his poetry complete this study.

Brian Moore’s Black Robe: Novel, Screenplay(s) and Film

Studying Brian Moore’s novel Black Robe (1985), this study examines the dual adaptation process of historical sources into fiction and fiction into film. The fictionalisation process is analysed on the basis of the Jesuit Relations of the 17th century and Moore’s novel. Besides transforming and compiling information from these annual reports, Moore also uses them to justify his choice of obscene language for the indigenous characters. The visualisation process is studied with the help of various versions of the screenplay with respect to the differences of narrative and narration in fiction and film; these materials are part of the Brian Moore Papers held at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas at Austin. A final exemplary analysis illustrates in detail how the original historical sources were transformed via the novel and the screenplays into the final visualisation in the motion picture.

Publications

Monographs

Schumacher, Antje. Mapping Louis Dudek, Canadian Man of Letters. Diss. RWTH Aachen, 2015. Aachen: privately printed, 2015. Print. (Commercial publication being planned.)

Schumacher, Antje. Brian Moore’s Black Robe: Novel, Screenplay(s) and Film. Frankfurt/M: Lang, 2010. European University Studies, Series XIV: Anglo-Saxon Language and Literature 494. (Printed with the help of the Gesellschaft für Kanada-Studien e.V.)

Articles

Lothmann, Timo, and Antje Schumacher. “Automobility in Poetry: A Conceptual Metaphor Approach.” Perspectives on Mobility. Ed. Ingo Berensmeyer and Christoph Ehland. Amsterdam – New York: Rodopi, 2013. 213-225. Print. Spatial Practices: An Interdisciplinary Series in Cultural History, Geography and Literature 17.

Lothmann, Timo, and Antje Schumacher. “Conceptual Metaphors Revisited: The Construction of Cultural Space in 19th-Century British Railway Poetry.” Spatial Representations of British Identities. Ed. Merle Tönnies and Heike Buschmann. Heidelberg: Winter, 2012. 191-203. Print. Anglistik und Englischunterricht 75.

Schumacher, Antje. “John Updike's 'Air Show': Displaying the End of American Exceptionalism.” Discourses of Mobility – Mobility of Discourse: The Conceptualization of Trains, Cars and Planes in 19th- and 20th-Century Poetry. Ed. Peter Wenzel and Sven Strasen. Trier: WVT, 2010. Print. 157-166.

Schumacher, Antje. “A Reply to William Wordsworth's Railway Sonnets? J.K. Stephen's ‘Poetic Lamentation on the Insufficiency of Steam Locomotion in the Lake District’.” Discourses of Mobility – Mobility of Discourse: The Conceptualization of Trains, Cars and Planes in 19th- and 20th-Century Poetry. Ed. Peter Wenzel and Sven Strasen. Trier: WVT, 2010. Print. 63-70.

Schumacher, Antje. “Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s Mobility.” Discourses of Mobility – Mobility of Discourse: The Conceptualization of Trains, Cars and Planes in 19th- and 20th-Century Poetry. Ed. Peter Wenzel and Sven Strasen. Trier: WVT, 2010. Print. 193-207.

Curriculum Vitae

Since 07/2015: Research Assistant, RWTH Aachen University, Department of English, American and Romance Intercultural Studies, Chair of American and Canadian Studies (Postdoc)

06/2015: Dr. phil. (s.c.l.), Faculty of Arts and Humanities, RWTH Aachen

01/2009 – 02/2015: Research Assistant, RWTH Aachen University, Department of English, American and Romance Intercultural Studies, Chair of American and Canadian Studies

04/2002 – 01/2009: M.A. (Magister Artium), RWTH Aachen University, major: American, British and New English Literatures, minors: Romance Studies and History

Stays abroad: Research stay (several weeks), McGill University Library, Montreal, Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa, CBC Radio Archives, Toronto, Canada (2013); research stay (several weeks), Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, Austin, Texas, USA (2008); Foreign Language Assistant, Saltash Community School, Saltash, Cornwall, U.K. (2004-05); Medium Term Volunteer, Concordia, Paris, France (2001); European Voluntary Service, Nizas, Hérault, France (2000-01); exchange student, Caston High School, Fulton, Indiana, USA (1997-98)

Honours and Fellowships: Fellowship of the German Academic Exchange Service (research stay in Montreal, Ottawa and Toronto, Canada) (2013); Excellence in Teaching Award, Faculty of Arts and Humanities, RWTH Aachen University (2013); Excellence in Teaching Award, Faculty of Arts and Humanities, RWTH Aachen University (2012); Excellence in Research Award “Friedrich-Wilhelm-Preis”, RWTH Aachen University, for the M.A. thesis “Brian Moore’s Black Robe: Novel, Screenplay(s) and Film” (2010); Fellowship of the German Academic Exchange Service (research stay in Austin, Texas, USA) (2008)