My name is Alexandra Irimia and I am happy to join the Institute on June 1, 2024 for a two-year research project kindly supported in different ways by Prof. Kerstin Stüssel and the Humboldt Foundation.
Whereas this specific project looks into the narrative, visual, and affective regimes at work in 21st-century novels and films set in administrative environments, my general interest lies in the broader history and cartography of bureaucratic fiction (which I see as a literary genre in itself, albeit a charmingly complicated one).
Before joining the IGLK, I held fellowships at the Eric Auerbach Institute in Cologne and the KWI in Essen. My academic background is in comparative literature, which I have studied in Romania and in Canada, with occasional side ventures in image and film studies, literary and critical theory, political science, translations and teaching assistantships.
My first book, Figures of Radical Absence: Blanks and Voids in Theory, Literature, and the Arts (2023, Open Access) is a revised version of doctoral work conducted at the University of Bucharest and at the Centre Figura in Montreal.
I work in English, French and Romanian for now, but I aim to be able to read Kleist, Kafka, Musil and Menasse in the original some time soon. Aikido and hiking are other languages that help me unwind, although I am far from being an expert in either.
I’m looking forward to meeting everyone at the Institute and learning more about your work!