KU Eichstätt-Ingolstadt
Am Marktplatz 2
85072 Eichstätt
Leonie.Unkel@ku.de
Leonie Unkel is a PhD candidate with the DFG-funded research group “Practicing Place: Socio-Cultural Practices and Epistemic Configurations” at the Katholische Universität Eichstätt-Ingolstadt. Before starting her PhD, Leonie completed two bachelor’s degrees in German Language, Literatures and Cultures and English and American Studies at the University of Bamberg. Afterwards she further pursued her studies in English and American Studies in the European Joint Master’s Programme at the University of Bamberg. As part of her master’s programme Leonie spent one term abroad at the Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland. During her master’s, Leonie attended the Graz International Summer School Seggau with the overall theme “Re-Measuring, Re-Calculating, Re-Counting: State – Society – Religion in Transition”, where her first article, “‘The Sun always has a way to reach us’: Exploring Innocence and Experience in Kazuo Ishiguro’s Klara and the Sun” was published in Off Campus: Seggau School of Thought Volume IX. In 2023, she successfully completed her master’s degree with a thesis titled: Towards a Narratology of Age(ing): A Study of Time and Space in Selected Novels by Kazuo Ishiguro. At its centre, her thesis argued that narrative time and narrative space are not universal narrative categories but are dependent on age(ing) in their realisation. Her thesis allowed her to combine her main research interests in postclassical narratologies and age studies and forge a band between the two disciplines. As part of the Joint Programme, Leonie holds a Master’s degree from the University of Bamberg and the Jagiellonian University in Krakow. In her dissertation, Leonie hopes to further develop the link between postclassical narratology and age studies by focusing on narrative space in connection with gender as a second identity marker in Kazuo Ishiguro’s works. Her aim is to show how narrative space can illustrate ageing processes and how narrative space demonstrates how practices of space and place change during a life.
Against Decline: Creating Narrative Places in (Young) Old Age in Contemporary British Novels.
Age has long been overlooked as a productive category of investigation of (western) identity politics. In her 2004 book, Aged by Culture, Margaret Morganroth Gullette shows that age is a cultural category. Furthermore, she introduces the notion of the decline narrative which is oftentimes connected to stories about old age. In my dissertation, I aim to foreground the so-called progress narrative that Gullette establishes as a counterpart to the decline narrative. My dissertation will highlight the individual, personal ageing narratives that can be differentiated from the ageing-as-decline stories since they show ageing as an “experience worth living” as Gullett terms it (“Against ‘Aging’ – How to Talk about Growing Older” 262). Based on readings of selected contemporary British novels, the progress narrative will be connected to notions of creating places in (young) old age in order to show how (aged) places are continuously constructed and formed. The co-production of places by different generations as well as the constantly changing imaginaries of places will be assessed during my study. My aim is to thoroughly examine the different and partially conflicting notions that are present in creating (aged) places like, for example, newness and hopefulness on the one hand and retrospective imaginaries on the other. With a focus on narrative categories, I plan to utilise the toolkit of classic narratology as well as postclassical narratologies to study these intricacies and show how the narrative structures create the (aged) places of the characters in the novels. Thus, my project will contribute to narratology and age studies and link both fields in a new and innovative way with place at the centre.