Natasa MuratovaDoctoral Student

About me

I hold a PhD in German-Language Literary Studies from the Department of Slavic and Baltic Languages, Finnish, Dutch and German at Stockholm University (2025). During my postgraduate studies, I worked on humour theory and post-millennial German-language literature, with a particular focus on postirony. I received my Master's degree in German-Language Literary Studies from Stockholm University (2017) and my Bachelor's degree in German Philology from Universität Innsbruck (2014).

I contributed to the volume Truth Claims Across Media (2024) with a co-authored article together with Anna Obererlacher from Universität Innsbruck. In addition, I co-organised a PhD conference at my department in 2019 together with my colleague Irene Elmerot.

Currently, I am a board member of the association Germanistische Literaturwissenschaft in Schweden (GLS) and part of a GLS editorial group working on a popular science book on humour in German-language literature. In my spare time, I volunteer at a language café in my hometown.

 

PhD in German-Language Literary Studies

Member of the 4th cycle of the European PhDnet in Literary and Cultural Studies,
Justus-Liebig-Universität Gießen (Germany)

______________________________

E-Mail: natasa.vukelic@tyska.su.se

Address: Frescati, Södra huset, hus E, plan 5

Languages: Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian, German, English, Swedish

______________________________

 

Dissertation
 

Title

Nonsense as Resistance? On Postironic Politics of German-language Literature

 

Abstract

In my dissertation I examined the extent to which the postironic writing style of the texts So ist das by Stephan Groetzner (2013), Verbannt! by Ann Cotten (2016) and Bot - Gespräch ohne Autor by Clemens J. Setz (2018) can be read as an irritation in the context of literary debates on German-language pop literature after the millennium, which reveal the desire for a literary paradigm shift towards sincerity. The thesis underlying this dissertation is that the texts So ist das, Verbannt!, and Bot are characterized by nonsense as a literary device that makes it possible to destabilize meaning and thus undermine the literary conventions evident in the debates: the central position of the novel, realism and the role of authors as creators of meaning. Nevertheless, the texts play with the idea of a paradigm shift with the help of the postironic practice of drawing attention to the hopelessness of irony and confronting contingency with openness. They draw on the guiding differences of pop literature—ironic/sincere and artificial/authentic—but present the distinction between the differences as superfluous or irresolvable. By destabilizing meaning and assigning the responsibility of making sense to the reader, the texts not only thematize the late modern relationship between literature and society, truth and reality, and offer the opportunity to experiment with new world views; they also become humorous, cultural narratives that contribute to the construction of values within the literary field.

 

List of publications

 

Muratova, N., Obererlacher, A. (2024). Clemens J. Setz on Bursting the Reader’s Reality Bubble. In: Schirrmacher, B., Mousavi, N. (eds) Truth Claims Across Media. Palgrave Studies in Intermediality. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-42064-1_8

Muratova, N. (2025). The Past is Present in Bo Burnham's Inside. In: de Muijnck, D. (Ed.), Troubling Time(s): Questioning Prevailing Notions of Time in the Study of Literature and Culture, Giessen Contributions to the Study of Culture. WVT Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier, Trier.
 

Master of Arts - Thesis in German Literary Studies
Stockholm University, 2017
Die Kunst der Kürze - Zu den Auswirkungen der Sprachknappheit auf die narrativen Elemente „Zeit“ und „Raum“ in Stephan Groetzners So ist das

Bachelor of Arts - Thesis in German philology
University of Innsbruck & Gothenburg University, 2014
1) Marktschreier sind sie doch alle (irgendwie): Autorinszenierungen zeitgenössischer Schriftsteller. Am Beispiel von Walter Moers, Daniel Glattauer, Wolf Haas und Olga Grjasnowa AND
2) Literatur als Text und Bild – Zur Geschichte, Kritik und Analyse von Graphic Novels

 

Teaching

Översättningsövningar (Tyska I)

Processkrivning (Tyska I)

Språklig textkommentar (Tyska I)

Nybörjarkurs I (Tyska I)

 

Research

Humor theory, Postirony, German-language literarature after the millenium