Univ.-Prof. Dr. Alison E. Martin
Full Professor and Chair
Research Interests
Translation and Science in the Early Modern, Enlightenment and Romantic periods
Scientific Travel Writing (particularly the work of Alexander von Humboldt) in Translation
Ruralism and British New Nature Writing
Periodical Cultures (19th, 20th, 21st century)
British Modernist Writing (particularly the work of Vita Sackville-West) in Translation
Externally-funded Research Projects
Spaces of Translation: European Magazine Cultures, c. 1945-1965 / Übersetzungsräume: Europäische Zeitschriftenkulturen, c. 1945-1965
DFG/AHRC-Funded Research Project in collaboration with Prof. Andrew Thacker (Nottingham Trent University, GB), Project Duration: Spring 2021 – Spring 2024
https://spacesoftranslation.org/
Scientific Knowledge and Western European Travel Writing on Africa in Translation, 1600-1820 / Naturwissenschaftliches Wissen und Übersetzungen westeuropäischer Reiseliteratur über Afrika, 1600-1820
DFG-Funded Research Project as part of the SPP 2130 Übersetzungskulturen der Frühen Neuzeit
Project Duration: Spring 2022 – Spring 2025
https://anglistik.fb06.uni-mainz.de/scientific-knowledge-and-travel-writing/
Selected Publications
Monographs
Nature Translated: Alexander von Humboldt’s Works in Nineteenth-Century Britain. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2018. Print.
Reviewed in:
- Journal of Historical Geography 66 (2019), 106-108: 10.1016/j.jhg.2019.07.004
- Translation Studies (2020): 10.1080/14781700.2020.1826354
- Scottish Geographical Journal 136 (2020), 202-204: 10.1080/14702541.2020.1759919
- Translation Review 106:1 (2020), 116-119: 10.1080/07374836.2020.1736930
- ISIS: A Journal of the History of Science Society 111: 4 (2020), 890-891: 10.1086/712365?ai=u2&ui=19q3&af=T
- Studies in Romanticism 60: 2 (2021), 229-232: 10.1353/srm.2021.0011
Moving Scenes: The Aesthetics of German Travel Writing on England, 1783-1830, Studies in Comparative Literature 13. Oxford: Legenda, 2008. Print.
Text Books
(co-authored, with Jane Fenoulhet). Dutch Translation in Practice. London/New York: Routledge, 2014. Print.
Editions and Special Issues
(co-ed., with Laura Tarkka). Special Issue “The Travellee.” Studies in Travel Writing 26.4 (2023). Web. <https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/rstw20/current>
(co-ed., with Claire G. Jones and Alexis Wolf). The Handbook of Women and Science since 1660. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2022. Print.
(co-ed., with Lise Jaillant). Special Issue: “Global Modernisms.” Modernist Cultures 13.1 (2018). Print.
(co-ed., with Lut Missinne and Beatrix van Dam). Travel Writing in Dutch and German, 1790-1930: Modernity, Regionality, Mobility. London/New York: Routledge, 2016. Print.
Special Issue: “Ingenious Minds: British Women as Facilitators of Scientific Knowledge Exchange, 1750-1900.” Journal of Literature and Science (2015). Print.
(co-ed., with Susan Pickford). Special Issue “Translating Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Travel Writing.” inTRAlinea. 2013. Web. <http://www.intralinea.org/specials/travelwritetrans>.
(co-ed., with Susan Pickford), Travel Narratives in Translation, 1750-1830: Nationalism, Ideology, Gender, Routledge Travel Writing Series. London/New York: Routledge, 2012. Print.
(co-ed., with Sam George) Special Issue: “Botanising Women: Transmission, Translation and European Exchange.” Journal of Literature and Science 4.1 (2011). Print.
Peer-Reviewed Journal Articles
"Introduction: travel writing and the travellee" (with Laura Tarkka). Studies in Travel Writing 26.4 (2023): 1–7. https://doi.org/10.1080/13645145.2024.2375607
"The travellee-translator and cultural memory: Thomas Nugent’s Travels through Germany
(1768) and its German editions." Studies in Travel Writing 26.4 (2023): 357-37. Print.
“Reframing the Past: Post-War German Periodical Culture and Hans B. Wagenseil’s Translation of Vita Sackville-West’s Thirty Clocks Strike the Hour.” Letteratura & Letterature 14 (2020): 103-118. Print.
“Translation, Annotation and Knowledge-Making: Leopold von Buch's Travels through Norway and Lapland (1813).” Comparative Critical Studies 16.2-3 (2019): 323-41. Print.
“Bloomsbury in Berlin: Vita Sackville-West’s Seducers in Ecuador in the German Literary Marketplace.” Modernist Cultures 13.1 (2018): 77-95. Print.
“Performing Scientific Knowledge Transfer: Anne Plumptre and the translation of Martin Heinrich Lichtenstein’s Reisen im südlichen Afrika (1811).” Journal of Literature and Science 8.1 (2015): 9-26. Print.
“Celtic Censure: Representing Wales in Eighteenth-Century Germany.” Studies in Travel Writing, Special Issue: Travellers to Wales, 18.2 (2014): 1-12. Print.
“Outward Bound: Women Translators and Scientific Travel Writing, 1780-1800.” Annals of Science 73.2 (2016 [online 2014]): 1-15. Print.
“Foreign Credit: Travel Writing and Authenticity in the Dutch Translation of the Memoirs and Travels of Mauritius Augustus, Count de Benyowsky (1790).” inTRAlinea. 2013. Special Issue: Travel Writing and Translation. Web. <http://www.intralinea.org/specials/article/1966>.
“Introduction: Travel Writing, Translation and World Literature” (with Susan Pickford). inTRAlinea. 2013. Special Issue: Travel Writing and Translation. Web. <http://www.intralinea.org/specials/article/1963>.
“Natural Effusions: Mrs J. Howorth’s Translation of Haller’s Die Alpen.” Translation Studies 5 (2012): 17-32. Print.
“Introduction” (with Sam George). Journal of Literature and Science 4.1 (2011): 1-11. Print.
“Revolutions in Botany: Nation, Gender and Education in the French Translation of Priscilla Wakefield’s Introduction to Botany.” Journal of Literature and Science 4.1 (2011): 30-43. Print.
“‘These Changes and Accessions of Knowledge’: Translation, Scientific Travel Writing and Modernity – Alexander von Humboldt’s Personal Narrative.” Studies in Travel Writing. Ed. Peter Hulme. Special Issue: Alexander von Humboldt 15.1 (2011): 39-51. Print.
“Reading Raabe, Writing Raabe: Deutscher Mondschein as Collaborative Translation Project.” with Michael Ritterson et al., Germanistik in Ireland 4 (2009): 33-51. Print.
“Weibliche Pedanterey: Georg Forster über Hester Lynch Piozzi.” Georg-Forster-Studien XIV (2009): 1-16. Print.
“Die Rolle von Forsters Übersetzungen in den intellektuellen Netzwerken seiner Zeit: Thomas Forrests Voyage to New Guinea (1779).” Georg-Forster-Studien XII (2007): 59-75. Print.
“Annotation and Authority: Georg Forster’s footnotes to the Nachrichten von den Pelew-Inseln (1789).” Translation and Literature 15:2 (2006): 177-201. Print.
“Sympathy and Spectacle: Lebende Bilder, Attitüden and Visual Representation in Johanna Schopenhauer’s Travel Writing.” Publications of the English Goethe Society (2004): 19-38. Print.
“The Traveller as Landschaftsmaler: Industrial Labour and Landscape Aesthetics in Johanna Schopenhauer’s Reise durch England und Schottland.” Modern Language Review 99.4 (2004): 991-1005. Print.
“Travel, Sensibility and Gender: The Rhetoric of Female Travel Writing in Sophie von La Roche’s Tagebuch einer Reise durch Holland und England.” German Life and Letters 57.2 (2004): 127-42. Print.
“Dutch and Flemish Cultural Identity: Presentation and Reception in the German-speaking Countries through the Medium of Translated Literature.” Linguistica Antverpiensia XXXIV (2000): 121-58. Print.
Invited Book Contributions
“Revision and Re-Visioning: Gendering Vita Sackville-West’s Family History in 20th- and 21st-Century Germany.” The Dynamics and Contexts of Cultural Transfers. Ed. Margaretha Fahlgren and Anna Williams. Uppsala: Uppsala Universitet, 2017. 191-202. Print.
“‘Fresh Fields of Exploration’: Cultures of Scientific Knowledge and Ida Pfeiffer’s Second Voyage round the World (1856).” Travel Writing in Dutch and German, 1790-1930: Modernity, Regionality, Mobility. Ed. Alison E. Martin, Lut Missinne and Beatrix van Dam. London/New York: Routledge, 2016. 75-94. Print.
“Potentially the Noble Creature?: Picturing Heroism in Henry Rider Haggard’s She.” Heroes and Heroism in British Fiction since 1800. Ed. Barbara Korte and Stefanie Lethbridge. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016. 47-66. Print.
“‘With Fry Innumerable Swarm’: Milton as Intertext in Nineteenth-Century Popular Science Writing.” Dante and Milton: Envisioned Visionaries. Ed. Christoph Singer and Christoph Lehner. Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2016. 123-46. Print.
“The Picturesque Abroad: William Gilpin’s Travel Writing in German Translation.” Der literarische Transfer zwischen Großbritannien, Frankreich und dem deutschsprachigen Raum im Zeitalter der Weltliteratur (1770-1850). Ed. Norbert Bachleitner and Murray G. Hall. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2012. 125-39. Print.
“Daughters of Science: Mathilde Ørsted, Leonora and Joanna Horner.” Readers, Writers, Salonnières: Female Networks in Europe, 1700-1900. Ed. Hilary Brown. Oxford: Peter Lang, 2011. 239-57. Print.
“The Voice of Nature: British Women Translating Botany in the Early Nineteenth Century.”Translating Women: Gender and Translation in the 21st Century. Ed. Luise von Flotow. Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 2011. 11-35. Print.
“Paeans to Progress: Arthur Young’s travel accounts in German translation.” Cultural Transfer through Translation: The Circulation of Enlightened Thought in Europe by Means of Translation. Ed. Stephanie Stockhorst. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2010. 297-314. Print.
“Frauenzimmerbotanik: Unschuldiger Zeitvertreib und Mode?.” Frauen und Gärten um 1800 – Weiblichkeit – Natur – Ästhetik. Ed. Christiane Holm and Holger Zaunstöck. Halle: Mitteldeutscher Verlag, 2009. 36-47. Print.
“Raabe’s “English Prophet”: Sophie Delffs as Translator of Abu Telfan.” Raabe International. Ed. Dirk Göttsche and Florian Krobb. Oxford: Legenda, 2009. 149-158. Print.
“Rerouting the Self: Georg Forster and the Art of Self-Translation.” Translating Selves: Experiences between Languages and Literatures. Ed. Paschalis Nikolaou and Maria-Venetia Kyritsi. London/New York: Continuum, 2008. 155-168. Print.
“‘Je n’ai droit de me placer dans aucune classe de littérateurs’: Octavie Belot (1719-1804) und die Selbstpositionierung der weiblichen Übersetzungspraxis.” Übersetzerinnen zwischen Aufklärung und Romantik, Aufklärung und Moderne. Ed. Brunhilde Wehinger and Hilary Brown. Hanover: Wehrhahn, 2008. 53-64. Print.
“‘German Travel Writing and the Rhetoric of Sensibility: Karl Philipp Moritz’s Reisen eines Deutschen in England im Jahr 1782.” Cross-cultural Travel. Ed. Jane Conroy. New York/London/Berlin: Peter Lang, 2003. 81–88. Print.
Articles in Reference Works and Handbooks
"Thomasina Ross (fl. 1850s): Title page of Alexander von Humboldt’s Personal Narrative of Travels (1852–1853)." Women in the History of Science: A Sourcebook. Ed. Hannah Wills, Sadie Harrison, Erika Jones,
Farrah Lawrence-Mackey and Rebecca Martin. London: UCL Press, 2023. 202-5. Print.
"Zeitschriften und Translationswissenschaft." Handbuch Zeitschriftenforschung. Ed. Oliver Scheiding and Sabina Fazli. Bielfeld: transcript, 2023. 375-85. Print.
(with Claire G. Jones and Alexis Wolf). "Women in the History of Science: Frameworks, Themes and Contested Perspectives." The Handbook of Women and Science since 1660. Ed. Claire G. Jones, Alison E. Martin and Alexis Wolf. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2022. 3-24. Print.
"Mediating Knowledge: Women Translating Science." The Handbook of Women and Science since 1660. Ed. Claire G. Jones, Alison E. Martin and Alexis Wolf. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2022. 381-97. Print.
"Travel Writing and Translation History." The Routledge Handbook of Translation History. Ed. Christopher Rundle. Abingdon: Routledge, 2022. 422-34. Print.
“Sackville-West, Vita.” Handbook of British Travel Writing. Ed. Barbara Schaff. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2020. 433-48. Print.
“Übersetzung und die Entdeckung der Welt: Georg Forster (1754-1794) und die Reiseliteratur.” Übersetzung. Translation. Traduction. Ein internationales Handbuch zur Übersetzungsforschung. Ed. Harald Kittel, Armin Paul Frank, Norbert Greiner et al. Berlin/New York: De Gruyter, 2007. 1634-41. Print.
Online Contributions
'Translations of Vita’s works into German’. In: Kathryn Batchelor, Lesley Chamberlain and Alison E. Martin, ‘Harold in Germany, Vita in Love: Stories from Sissinghurst’s Library’, 2022, UCL Discovery. <https://doi.org/10.14324/000.wp.10156167>
“Vita Sackville-West.” Modernist Archives Publishing Project (collaborative project – University of Reading; The King's University, Edmonton; Simon Fraser University; Stanford University; University of Oregon). Web. <https://www.modernistarchives.com/person/vita-sackville-west>.
Reviews
Vera M. Kutzinski and Ottmar Ette, eds. Transl. J. Ryan Poynter, Kenneth Berri, and Vera M. Kutzinski. "Alexander von Humboldt. Political Essay on the Kingdom of New Spain. 2 vols." Studies in Romanticism
Volume 62.1 (2023): 162-65.
Andreas Beck, Nicola Kaminski, Volker Mergenthaler, and Jens Ruchatz, eds. "Visuelles Design: Die Journalseite als gestaltete Fläche / Visual Design: The Periodical Page as a Designed Surface." Journal of European Periodical Studies 6.2 (2021): 126-28. Online.
Laura Fólica, Diana Roig-Sanz, and Stefania Caristia, eds. "Literary Translation in Periodicals: Methodological Challenges for a Transnational Approach." The Translator 27.2 (2021): 236-38.
Werner von Koppenfels, ed. and transl. "D. H. Lawrence: Nimm mein Wort in die Hand. Gedichte, zweisprachig englisch/deutsch." Archiv für das Studium der neueren Sprachen und Literaturen 173.2 (2021): 435-36. Print.
Anneke Lubkowitz. "Haunted Spaces in Twenty-First Century British Nature Writing." Green Letters 24.4 (2020):1-2. Online.
Padma Rangarajan, “Imperial Babel: Translation, Exoticism, and the Long Nineteenth Century.” Translation and Literature, 24.3 (2015): 346-50. Print.
Stephen T. Jackson and Laura Dassow Walls. “Alexander von Humboldt. Views of Nature: A Critical Edition.” ISIS: A Journal of the History of Science Society 106.4 (2015): 939-40. Print.
Susanne Schmid. “British Literary Salons of the late Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries.” Anglistik: International Journal of English Studies 25.2 (2014): 169-70. Print.
Vera M. Kutzinski, Ottmar Ette, and Laura Dassow Walls, eds. “Alexander von Humboldt and the Americas.” British Journal for the History of Science 47.1 (2014): 185-87. Print.
Yomb May, “Georg Forsters literarische Weltreise: Dialektik der Kulturbegegnung in der Aufklärung.” German Studies Review 35.3 (2012). 643-44. Print.
Donna Spalding Andréolle and Véronique Molinari, eds. “Women and Science, 17th Century to Present: Pioneers, Activists and Protagonists.” The British Journal for the History of Science, 45.2 (2012): 309-10. Print.
Bettina Hey’l. “Das Ganze der Natur und die Differenzierung des Wissens. Alexander von Humboldt als Schriftsteller.” Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies 34.3 (2011): 415-16. Print.
Mark Napierala. “Archive der Kritik: Die Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung und das Athenäum.” Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies 34.3 (2011): 400-1. Print.
Molly Mahood. “The Poet as Botanist.” Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies 34.3 (2011): 417-18. Print.
Erdmut Jost. “Landschaftsblick und Landschaftsbild: Wahrnehmung und Ästhetik im Reisebericht 1780-1820.” Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies 34.1 (2011): 102-3. Print.
Review Essay. “Society, Creativity and Science: Mrs. Delany and the Art of Botany.” Eighteenth-Century Life 35.2 (2011): 102-7. Print.
Ulrich Päßler. “Ein “Diplomat aus den Wäldern des Orinoko”: Alexander von Humboldt als Mittler zwischen Preußen und Frankreich.“ German History 18.3 (2010): 370-71. Print.
Sam George. “Botany, Sexuality and Women’s Writing, 1760-1830. From Modest Shoot to Forward Plant.” Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies 33.3 (2010): 403-4. Print.
Suzanne Keen. “Empathy and the Novel.” Anglistik: International Journal of English Studies 19.1 (2008): 168-69. Print.
Employment and Education
2018– Professor of British Studies at JGU Mainz/Germersheim, Germany
February 2021: Completion of the Rheinland-Pfalz-Zertifikat in der Hochschuldidaktik
June 2019: Nomination for the JGU Lehrpreis
June 2019: Awarded the Fleiß-Preis der Studierendenschaft des FTSK
December 2018: Nomination for the Lehrpreis des Landes Rheinland-Pfalz 2020
I am a member of the Executive Committee of the Gutenberg Graduate School of the Humanities and Social Sciences.
I am a Visiting Research Fellow in the School of Literature and Languages at the University of Reading (GB) from 2024 to 2027.
2012–2018 Lecturer, subsequently Associate Professor, Department of Modern Languages and European Studies, University of Reading, UK
Fellow (2013) and Senior Fellow (2017) of the Higher Education Academy
2007–2012 Assistant Professor, completion of Habilitation (post-doctoral teaching and research qualification), Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik, Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg, Germany
2004–2007 Lektorin in English and Translation Studies, Fachbereich Anglistik, Universität Kassel, Germany
2001–2004 AHRB-funded PhD, Department of German, University of Cambridge, UK
2000–2001 Assistant Lecturer in Business English and German, Limburgs Universitair Centrum (now Universiteit Hasselt), Belgium
1998–2000 Translator of financial, legal and IT texts: German, Dutch, French to English, National Bank of Belgium, Brussels, Belgium
1997–1998 AHRB-funded MA in Modern Dutch Studies (with specialisms in practical translation and literary translation), University College London, UK
1995–1996 British Council Foreign Language Teaching Assistant, Kooperative Gesamtschule, Neuenhaus (Niedersachsen), Germany
1993–1997 BA in Modern Languages (German, French, Dutch) at Christ’s College, University of Cambridge, UK
PhD Students Supervised to Completion
2024 - Vivian Colbert: Staging Women's Pasts: History Plays and the Relationship of Feminism and History in Interwar British Drama