Prof. Dr. Sabine Volk-Birke

Member of Board

Sabine Volk-Birke is Professor of English Literature at Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg. Her research interests include 18^th century literature and culture, literature and religion, the libretti of Händel’s music, poetry, narratology, and modernism. Among her numerous publications are Grenzpfähle der Wirklichkeit. Approaches to the Poetry of R. S. Thomas (1985), Chaucer and Medieval Preaching. Rhetoric for Listeners in Sermons and Poetry (1991), and the co-edited volume Konstruktionen nationaler und individueller Identität in Großbritannien und Amerika (2003). As a directorial board member of the Interdisciplinary Centre for European Enlightenment Studies (IZEA), Sabine Volk-Birke maintains close academic ties to Halle’s Francke Foundations, the starting point of Henry Melchior Muhlenberg’s American venture. In 2013, Sabine Volk-Birke was elected to the Executive Committee of the International Association of University Professors of English (IAUPE). Her current international research project, in cooperation with Laura Stevens (University of Tulsa, USA) and William Gibson (Oxford Brookes University, UK), focuses on a multidisciplinary approach to forms and functions of prayer in the Long Eighteenth Century.