Nina Pilz

Changing Perceptions of the Baltic Sea Region in the Pandemic Discourse. A Narratological Approach

The corona pandemic has a strong impact on social structures and processes, not least on public narration. An epochal crisis like the current pandemic challenges conventional narratives and requires new or modified narratives more appropriate for addressing novel issues.

The PhD project focuses on the corona pandemic as a turning point for public narratives about the Baltic Sea Region. Based on a corpus of German newspaper articles covering the pandemic, it aims to investigate how the public perception of Sweden and the federal state Mecklenburg-Vorpommern has changed under the influence of the current crisis. The study examines journalistic texts as powerful units of discourse when it comes to shaping and establishing new narratives. The project combines methods of narratology with discourse and corpus linguistic approaches. Thus, it seeks to contribute to pandemic research in the field of narratology and discourse analysis.

• “Landschaftserzählungen: Ålands Natur als Protagonistin,” [blog] Baltic Peripeties Blog, May 14, 2022, https://peripeties.uni-greifswald.de/landschaftserzahlungen/.
• Johnson, Uwe: Werkausgabe in 43 Bänden, Werke Bd. 4: Karsch und andere Prosa. Rostocker Ausgabe, ed. by Yvonne Dudzik and Christian Riedel, in cooperation with Nina Pilz, Berlin: Suhrkamp 2021. 

• “The Pandemic’s Protagonists: The Baltic Sea Region as an Example for Regional Narratives of the COVID-19 Pandemic,” 16th biannual conference of the Nordic Association for Literary Research (NorLit) Literature and Space, NTNU Trondheim, June 14-16, 2022.
• Participation in the PhD Seminar at the 16th biannual conference of the Nordic Association for Literary Research (NorLit) Literature and Space, NTNU Trondheim, June 14, 2022.
• “Regions as Pandemic Actors: Narratives on the Baltic Sea Region in Times of the Pandemic,” CITAS conference Crisis Narratives and the Pandemic, Regensburg, May 19-21, 2022.
• “Baltic Sea Region Narratives of the COVID-19 Pandemic,” workshop Narrating Illness and Crises: Social Construction of Roles and Norms, NTNU Trondheim, May 13-14, 2022.
• “The Invention of a Pandemic: Conspiracy Theory Reasoning in the German Left-Wing Newspaper ‘Demokratischer Widerstand’,” conference Conspiracy Theories and Leftwing Populism, organized by PACT (Populism and Conspiracy Theory) at the University of Tübingen, March 10-12, 2022.
• “‘Nehmt euren Virus und haut ab in die Stadt, wo ihr herkommt!’ Stadt-Land-Erzählungen der Pandemie,” workshop Literarische Selbst- und Fremdbilder im Zeichen des Unverfügbaren, in Cooperation with the Waseda University in Tokio, the DAAD and the Uwe Johnson-Forschungsstelle at the University of Rostock. November 26-28, 2021.