Jon Hughes

I am a Reader in German and Cultural Studies in the Department of Languages, Literatures and Cultures. At present I am the Programme Director for German.  From 2013 to 2015 I was Head of Department.

I studied at New College, Oxford, and the University of Wales Swansea, where my PhD was awarded in 2000. Since then I've been Research Officer at the Centre for German-Jewish Studies in Sussex (2001) and Lecturer in German at King's College London (2001-3), and I joined the German Department at Royal Holloway, now part of the Department of Languages, Literatures and Cultures, in 2003.

I am a specialist in German and Austrian cultural history between 1918 and 1945. My current research is focused on the the cinema of the Weimar Republic and on cultural responses to sport and leisure. My next book will be an illustrated study of the groundbreaking film Menschen am Sonntag (People on Sunday, 1930), which will appear in the BFI Film Classics series published by Bloomsbury in 1925.

I have a particular interest in the work of the Austrian novelist and journalist Joseph Roth (1894-1939), the subject of my 2006 monograph Facing Modernity: Fragmentation, Culture and Identity in Joseph Roth's Writing in the 1920s, MHRA Texts and Dissertations, 67 (Leeds: Maney, 2006) . I continue to work on this fascinating and contradictory author.

From the reviews of Facing Modernity:

• 'Hughes's readings of Roth's texts are fresh and compelling. [...] [U]ndeniably this new study considerably expands the scope of the discussions about Roth and his intellectual environment in the light of current critical debates and theories. Hughes presents his arguments clearly and succinctly. The scholarly documentation is impeccable, and the book, equipped with a comprehensive bibliography and an extensive index, is as user-friendly in its organization as it is sophisticated.' (Dagmar Lorenz, Modern Language Review)

• 'Hughes achieves [his aims] with authority and admirable breadth of reference [...] The overall argument is coherently structured and includes valuable new readings of the travel report "Die weissen Städte" and of the early novels. Subsequent chapters on the treatment of modern phenomena in Roth's reportage on technology and on film are the product of careful research and are a welcome and overdue contribution to our understanding of the development of Roth's ideas at this period. [...] it is an important book, both as only the second monograph on Joseph Roth to appear in English [...] and because it sheds light on the writing and cultural debates of the Weimar Republic.' (Helen Chambers, Modern Austrian Literature)

In 2017 I published a monograph on the cultural, social and political significance of the legendary German boxer Max Schmeling (1905-2005): Max Schmeling and the Making of a National Hero in Twentieth-Century Germany (Palgrave Studies in Sport and Politics, 2017). Described in the Journal of Sport History as 'an engagingly readable book', it examines responses to and representations of Schmeling, and of boxing and sport more generally, between the Weimar Republic and the present day.

From the reviews of Max Schmeling and the Making of a National Hero:

• A 'probing, balanced treatment of how the world’s nascent mass media presented one of its original international celebrity athletes.' (Zachary Androus, Journal of Sport History)

My other areas of research interest include: the Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity); the cultural politics of Nazi Germany; the literature of the anti-fascist exile.

I would welcome expressions of interest from any potential postgraduate students with research interests in any of these areas.

I teach at all levels on the German, Comparative Literature and Culture and Film Studies programmes.

My first-year teaching includes ML1101 International Film: Contexts and Practices, which covers iconic films such as The Blue Angel, Citizen Kane, Rashomon and Psycho. In the final year I teach GM3134 National Socialism and The Third Reich in German Film and Visual Culture from 1933 to the Present. Almost all of my teaching is comparative and interdisciplinary in nature.

I also teach German language, and have taught grammar, comprehension and translation for our core language courses.

I am a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.