Affiliation: Goethe University Frankfurt
Key Words: Plant Studies - Travel Literature - Literature and Knowledge
Christina Becher works at the Goethe University Frankfurt in Germany and her research interests are situated at the intersection of literary and cultural studies. She works on modern German literature, esp. literature of the 19th to 21st century, travel literature, Literary and Cultural Plant Studies, Material Ecocriticism, and Comics Studies.
She holds a PhD in German Philology and Transcultural German Studies from the University of Cologne and the University of Arizona (cotutelle).
Bringing together literature and knowledge, Christina published a book on human-plant hybrids (“Zwischen Mensch und Pflanze. Vegetabile Hybriden in literarischen und grafischen Texten des 20. und 21. Jahrhunderts,” Wallstein 2024) and several articles on human-plant relationships and vegetal rhetoric, sustainable burials as well as on early German science fiction.
In addition to her academic work on literature and the environment, science communication to a broader audience is very important to her: For example, she worked on an exhibition project entitled “Eden? Plants between Science and Fiction,” which was on display at the Botanical Garden in Münster in 2022. She recently participated in the publication accompanying the exhibition “Unter Pflanzen” (‘Among Plants’) at the Museum Sinclair-Haus in Bad Homburg (2025). She also wrote for various blogs and gives book talks.
Currently, Christina Becher is working on a collaborative research project on captivity in early modern literature. At the same time, she is focusing on her second book on travel literature on sailing trips and life at sea.
https://www.uni-frankfurt.de/151658254/Dr__Christina_Becher