Alexandra Ksenofontova is a postdoctoral researcher at the EXC 2020 with a project on Victorian present-tense fiction and time culture. She holds a PhD in comparative literature from the Freie Universität Berlin. Her award-winning first book The Modernist Screenplay: Experimental Writing for Silent Film (2020) explores the conjunctions between literary modernism and the screenwriting of the European avant-gardes. She has co-edited two collections of essays, Writing in Residence (2024) and Drehbuchforschung (2022); her translation of a poetry volume by the Russian-Jewish modernist poet Valentin Parnach into German is forthcoming. Her articles on film, screenwriting, and time in fiction have appeared in KronoScope: Journal for the Study of Time, Film History, Journal of Modern Periodical Studies, and Journal of Screenwriting. She is the co-founder of the German screenwriting research network Drehbuchforschung and member of the editorial board of the Journal of Screenwriting.

Current research includes an EXC 2020 post-doctoral research project, Tense and Time: The Politics and History of Present-tense Fiction (2022-).

As follows from the preliminary title of my project, the focus is on the link between tense and time in fiction, more specifically on the link between the present tense and the non-normative temporalities. Both connections have been significantly underestimated or even denied in research; my first aim is therefore to re-establish the legitimacy of the link between tense and temporality in fiction. Zooming in on present-tense fiction, my second aim is to demonstrate that the continuous use of the present tense is by no means an invention of the 21st century. Rather, it has a long and versatile history in both anglophone and non-anglophone literatures. Exploring this history, I hope to demonstrate, thirdly, that the historical rise of present-tense fiction goes hand in hand with growing attention to non-normative temporalities, such as the temporalities of traumatized, female, queer, disabled, and other marginalized subjects.

Research interests

• Film and literature, screenwriting, notations in the arts.

• Victorian novel and time culture.

• French, German, and Soviet modernism and historical avant-gardes.

• Queer and trans theory, queer literatures in Eastern and Central Europe.

• Contemporary novel, tense and temporality in fiction.

• Media theory, genre theory, narratology.

Monograph

The Modernist Screenplay: Experimental Writing for Silent Film. Palgrave Studies in Screenwriting. Palgrave Macmillan, 2020.

“Best Monograph” award of the Screenwriting Research Network (2020–2021). Reviews: Journal of Screenwriting 12, no. 2: 246–7; Moderna språk 115, no. 4: 226–9; Modernist Cultures 17, no. 2: 290–5.

Edited and Translated Volumes

Writing in Residence: Globale Literaturproduktion in deutschen Residenzprogrammen. Ed. by Stefan Keppler-Tasaki, Alexandra Ksenofontova, and Jutta Müller-Tamm. Weltliteraturen 24. De Gruyter.

Drehbuchforschung: Perspektiven auf Texte und Prozesse. Ed. by Jan Henschen, Florian Krauß, Alexandra Ksenofontova, and Claus Tieber. Springer 2022.

Review: Mediendiskurs 28, no. 1 (2024 / issue 107): 92.

Valentin Parnach. Prolog zu den Tänzen: Ausgewählte Gedichte und kleinere Schriften. Ed. by Alexandra Ksenofontova and Anna Luhn. Translated by Alexandra Ksenofontova in collaboration with Anna Luhn. Spector Books OHG (forthcoming).

Journal Articles and Book Chapters

Modest Temporalities: Time and Tense in Millennial Novels. In The Edinburgh Companion to The Millennial Novel, ed. by Loïc Bourdeau and Christopher Lloyd. Edinburgh University Press (forthcoming).

Past and Present, Old and New (1929): On Tense, Time, and Narrators in Screenwriting. In The Bloomsbury Handbook of International Screenplay Theory, ed. by Ann Igelström and Andrew Gay. Bloomsbury Publishing (forthcoming).

Disidentifying with the Present: The Multiple Values of the Prefix “Post-”. In ‘Value,’ ed. by Michael Gamper, Till Kadritzke, Alexandra Ksenofontova, Jutta Müller-Tamm. Articulations (July 2024): https://articulations.temporal-communities.de.

Globale Literaturproduktion in deutschen Residenzprogrammen. Zur Einführung (with Jutta Müller-Tamm and Stefan Keppler-Tasaki). In Writing in Residence: Globale Literaturproduktion in deutschen Residenzprogrammen, ed. by Stefan Keppler-Tasaki, Alexandra Ksenofontova, and Jutta Müller-Tamm, 1–14. Weltliteraturen 24. De Gruyter.

Die Widersprüche avantgardistischer Multisensorik: Moni de Bulis Filmskript Doktor Hipnison ili tehnika života (1923). In Sehen, Hören, Berühren. Multisensorische Perspektiven auf Medialität in Osteuropa, special issue of Wiener Slawistischer Almanach, ed. by Svetlana Efimova and Philipp Kohl, 335–56. Peter Lang, 2024.

Inventing Middlebrow Cinema: The Russian Film Journal Pegasus (1915–17). Journal of Modern Periodical Studies 14, no. 2 (2023): 134–58.

Theatre-Fiction in the Present Tense: Reflections on Trauma and Healing in Margaret Atwood’s Hag-Seed (2016) and Eleanor Catton’s The Rehearsal (2008). In The Routledge Companion to Theatre-Fiction, ed. by Graham Wolfe, 146–59. Routledge, 2023.

Silent Screenwriting in Europe: Discourses on Authorship, Form, and Literature. In The Palgrave Handbook of Screenwriting Studies, ed. by Rosamund Davies, Paolo Russo, and Claus Tieber, 237–57. Palgrave Macmillan, 2023.

Sergei Eisenstein's “The Form of the Script”: A New Translation. Film History: An International Journal 34, no. 4 (2023): 109–25.

Towards an Interdisciplinary Approach to Time in Fiction. KronoScope: Journal for the Study of Time 23, no. 1 (May 2023): 86–103.

Einleitung. In Drehbuchforschung: Perspektiven auf Texte und Prozesse, ed. by Jan Henschen, Florian Krauß, Alexandra Ksenofontova, and Claus Tieber, 1–24. Springer, 2022.

Round Table: Pushing the boundaries of the Screenwriting Research Network (with Paolo Russo, Rosamund Davies, Rafael Leal, Ian W. Macdonald, Steven Maras, and Claus Tieber). Journal of Screenwriting 13, no. 1 (April 2022): 115–34.

Drehbuch im Stummfilm: Eine Bibliographie / Silent Film Screenplay: A Bibliography. Medienwissenschaft: Berichte und Papiere, no. 188 (2020): 1–42.

Once Again into the Cabinets of Dr. Caligari: Evil Spaces and Hidden Sources of the Caligari Screenplay. Journal of Screenwriting 10, no. 3 (September 2019): 261–77.

The Screenplay/Film Relationship Bifurcated: Reading Carl Mayer’s Sylvester (1924). Journal of Screenwriting 9, no. 1 (March 2018): 25–39.

Reviews

Zoltán Boldizsár Simon and Marek Tamm. The Fabric of Historical Time. Cambridge Elements in Historical Theory and Practice. Cambridge University Press, 2023. KronoScope: Journal for the Study of Time 23, no. 2 (February 2024): 229–32.

Open Scriptures: Notation in Contemporary Artistic Practices in Europe and the Americas. Hg. Susana González Aktories und Susanne Klengel; unter Mitarbeit von Karina Bailey (2022). In Jahrbuch Komparatistik 2023, ed. by Martin Sexl, Annette Simonis, and Alexandra Müller, 283–96. Aisthesis.

A Tale from Constantinople: The History of a Film That Never Was, Bo Florin And Patrick Vonderau (2019). Journal of Screenwriting 12, no. 3 (September 2021): 392–4.

Miscellanea

‘Value,’ Curated Collection in Articulations, ed. by Alexandra Ksenofontova, Jutta Müller-Tamm, Michael Gamper, Till Kadritzke. Articulations (July 2024): https://articulations.temporal-communities.de/collections/value/.

‘Circulation,’ Curated Collection in Articulations, ed. by Florian Fuchs, Michael Gamper, Jutta Müller-Tamm, Till Kadritzke, Alexandra Ksenofontova, and Jasmin Wrobel. Articulations (July 2024): https://articulations.temporal-communities.de/collections/circulation/.

Dance, Poetic Movement, and Avant-Garde Translation. Conversation with Eugene Ostashevsky for the digital exhibition TANGO TRANSLATION TYPOGRAPHY of the Berlin State Library (March 2024): https://blog.sbb.berlin/tango-translation-typography, https://youtu.be/yG4UlqU4oHw?si=HCN_Hi81aY2Rfk1f.

“A Time Capsule”: Reading a Queer Russian Romance in the Age of War. Blog entry for Literaturwissenschaft in Berlin (September 2023): https://literaturwissenschaft-berlin.de/a-time-capsule/.