What does class sound like? What do sounds and their perception say about belonging and social injustice? Literary scholar Dr Jana Maria Weiß from the European University Viadrina Frankfurt (Oder) has been awarded the Postdoc Prize of the State of Brandenburg for her work on these questions. She was honoured today, Saturday 9 May 2026, as part of the Potsdam Day of Science. She received the prize, endowed with 20,000 euros, for her essay "Class Listening with Deniz Ohde. On Sound, Class and Affect in Contemporary Literature" in the collected volume "Klassen. Emotions. Erzählen".
In her award-winning work, Jana Maria Weiß develops the approach of "Class Listening". She combines literary text analysis with approaches from sound studies. She shows how class differences are made audible in literary texts - at the level of voices and sounds, but also in silence. "I deliberately called my approach Class Listening to emphasise that sounds in literary texts also have a social dimension. Sound and noises are never purely aesthetic sound material. They are embedded in social orders and carry with them affects of social inequality," explains the literary scholar. The method also invites students to use literary skills to analyse social discourses: "Class listening also means paying attention to pitches, silences and parts of speech. Who is speaking? How loud? And who remains silent?"
She is particularly pleased to have been honoured with the Postdoc Award because it draws attention to such a socially relevant topic. "Especially now, when social inequality is increasing, it is important to think about class issues. The prize is an opportunity to talk about class. If this encourages people to read one of the novels or otherwise engage with social inequality, I think that would be a great gain," says Jana Maria Weiß.
Prof. Dr Eduard Mühle, President of the European University Viadrina, says of the award: "I warmly congratulate Jana Maria Weiß on this important prize and am delighted that her outstanding research findings have been recognised. Her work impressively illustrates the social relevance and interdisciplinary connectivity of research at Viadrina."
Science Minister Dr Manja Schüle said at the award ceremony on today's Potsdam Science Day: "Knowledge is omnipresent today, but a shared reality is becoming increasingly questionable. AI, algorithms and disinformation are changing how we learn, search and think. Science aims to do the opposite. It does not ask what we want to believe - but what is actually the case. And it allows error as a learning opportunity. This is what today's award winners stand for: teachers who think beyond their subject. And young researchers who are shaping the science of tomorrow."
For an in-depth interview with the prizewinner
About the person
Dr Jana Maria Weiß is a Germanist and researches mainly German-language literature of the 20th and 21st centuries from an interdisciplinary perspective. She has been a research assistant at the Chair of German-Jewish Literary and Cultural History, Exile and Migration at the Viadrina since April 2025. She previously completed her doctorate on Paul Celan's poetics of multilingualism at the Free University of Berlin.
Jana Maria Weiß's research interests range from literary multilingualism and translation to affect theory and sound studies. In various projects, she deals with archives and media history, especially the young Federal Republic of Germany. In addition to her academic work, she writes essays and works as an editor and translator of contemporary poetry.