Bode is the second child of the private language school director and university lecturer (Anglistik und Amerikanistik) Dr. Adolf Bode and his wife Ute Bode (born Kuß). Bode was educated in his home town of Siegen (1959–1971), before reading English and American literature, geography, and philosophy/pedagogy at Philipps-Universität Marburg, Germany, and University College Cardiff (1971–1976). After his graduation from Marburg in 1976 (state examination), Bode received his Ph.D. from the same university in 1978 (English and American literature, with philosophy/pedagogy as minor subject). This was followed by Bode's alternative service as conscientious objector (1978–1980).
Bode is a specialist in British, European, and American Romanticism and Modernist literature. With a background in philosophy and aesthetics (Ästhetik der Ambiguität, 1988), he is also a narratologist (The Novel, 2011; "Narrating Futures" project) and an expert in poetics. Other facets of his research include literary theory and travel writing. Bode has been the president of the Gesellschaft für englische Romantik (Society for English Romanticism) since 2001.
Memberships
Bode is a member of some 15 learned societies and associations, among them
2008/09 Sabbatical year funded by the Exzellenzinitiative des Bundes for research on the History and Theory of British Travel Writing
2009-12 Advanced Investigator Grant of the European Research Council (ERC): "Narrating Futures" project[2] (900.000 €). Bode was the first English Literature scholar in Europe to receive such a grant.
2010 Fellow of the Center for Advanced Studies (CAS) at LMU Munich
Aldous Huxley, "Brave New World, München: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 1985. (Text und Geschichte: Modellanalysen zur englischen und amerikanischen Literatur, Bd. 13; utb 1312); 2., verbesserte Auflage 1993.
Ästhetik der Ambiguität: Zu Funktion und Bedeutung von Mehrdeutigkeit in der Literatur der Moderne, Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1988. (Konzepte der Sprach- und Literaturwissenschaft, Bd. 4).
John Keats: "Play On", Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag C. Winter, 1996. (Anglistische Forschungen, Bd. 241).
Der Roman: Eine Einführung, Tübingen: Francke, 2005 (second, enlarged edition 2011).
Selbst-Begründungen: Diskursive Konstruktion von Identität in der britischen Romantik 1: Subjektive Identität, Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier, 2008.
Fremd-Erfahrungen: Diskursive Konstruktion von Identität in der britischen Romantik 2: Identität auf Reisen, Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier, 2009.
The Novel: An Introduction, Oxford/Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011.
Co-Editor
Bode has co-edited 8 collections, among them
Hugo Keiper and Richard J. Utz, Nominalism and Literary Discourse: New Perspectives, Amsterdam/Atlanta: Rodopi, 1997. (Critical Studies, Vol. 10).
Ulrich Broich, Die Zwanziger Jahre in Großbritannien: Literatur und Gesellschaft einer spannungsreichen Dekade, Tübingen: Gunter Narr Verlag, 1998.
Sebastian Domsch, British and European Romanticisms: Selected Papers from the Munich Conference of the German Society for English Romanticism, Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier, 2007.
As president of the Gesellschaft für englische Romantik, Bode has been co-editor of the series "Studien zur englischen Romantik" with Die Blaue Eule publishers, as of 2005 with WVT Trier.
Co-editor, Münchener Universitätsschriften: Texte und Untersuchungen zur Englischen Philologie, Frankfurt/Main, Peter Lang Verlag (since 2007).
Bode has published well over 70 articles, among them
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!': Notes on the Non-teachability of Poetry, Anglistik & Englischunterricht Vol. 53 (1994): Teachable Poems from Sting to Shelley, 139-152.
Why Theory Matters, Theories and Functions of Literature, eds. Rüdiger Ahrens, Laurenz Volkmann. Heidelberg, Universitätsverlag C. Winter, 1996, 87-100.
Beyond/Around/Into One's Own: Reiseliteratur als Paradigma von Welt-Erfahrung, Poetica 26: 1-2 (1994), 70-87.
Anglistische Literaturwissenschaft und/oder Cultural Studies?, Anglia 114: 3 (1996), 396-424.
Azores High, Iceland Low: The Location and Dynamics of Shakespeare's Meaning and Value, Historicizing/Contemporizing Shakespeare: Essays in Honour of Rudolf Böhm, eds. Christoph Bode, Wolfgang Klooß, Trier: WVT, 2000, 25-51.
Unfit for an English Stage? Inchbald's Lovers' Vows and Kotzebue's Das Kind der Liebe, European Romantic Review 16, 3 (2005), 297-309.
Europe, Romanticism: An Oxford Guide, ed. Nicholas Roe, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005, 126-136.
"I have travelled a good deal in Concord": Romantic Cosmopolitanism and the Quest for the Universal in the Particular, Symbolism: An International Annual of Critical Aesthetics 7 (2007), 259-280.
Discursive Constructions of the Self in British Romanticism, Romanticism and Victorianism on the Net, Issue 51, August 2008 [published in January 2009], Modelling the Self: Subjectivity and Identity in Romantic and Post-Romantic Thought and Culture, guest-edited by Mark Sandy and Sarah Wootton, 16pp. [1]
Reviews
There are some 60 reviews and handbook entries by Bode.
Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Bode, Christoph in Annual Report on English and American Studies (AREAS), eds. Anja Holderbaum, Anne Kimmes, Joachim Kornelius, Trier: WVT, 1 ff. (1991 ff.) (biannual) ISBN978-3-86821-339-3