Kaja Elisa Fink

Kaja (she/her) is a doctoral candidate in German Studies at Stanford University. She received her B.A. and M.Ed. in German and Biology from Kiel University (Germany).

Her research interests include representations of illness, dying, and death in medieval and early modern literature, gender studies, and manuscript and early print culture.

In her dissertation, Kaja examines female care work in fifteenth- and sixteenth-century German literature. Drawing on a wide range of genres, from hagiography to Schwank (comic tales) as well as devotional and moral-didactic texts, she investigates care as a literary trope, its gendered perceptions, and its role in female agency and knowledge transmission.

Kaja currently serves as graduate co-chair of the research group SCRIPTA.

Recent Publications:

• Fink, Kaja Elisa. “Bestattung, Blut und Trauer. Die 17. Âventiure des Nibelungenliedes im Spiegel des christlichen Glaubens.” Zeitschrift für deutsches Altertum und deutsche Literatur 154 (2025), pp. 432–450.
• Fink, Kaja Elisa. “Death and Dying in Fifteenth-Century Germany: The Ars moriendi Tradition.”, edited by Kristen Poole and Duncan Hardy. Routledge Resources Online – The Renaissance World (2025). https://doi.org/10.4324/9780367347093-RERW252-1