Academic Education and Employment

2017

Visiting Researcher at UC Berkeley (sponsored by Colleen Lye, Department of English)

2014 – now

Researcher, John F. Kennedy-Institute for North American Studies, Department of Literature
Doctoral Candidate in the Dahlem International Network Junior Research Group “American Literature and Managerialism, 1875-1925,” funded by the Excellence Initiative of the DFG 

2005 – 2014

Magister Artium: North American Studies and English Philology,  Freie Universität Berlin
Thesis Title: “Affect, Emotion, and the Critical Investment in Melville’s Bartleby”
Advisers: Prof. Dr. Ulla Haselstein and Prof. Dr. MaryAnn Snyder-Körber

2013 – 2014

Research Assistant to Prof. Dr. Florian Sedlmeier, JFKI, Department of Literature

2008 – 2013

Research Assistant to Prof. Dr. Ulla Haselstein, JFKI, Department of Literature

Organizational Activities

“Race, Power, and Privilege in Academia,” American Studies, Humboldt Universität zu Berlin, July 27-28 2017 (with Selma Bidlingmaier, Eva Boesenberg, Kristina Graaff, Karin Hermes, Anne Potjans, Jiann-Chyng Tu, Christine Vogt-William)

"Managing Racial Capital," John F. Kennedy Institute for North American Studies, Freie Universität Berlin, June 30-July 1, 2017 (with Florian Gabriel)

“Fictions of Management,” International Conference, John F. Kennedy Institute for North American Studies, Freie Universität Berlin, December 8-10, 2016 (with James Dorson and Florian Gabriel)

“Approaches to Structural Racism” Reading Group (with Lily Kelting und Sarah Schmidt), JFKI, Freie Universität Berlin, January 2015 – now

FORUM: “Paris, Pegida, Counter|Publics” (with Aliyyah Abdur-Rahman und Florian Sedlmeier), JFKI, Freie Universität Berlin, February 12, 2015 

“Approaching Blackness: Beyond the Limits of Representation” (with Jiann-Chyng Tu und Chloé Faux), 13th Annual Students and Graduates Conference, Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik, Humboldt Universität zu Berlin, November 13-15, 2014 

Student Colloquium at the John F. Kennedy Institute for North American Studies (with Sabine Engwer), Freie Universität Berlin, 2009-2011 

"Approaches to Structural Racism" Reading Group, WS 2014/15 - now, John F. Kennedy-Institute for North American Studies, Freie Universität Berlin

“United We Disrupt: An Introduction to Queer Theory,” SoSe 2011, student-led Seminar, John F. Kennedy-Institute for North American Studies, Freie Universität Berlin

Research Interests

• 19th Century American Literature
• 19th Century Bureaucracy and Administration
• Critical Race and Ethnic Studies
• Queer Theory
• Affect Theory
• Transgender Studies
• Disability Studies

Disseration Project

“Administering the Nation: Bureaucratic Governance, Comparative Racialization, and American Literature, 1875-1925” (Arbeitstitel)

Articles

“On Affect Theory’s Hidden Histories: Toward a Technological Genealogy,” American Quarterly 69.2 (June 2017), forthcoming.

“Transgender Bodies and Male Pregnancy: The Ethics of Radical Self-Refashioning.”  Machine: Bodies, Genders, Technologies.  Eds. M. Michaela Hampf and MaryAnn Snyder-Körber.  Heidelberg: Winter, 2012.  107-136.

With M. Michaela Hampf und MaryAnn Snyder-Körber.  “Teaching Machines: Suggestions for Further Reading”  Machine: Bodies, Genders, Technologies.  Eds. M. Michaela  Hampf and MaryAnn Snyder-Körber. Heidelberg: Winter, 2012.  297-322. 

Conference Talks

“Counting Heads and Talking Papers: Bureaucratic Documentation and the Management of Racialized Bodies,” Fictions of Management, John F. Kennedy Institute for North American Studies, Freie Universität Berlin, December 8-10, 2016.

“From Social Reform to Social Control: Bureaucratic Governance and the American Eugenics Movement of the Early Twentieth Century,” Workshop “Neurosis & Social Transformations,” Universität Duisburg-Essen, Campus Essen, February 18-19, 2016

“The Affective Life of Racism and a Critical Desire for Objectivity,” Workshop “Who Can Speak and Who is Heard/Hurt? Ethnic Diversity, ‘Race’ and Racism in American Studies in Germany,” Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen, January 17-19, 2016

“The Powers and Failures of Documentation: Racial Classification and Late 19th-Century Practices of Bureaucratic Surveillance,” International Conference “The Failed Individual,” Universität Mannheim, November 12-14, 2015

“Paper Empires: Race, Ethnicity, and the Compulsion to Document in the Gilded Age,” 3rd Conference of the Postgraduate Forum “Postcolonial Narrations,” "Empire & Neurosis,” Universität Duisburg-Essen, Campus Essen, October 8-10, 2015

“The Skin as Interface: On the Digitalization of the Body in Affect Theory,” London Conference in Critical Thought, UCL, June 26-27, 2015

‘‘I would prefer not to be a little reasonable’: Occupy Wall Street and the Affective Investment in Melville’s Bartleby,” International Graduate Conference “Claiming Space: Reconfigurations in Times of Crisis,” GSNAS, FU Berlin, May 24-25, 2013

“Strategic Authenticity: Male Pregnancy and the Renaturalization of the Transgender Body,” Gender*Queer*Workshop, Universität des Saarlandes, June 30 - July 1, 2011

“Through the Looking Glass: Transatlantic Emotional Culture and the Problem of Mimesis,” Graduate Student Conference “Between Global Village and Global Dump: Placing America in a Transnational World,” American Studies Leipzig, March 22-23, 2010

“‘Everything is a copy of a copy of a copy’: Psychological and Structural Doubling in David Fincher’s Fight Club,” Student Colloquium of the John F. Kennedy Institute for North American Studies, Winter Semester 2009-2010, FU Berlin, November 2, 2009

 “A Black Adam in Switzerland: ‘In-Betweenness’ and the Pitfalls of Genre in the Pool Group’s Borderline,” Student Colloquium of the John F. Kennedy Institute for North American Studies, Summer Semester 2008, FU Berlin, May 27, 2008

“Transgender Bodies and Male Pregnancy: The Ethics of Radical Self-Refashioning,” Interdisciplinary Conference “[machine] body.gender.technology,” John F. Kennedy Institute for North American Studies, FU Berlin, February 15-16, 2008

Translations (selection)

Malinowski, Bernadette.  “Literary Epistemology: Daniele Del Giudice’s Novel Atlante occidentale.”  Physics and Literature: Theory – Popularization – Aestheticization.  Eds. Aura Heydenreich und Klaus Mecke.  Berlin: de Gruyter.  (forthcoming)

Hartwig, Susanne.  “September 10, 2001, or, How do texts work?”  Physics and Literature: Theory – Popularization – Aestheticization.  Eds. Aura Heydenreich und Klaus Mecke.  Berlin: de Gruyter.  (forthcoming) 

Wiedemann, Barbara. “‘The Bubble Chamber’ – Paul Celan’s Physical ‘Enrichments.’”  Physics and Literature: Theory – Popularization – Aestheticization.  Eds. Aura Heydenreich und Klaus Mecke.  Berlin: de Gruyter.  (forthcoming) 

Heydenreich, Aura. “Closed Timelike Curves: Gödel’s Solution for Einstein's Field Equations in the General Theory of Relativity and Bach’s The Musical Offering as Configuration Models for Narrative Identity Constructions in Richard Powers's The Time of Our Singing.”  Narrated Communities and Narrated Realities. Narration as Cognitive Processing and Cultural Practice.  Eds. Hermann Blume, Christoph Leitgeb, and Michael Rössner.  Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2015.  153-173. 

Brokoff, Jürgen.  “Writing About Living and Surviving Under a Dictatorship: Herta Müller.”  Axel Springer Lecture.  Hebrew University of Jerusalem, June 18, 2014.