Professional Experience / Akademische Laufbahn

• since April 2013: Assistant Professor (wiss. Mitarbeiter), Department of Culture, John-F.-Kennedy Institute for North American Studies, Free University Berlin
• since April 2024: Principal Investigator of the DFG-funded project “From Patronage to the Mass Market: Institutionalizing Literary Knowledge Cultures in the 19th-Century United States” at Heidelberg University (eigene Stelle)
• April 2023-Sep. 2023: Visiting Associate Professor (Professurvertretung), Department of Anglophone Studies / American Studies, Universität Duisburg-Essen
• Oct. 2022-Mar. 2023: Visiting Associate Professor (Professurvertretung), English Department / Book Studies, WWU Münster
• Oct. 2016-Sep. 2017: Visiting Assistant Professor of American Studies, Brown University (USA)
• 2008-2013: Research Associate, American Studies, English Department,  University of Göttingen
• 2006-2008: Research Assistant, American Studies, English Department, University of Göttingen

Education / Studium

• October 2012: Doctor of Philosophy (Dr. phil.) in English / American Studies at Georg-August-University Göttingen; Dissertation: "Writing Metamedia: American Literature and the Matter of the Book, 1998-2010"; Grade: summa cum laude
• March 2008: Master of Arts (M.A.) in English and Media/Communication Studies at Georg-August-University Göttingen
• 2002-2008: Undergraduate and Graduate Studies at Georg-August-University Göttingen and the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA)

Administration

Active positions

• since 2015: Elected Member of the Institute Board (Institutsrat), John F. Kennedy Institute
• since 2015: Website Administrator, John F. Kennedy Institute
• 2014: Teaching Committee, John F. Kennedy Institute, Berlin (member)
• 2013: Selection committee for the annual Willi-Paul-Adams Prize, John F. Kennedy Institute, Berlin (member)

Previous positions:

• 2018: Faculty search committee W1 junior professorship for political science with a focus on political communication and media in North America, FU Berlin (member)
• 2014: Faculty search committee; W1 junior professorship for North American Literature, “Dahlem International Network Junior Research Groups”, FU Berlin (member)
• 2013-2015: Administrator for E-Learning and Computer Resources, John F. Kennedy Institute, Berlin
• 2013-2014: Faculty search committee; W2 professorship for Political Science / North American Studies, FU Berlin
• 2013-2016: Library Committee, John F. Kennedy Institute, Berlin (member)
• 2012-2013: Principal coordinator of the accreditation process for the American Studies degree programs at Göttingen through ZEvA (Central Evaluation and Accreditation Agency)
• 2010-2013: Program Coordinator and Advisor American Studies (Bachelor / Master), University of Göttingen
• 2010-2013: Selection committee for the Master of Arts in American Studies, University of Göttingen (member)
• 2009: American Studies faculty search committee; W2 professorship for American Studies/Media Studies in Göttingen (member)
• 2006-2008: Member of the editorial team for the American literature section in Kindlers Literatur Lexikon (3rd ed.)
• 2006: American Studies faculty search committee; junior professorship for American Studies/Media Studies in Göttingen (student representative)
• 2006-2013: Website Administrator of the department website; oversaw complete redesign in 2010 (www.amstud.uni-goettingen.de)

Courses Taught / Lehrveranstaltungen

Current

Winter 2023/24: “The American Campus: Space, Narrative, Media” (interdisciplinary graduate seminar; co-taught with Prof. Dr. Karin Höpker of the Literature Department); “Rhetorics of Continuity and Change: A Survey of American Cultural History” (undergraduate seminar)

Past

Berlin

Summer 2022: “Material Text Studies and American Print Cultures” (undergraduate seminar); "Reading W.E.B. Du Bois across Genres and Institutions” (graduate seminar)

Winter 2021/22: "Understanding North America A” (undergraduate lecture; co-taught with Ulla Haselstein and Sebastian Jobs)

Summer 2021: “(Counter-)Narratives of American Nationhood and Citizenship in the Antebellum Period” (graduate seminar); “Reform, Diversity, and Cultural Nationalism in the Age of Romanticism” (graduate lecture)

Winter 2020/21: “American Institutions of Literature” (interdisciplinary graduate seminar; co-taught with Prof. Dr. Florian Sedlmeier of the JFKI Literature Department); “Discourse and Practices of Colonization and Settlement in North America” (graduate lecture)

Summer 2020: "American Print Cultures from the Colonial Era to the Digital Age: Theory, Materiality, Aesthetics" (undergraduate seminar); "Narrative, Ecology, and the Anthropocene" (graduate seminar)

Winter 2019/20: “Black/White – Top/Bottom: Race and Class in American Culture around 1900” (undergraduate seminar); “Rhetorics of Continuity and Change: A Survey of American Cultural History” (undergraduate seminar)

Winter 2018/19: "American Modernities" (graduate lecture); "Understanding North America A" (undergraduate lecture; co-taught with Birte Wege and Sönke Kunkel)

Summer 2018: "The Evolution of North American Publics: From the Bourgeois Public Sphere to Echo Chambers and Filter Bubbles" (interdisciplinary graduate seminar; co-taught with Prof. Dr. Christian Lammert of the Political Science Department); B.A. Colloquium

Winter 2017/18: "Discourses and Practices of Colonization and Settlement, 1492-1790" (graduate lecture); "Rhetorics of Continuity and Change: A Survey of American Cultural History" (undergraduate seminar)

Summer 2016: "American Ecologies" (graduate seminar); B.A. Colloquium

Winter 2015/16: "Man, Woman, Nation: The Public Uses of Gender in American Culture, 1877-1920" (graduate seminar); "Rhetorics of Continuity and Change: A Survey of American Cultural History" (undergraduate seminar)

Summer 2015:  "All New! Functions of Novelty in American Cultural Theory and Practice" (graduate seminar); B.A. Colloquium

Summer 2014: "How to Know Things: Competing Visions of Knowledge in Modern America" (graduate seminar); B.A. Colloquium

Winter 2013/14: "Rhetorics of Continuity and Change: American Cultural History from the Late 19th Century to Today" (undergraduate seminar); Bachelor-Colloquium

Summer 2013: "Rhetorics of Continuity and Change: American Cultural History from the 17th to the 19th Century" (undergraduate seminar); "North American Graphic Design: Artists, Media, Contexts" (advanced undergraduate seminar)

Duisburg-Essen

Summer 2023: “Campus Novels and Campus Films” (undergraduate seminar); “Race and Gender around 1900” (graduate seminar); “W.E.B. Du Bois: Writer, Scholar, Activist” (graduate seminar); “Democracy, Reform, and Cultural Nationalism in the Age of Romanticism (graduate lecture)

Münster

Winter 2022/23: “Institutions of Literature” (graduate seminar); “Text, Book, and Culture” (graduate-level survey lecture + colloquium); Postgraduate Class Book Studies

Brown University

Spring Term 2017: "Making Knowledge in the Progressive Era: Institutions, Spaces, and Ideas" (upper-level undergraduate seminar)

Göttingen

Winter 2012/13: "Ezra Pound, Modernist Poetry, and American Print Culture" (undergraduate seminar); Introduction to American Cultural History II

Summer 2012: "Outward and Inward: Henry James and the American Novel" (undergraduate seminar); "Realism, Naturalism, Early Modernism: U.S. Literature from the Civil War to the Armory Show" (Directed Reading Course)

Winter 2011/12: Introduction to the Study of American Literature and Culture (undergraduate seminar); Introduction to American Cultural History II

Summer 2011: "Enlightenment and Nationalism: American Literature and Culture from the Revolution to the Jacksonian Era" (Two Directed Reading Courses)

Winter 2010/11: Introduction to the Study of American Literature and Culture (undergraduate seminar); Cultural Studies I: Introduction to American Cultural History

Summer 2010: "Postmodernism, New Ethnic Literatures, Recent Developments: U.S. Literature from The Second World War to the Age of Hegemony" (Two Directed Reading Courses)

Winter 2009/10: "The Golden Age of Hollywood" (undergraduate seminar)

Summer 2009: "A Cultural History of American Literature IV: Realism, Naturalism, Early Modernism – U.S. Literature from the Civil War to the Armory Show" (Directed Reading Course)

Summer 2008 & Winter 2008/09: "American Cultural Studies I: Introduction to American Cultural History"

 

Teaching Qualification

2008-2009: Certificate in Didactics at the University Level

10 Units including "Planning and Organizing a Course," "Interactive Teaching Methods," "Conducting Discussions"; additional one-on-one coaching

Current Projects

• "American Culture/Knowledge around 1900: Epistemic Forms, Styles, and Institutions in a Professionalizing Age" (Habilitation / second book)
• "From Patronage to the Mass Market: Institutionalizing Literary Knowledge Cultures in the 19th-Century United States"; Principal Investigator, DFG Individual Research Grant / Eigene Stelle at the University of Heidelberg (funding period: 04/2024-03/2025)
• Member of the DFG network “The Failure of Knowledge – Knowledges of Failure” with a project titled “Failed Scholar, Successful Scholarship: W.E.B. Du Bois and the Epistemic Style of Professionalized Social Inquiry in the U.S.”

Research Interests

American Literature and Culture (esp. contemporary and late 19th/early 20th century)
Knowledge Production and Historical Epistemology
Literary and Media Theory
Literary Institutions and Professionalization
Book Design and Textual Materiality
Contemporary Print Culture and Digitization
Ecocriticism / Environmental Humanities

Conference Papers & Invited Lectures

"The Novel in the Age of Reese’s Book Club" (28 September 2024, International Conference "What Was Contemporary Literature," Heidelberg Center for American Studies, Universität Heidelberg)

"Literary Knowledge in US Popular Magazines." (19 June 2024, Workshop "Aesthetics, Archives, Institutions: Literary Production and Social Reform in the Nineteenth-Century United States," Universität Hamburg)

"Buchform, Papiermaterialität und die Dingwelten gegenwärtiger amerikanischer picture books." (22 February 2024, Workshop “Medienreflexion und reflexive Medialität Kinder- und Jugendliteratur in der Medienkonkurrenz,” Hanse Wissenschaftskolleg, Institute for Advanced Study)

"Response: Bookishness Reconsidered" (27 April 2023, "Bookishness: A Workshop with Jessica Pressman," University of Münster)

"W.E.B. Du Bois between Genres and Institutions" (17 March 2023, ACLA Annual Meeting, Chicago)

"W.E.B. Du Bois between Genres and Institutions" (7 December 2022, Lecture Series: Hotspots in Literary and Cultural Studies, Book Studies, and Linguistics, University of Münster)

“Epistemic Style and Emergent Publishing Ecologies between Sociology and Literature around 1900: The Case of W.E.B. Du Bois’s Scorn” (12 July 2022, SHARP Annual Conference, University of Amsterdam)

“Literary Critique and Epistemic Style in W. E. B. Du Bois’s Scorn” (9 January 2022, Panel “Historicizing Critique” at the MLA Annual Meeting, Washington, D.C. and online)

“Reading in Print and on Screen” (19 November 2021, Invited Lecture, OSL Seminar “How We Read – Interpretation, Relation, Mediation, University of Groningen)

“Literarische Kartografie auf Buchseite und Bildschirm” (16 November 2021, Wissenswerkstatt “Die Materialität von Schriftlichkeit – Bibliothek und Forschung im Dialog,” Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin)
Full Lecture Available on YouTube

“Fringe Knowledge and the Poetics of Urban Sociology in W.E.B. Du Bois and Jane Addams.” (22 October 2021, Online Conference “Speculative Endeavors: Cultures of Knowledge and Capital in the Long Nineteenth Century,” University of Bayreuth)

with Florian Sedlmeier, “Howells in the Study and Cather at the Office.” (10 June 2021, Symposium “Competing American Literary Institutions around 1900,” John F. Kennedy Institute for North American Studies, Freie Universität Berlin)

"Willa Cather and the Professionalization of American Knowledge Cultures around 1900" (12 December 2019, Invited Lecture, Heidelberg Center for American Studies)

"Meaningful Maps: Reading Fictional Cartographies in Print and on Screens" (26 November 2019, Workshop "Media, Memory, and the City," KWI Essen)

“The Organic Book in American Publishing: From William Addison Dwiggins to the Digital Present” (18 December 2018, Workshop “@LIBB: Changing Literacies for the Boundless Book”, KNIR Rome)

“Elements of Epistemic Style: Willa Cather and the Professionalization of American Knowledge Cultures” (20 November 2018, Invited Lecture, University of Erlangen)

"Comprehending Class in the Industrial City: Jane Addams's Chicago and W.E.B. Du Bois's Philadelphia" (6 December 2017, Ringvorlesung "Capitalism and the North American City", FU Berlin, John F. Kennedy Institute for North American Studies, FU Berlin)

"'I absolutely know this': Cather’s Epistemic Poetics in A Lost Lady and Beyond” (26 May 2017, Annual Conference of the American Literature Association, Boston)

"The Elements of Epistemic Style: Making Knowledge in Carnegie Libraries and Beyond" (26 January 2017, Invited Lecture, John Nicholas Brown Center for Public Humanities and Cultural Heritage, Brown University)

"The Small American Novel: Reading, Marketing, and Evaluating the Short Book Today" (24 September 2016, Conference "Novel-Seeming-Goods: Futures of the Anglophone Novel", University of Mainz)

“The Elements of Epistemic Style: Research Universities, Public Libraries, and the Emerging Literary Professional” (13 July 2016, Workshop “American Media/Knowledge at the Turn of the 20th Century," John F. Kennedy Institute for North American Studies, FU Berlin)

“Amerikanische Wissenskulturen, 1878-1929. Formen, Stile, Institutionen” (14 January 2016, Göttinger philologisches Forum, University of Göttingen)

“Metamedia: Books as Narrative Agents in Today’s Literary System” (5 November 2015, Conference “Medium, Object, Metaphor: The Printed Book in Contemporary American Culture”, University of Konstanz)

“Buchwerke: Paratext und post-digitale Materialität in der amerikanischen Gegenwartsliteratur” (22 October 2015, “Wiederkehr des Werks? Symposium zur Gegenwart des Werkbegriffs”, Schloss Herrenhausen, Hannover)

“Professionelle Kondensierung: Annotiertes und evaluiertes Wissen im Catalog der American Library Association (1893-1904)” (9 July 2015, Conference “Kurz & Knapp. Erzählen und Wissen in kleinen Formen”, University of Hannover) 

“Building Knowledge: Tacit Preconceptions and Philanthropic Professionalism in Andrew Carnegie’s Public Library Program” (29 May 2015, “Knowledge Landscapes North America”, Annual Conference of the German Association for American Studies (DGfA), University of Bonn)

“Media Theory as Book Theory: The Metamedial Moment in Contemporary American Literature” (21 March 2015, Conference “Literature and Media Theory: Mediality – Materiality – Cultural Technique,” University of Göttingen)

“Material Texts, Book Design, and Contemporary American Literature” (Salzburg Seminar American Studies Association 2014 Symposium "Defining America: New Writing, New Voices, New Directions," Salzburg Global Seminar, September 21-October 1 2014)

"What’s the Matter with Meta? Reflections of/on the Book in J. J. Abrams and Doug Dorst’s S." (27 June 2014, Bologna-Conference "Media Transformations / Transformative Media", John F. Kennedy Institute for North American Studies, Freie Universität Berlin)

"Observing Technologies: The Media Work of American Literature after Digitization" (28 May 2014, Conference “Digital American Studies: Theories, Practices, and Perspectives“, University of Stuttgart)

"The Well-Made Play: Experimental Design and the Aesthetics of Improbability in American Basketball" (22 November 2013, International Conference "Cultures of Basketball", Humboldt University Berlin)

"Reading, Seeing, Feeling: How to Account for Carrier Media in Cultural Theory" (10 October 2013, Symposium "Writing Matters", Collaborative Research Center "Material Text Cultures," University of Heidelberg)

"Relocating Post-Digital Print Culture: Embodied Literature, Metamedia, and the Paratextual Aesthetics of Place" (21 July 2013, SHARP Annual Conference "Geographies of the Book," University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia)

"Wove Paper, Deckle Edges, Gorilla Glass: Tethering Literature to Material Production Cycles" (29 June 2013, International Conference "Cultures of Obsolescence in North America: Aesthetics, Materiality, History," Georg-August-Universität Göttingen)

"Evolving Technologies, Enduring Media: Material Irony in Octave Uzanne’s ‘The End of Books.'" (13 June 2013, International Symposium "Imagining Media Change," University of Hanover)

"The Organic Book: William Addison Dwiggins, Alfred A. Knopf, and the Graphic Design of American Literature." (9 May 2013, Network-Conference for German Scholars of Book History and Print Culture, University of Freiburg)

"Bildschirm und Buchseite: Was die amerikanische Literatur mit der Digitalisierung macht" (18 January 2013, Festvortrag, Dies Philosophicus der Philosophischen Fakultät, Georg-August-Universität Göttingen)

"Book Fictions: Graphic Design and the Emergent Aesthetics of Embodied Literature in the American Novel" (25 October 2012, International Symposium "Worth a Thousand Words: At the Intersections of Literature and the Visual Arts," Radboud University Nijmegen)

"Content and Context: The McSweeney's Approach to Bookmaking" (30 September 2011, Edinburgh Book History Seminar, Centre for the History of the Book, University of Edinburgh)

“American Comics Anthologies: Transculturality—Mediality—Canonization.” (18 June 2011, “Transnational American Studies,” Annual Conference of the German Association for American Studies (DGfA), University of Regensburg)

"Always already green: Zur Entwicklung und den literaturtheoretischen Prämissen des amerikanischen Ecocriticism." (15 July 2010, Workshop "Ökologische Transformationen und Literarische Repräsentationen", Georg-August-Universität Göttingen)

"'Little Heavy Papery Beautiful Things': McSweeney's and the Rejuvenation of the Print Medium in the USA." (27 March 2010, European Association for American Studies (EAAS) Annual Conference 2010 "Forever Young? The Changing Images of America," Dublin)

"Of Paratexts and Paper Objects: The New Tactility of the Literary Magazine inMcSweeney's Quarterly Concern." (22 March 2010, Universität Basel)

with Andreas Jahn-Sudmann. "The Quest for Quality: Innovation and Metamediality in Contemporary American Serial Drama." (15 Jan. 2010, International Conference "Contemporary Serial Culture: Quality TV Series in a New Media Environment," Hochschule für Film und Fernsehen Potsdam-Babelsberg)

"Local Captivities, Global Narratives: The Ecological Subtext of American Captivity Narratives in the 17th and the 21st Century." (13 Jan. 2010, International Conference "New Grounds: Ecocriticism, Globalization, and Cultural Memory," Department of History, Literature and Cultural Studies, Radboud University Nijmegen, Netherlands)

with Kathleen Loock, "The Tenements in Tinseltown: Anzia Yezierska’s Hungry Hearts on the Silver Screen." (17 Dec. 2009. University of Göttingen)

"Anthologizing American Comics: Teaching the Art of American Graphic Narration through McSweeney's 13" (8 Nov. 2009, American Studies Association (ASA) Annual Meeting "Practices Of Citizenship, Sustainability And Belonging," Washington D.C.)

"The Materiality of Books and TV: Metamedial Narratives in a World of Media Competition and Amateur Narratologists." (1 Oct. 2009, International Symposium "The Metareferential Turn in Contemporary Arts and Media: Forms, Functions, and Attempts at Explanation," Centre for Intermediality Studies, English Department, University of Graz)

"'You Ain't Heard Nothing Yet': Metamedial Configurations of Sound in Early Talkies and Dolby Trailers" (10 June 2009, conference "Blending Media: Defining Film in the Modernist Period," Department of American Studies and 'Framing Media' Research Project of the Austrian Science Fund, University of Innsbruck)

"Roots of American Nature – Negotiating Discourse and Environment in Early American Captivity Narrative." (31 Oct. 2008, conference "Transcultural Spaces: Challenges of Urbanity, Ecology, and the Environment in the New Millenium," John-F.-Kennedy-Institute, FU Berlin)

"'The Painfully, Endlessly Self-Conscious Book Aspect': McSweeney's and Meta-Mediality." (11 July 2008, symposium "Magazine – Playground – Institution: McSweeney's Literary and Cultural Politics", Kennedy Institut - FU Berlin)

Events and Panel Chairs

Moderator: Writer, director, and performer Deborah D.E.E.P. Mouton reading from her memoir Black Chameleon (21 June 2023, Universität Duisburg-Essen)

Panel Chair:  "Institutional Failures and the Dissemination of Literary Knowledge" (6 May 2023, Closing Conference of the Research Network "The Failure of Knowledge - Knowledges of Failure," Universität Mannheim)

Organizer (with Florian Sedlmeier): Seminar "Reading Literary Institutions around 1900" (17 & 18 March 2023, ACLA Annual Meeting, Chicago)

Organizer: Workshop "Black Paratext" with Kinohi Nishikawa from Princeton University (12 January 2023, Universität Münster)

Moderator: Novelist, poet, and critic Lucy Ives reading from her novel Life is Everywhere (12 December 2022, Universität Münster)

Organizer and Panel Chair (with Nir Evron): "Ecological Crisis and Environmental Humanities: The Agency of Literature in the Anthropocene," 13. German-Israeli Frontiers of Humanities Symposium of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities (6-9 November 2022, Jerusalem, Israel)

Organizer and Panel Chair (with Ilka Brasch): “Dispatches from the Method Wars: New Approaches to Cultural Agency and Participation in American Studies,” 67th Annual Meeting of the German Association for American Studies (18 June 2021, University of Heidelberg, Online Event)

Organizer (with Florian Sedlmeier): Symposium “Competing American Literary Institutions around 1900.” (10-11 June 2021, John F. Kennedy Institute for North American Studies, Freie Universität Berlin)

Moderator: A Reading and Conversation with Joy Castro, author of The Truth Book and How Winter Began (19 November 2019, John F. Kennedy Institute for North American Studies, Freie Universität Berlin)

Organizer (with Christian Lammert): Student Symposium “The Evolution of North American Publics” (12 July 2018, John F. Kennedy Institute for North American Studies, Freie Universität Berlin)

Moderator: “neu_übersetzt: James Baldwin,” a conversation and reading with the German translator Miriam Mandelkow (29 June 2018, Literarisches Zentrum Göttingen)

Organizer: Workshop “American Studies as Engaged Scholarship: Doing Public Humanities from the Local to the Transnational,” 65th Annual Conference of the German Association for American Studies (DGfA): “American Counter/Publics” (26 May 2018, John F. Kennedy Institute for North American Studies, Freie Universität Berlin)
Workshop Blog: https://publichumanitiesdgfa18.hcommons.org/

Member of the Planning Committee: 65th Annual Conference of the German Association for American Studies (DGfA): “American Counter/Publics” (24-27 May 2018, John F. Kennedy Institute for North American Studies, Freie Universität Berlin)

Organizer (with Martin Lüthe): Workshop “American Media/Knowledge at the Turn of the 20th Century” (13-14 July 2016, John F. Kennedy Institute for North American Studies, Freie Universität Berlin)

Panel Chair: “Locating Thought, Locating Literatures: Regions and Representations” (2 June 2016, International Conference of the Graduate School of North American Studies “Flows and Undercurrents: Dimensions of Im/mobility in North America”, Freie Universität Berlin)

Organizer (with Kathleen Loock): Workshop "Cli-Fi: The Dystopian Impulse of Contemporary Climate Fiction", in cooperation with the Institute for Advanced Sustainabilty Studies, Potsdam (13 May 2016, John F. Kennedy Institute for North American Studies, Freie Universität Berlin)

Organizer (with Frank Kelleter): Conference "Looking Forward, 2014: Current Projects in American Studies" (13-15 November 2014, John F. Kennedy Institute for North American Studies, Freie Universität Berlin) 

Moderator: David Vann (author of Legend of a Suicide and Caribou Island) reading from his novel Goat Mountain, with Christian Brückner reading from the German translation (9 September 2014, Literarisches Zentrum Göttingen)

Organizer (with Frank Kelleter): "Media Transformations / Transformative Media", Bologna Conference of the International American Studies Research Group (26-28 June 2014, John F. Kennedy Institute for North American Studies, Freie Universität Berlin) 

Panel Chair: “Functions of Narrating” (6 June 2014, International Conference “Forms and Practices of Narrating”, John F. Kennedy Institute for North American Studies, Freie Universität Berlin) 

Moderator: A Reading and Conversation with Jonathan Lethem (21 May 2014, John F. Kennedy Institute for North American Studies, Freie Universität Berlin)

Panel Chair: “’The Most Trusted Name in News?’: Television from Political Commentary to Parody” (9 May 2014, International Conference of the Graduate School of North American Studies “Trust Issues: Community, Contingency, and Security in North America”, Freie Universität Berlin)

Panel Chair: "Circulating Identities: Nineteenth-Century American Periodicals" (20 July 2013, SHARP Annual Conference "Geographies of the Book," University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia)

Organizer (with Frank Kelleter): Lichtenberg-Workshop "Ästhetik und Praxis populärer Serialität II" (16-17 July 2009) mit Kommentatoren Prof. Dr. Ursula Ganz-Blättler (Universität Lugano) und Prof. Dr. Jörg Türschmann (Universität Wien).

Organizer (with Frank Kelleter): "Ästhetik und Praxis populärer Serialität I" (12-13 February 2009) mit Kommentatoren Prof. Dr. Hans-Otto Hügel (Universität Hildesheim) und Prof. Dr. Irmela Schneider (Universität zu Köln).

Grants and External Funding

July 2023: DFG Individual Research Grant (Sachbeihilfe) for the Project “From Patronage to the Mass Market: Institutionalizing Literary Knowledge Cultures in the 19th-Century United States”; collaborative project with Philipp Löffler, University of Heidelberg (project begins spring 2024)

November 2022: Grant by the Fritz Thyssen Stiftung for a W3 visiting professorship at the University of Duisburg-Essen (in collaboration with Barbara Buchenau) 

November 2022: Travel Grant by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation (DAAD) for the German Israeli Frontiers of Humanities Symposium 2022, Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, Jerusalem

June 2021: Funding by the EXC 2020 “Temporal Communities: Doing Literature in a Global Perspective” (FU Berlin) for the symposium “Competing American Literary Institutions around 1900” 

July 2016: Funding by the Graduate School of North American Studies and the Center for International Cooperation (FU Berlin) to support the workshop “American Media/Knowledge at the Turn of the 20th Century”

October 2016-September 2017: Feodor Lynen Research Fellowship by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation; one-year grant for research at Brown University

May 2016: Funding by the Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies at Potsdam to support the workshop “Cli-Fi: The Dystopian Impulse of Contemporary Climate Fiction” 

2013-2017: Postdoctoral Associate at the Graduate School "Literature and the Dissemination of Literature in the Age of Digitization", University of Göttingen (funded by the German Research Foundation)

September 2014:  Travel Grant by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) for the symposium "Defining America: New Writing, New Voices, New Directions" at the Salzburg Global Seminar

July 2013: Travel Grant by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) for the SHARP Annual Conference "Geographies of the Book" at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia

2008-2012: Seven travel grants for national and international conferences, awarded by the Graduate School of Humanities (GSGG), Göttingen

November 2009: Travel Grant by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) for the Annual Convention of the American Studies Association (ASA) in Washington, D.C.

2008-2009: Coordinator of the Funding Application for a Research Unit on "Popular Seriality: Aesthetics and Practice" at the German Research Foundation; (overall grant: 1.8 million Euro; funding period: 2010-2013)

2004-2005: Scholarship of the Education Abroad Program (EAP), University of California, Los Angeles (undergraduate exchange)

Memberships

German Association for American Studies (DGfA)

Modern Language Association (MLA)

Society for the History of Authorship, Reading & Publishing (SHARP)

Monograph

• Metamedia: American Book Fictions and Literary Print Culture after Digitization. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2015. 316 pages.
  [Reviews: American Literary History 30.2 (2018): 394-401; The Year's Work in English Studies 96 (2017): 1092-93; American Literature 89.2 (2017): 434-37; SHARP News (August 2017); Materialities of Literature 4.2 (2016): 292-295; Westminster Papers in Communication and Culture 11.1 (2016): 21–25; American Literary Scholarship (2015): 289]

Edited Volumes & Special Issues

• with Sheila Liming and Florian Sedlmeier. American Literary Institutions around 1900. Spec. issue of College Literature 51.4 (2024).

• with Frank Kelleter. Culture²: Theorizing Theory for the Twenty-First Century, Vol. 1. Bielefeld: transcript, 2022. 264 pages.
  Download Open Access Version

• with Ulla Haselstein, Frank Kelleter, and Birte Wege. American Counter/Publics. Heidelberg: Winter, 2019. 415 pages.

• with Heike Schäfer. The Printed Book in Contemporary American Culture: Medium, Object, Metaphor. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019. 277 pages.
  [Reviews: Textual Cultures 14.1 (2021): 291-295; Amerikastudien/American Studies 66.4 (2021): 709-11; European Journal of American Studies (online), reviews 2021-4.]

• with Frank Kelleter. Projecting American Studies: Essays on Theory, Method, and Practice. Heidelberg: Winter, 2018. 314 pages.
  [Reviews: American Studies in Scandinavia 54.1 (2022): 80-82; Amerikastudien/American Studies 64.1 (2020): 127-30; Anglia 138.2 (2020) 328-32.]

Journal Articles

• with Corinna Norrick-Rühl. "Reading Reese’s Pieces: Genre, Diversity, and Metanarrative in Reese Witherspoon’s Book Club." Contemporary Literature (accepted for publication).

• with Sheila Liming and Florian Sedlmeier. "Introduction." American Literary Institutions around 1900. Spec. issue of College Literature 51.4 (2024): 429-44.

• with Florian Sedlmeier. “Literary Sites of Institutional Confirmation and Critique: Howells in the Study, Cather in the Office.” American Literary Institutions around 1900. Spec. issue of College Literature 51.4 (2024): 669-98.

• with Ilka Brasch et al. “Forum: Method as Practice.” Amerikastudien/American Studies 67.1 (2022): 5-34.
  Full Text Download

• "The Document as Epistemic Object: Notes on Archival Knowledge Cultures." Anglia: Journal of English Philology 138.3 (2020): 404-427.

• "'Little Heavy Papery Beautiful Things': McSweeney's, Metamediality, and the Rejuvenation of the Book in the USA."  Writing Technologies 3 (2010): 25-41.
  Full Text Download

• "(Forced) Walks on the Wild Side: Precarious Borders in American Captivity Narratives." Ecozon@: European Journal of Literature, Culture and Environment 1.2 (2010): 22-37.
  Full Text Download
• "Wilderness Woes: Negotiating Discourse and Environment in Early American Captivity Narratives." Transcultural Spaces: Challenges of Urbanity, Ecology, and the Environment. Ed. Stefan L. Brandt, Winfried Fluck, and Frank Mehring. REAL: Yearbook of Research in English and American Literature 26. Tübingen: Narr, 2010. 273-293.

Book Chapters

• “The Failed Scholar Turned Novelist: W.E.B. Du Bois’s Early Fiction within and against the University.” The Failure of Knowledge - Knowledges of Failure. Ed. Katharina Motyl and Regina Schober. (under review)

• "Epistemic Style and the 'Knowing Unkown” of Racial Capitalism in W.E.B. Du Bois’s Scorn.' Speculative Endeavors: Cultures of Knowledge and Capital in the Long Nineteenth Century. Ed. Katrin Horn, Karin Hoepker, and Selina Foltinek. Manchester: Manchester UP (forthcoming 2025).

• “McSweeney’s.” Print Works? Wie Verlagen, Zeitungen und Zeitschriften das Überleben gelingt. Ed. Hendrikje Schauer and Marcel Lepper. Stuttgart: Works & Nights (forthcoming).

• “Affordance.” The Aesthetics of Collective Agency: Corporations, Communities and Crowds in the Twenty-First Century. Ed. Stefanie Mueller and Simone Knewitz. Bielefeld: transcript, 2024. 51-62.
  Open Access Version

• "Die small American novel: Ästhetische Handlungspotenziale des kurzen Buchs auf dem modernen Literaturmarkt." Der Roman als Netzwerk: Formen, Ideen, Waren. Ed. Tim Lanzendörfer and Corinna Norrick-Rühl. Cham: Springer, 2023. 333-358.

• “Multimodal Fantasies of Getting Lost: Reading Contemporary Literary Maps.” Fictionality and Multimodal Narratives. Ed. Torsa Ghosal and Alison Gibbons. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 2023. 39-59.

• "Media Theory as Book Theory: From the Technologies of Writing to the Materialities of Reading." Media Ecologies of Literature. Ed. Susanne Bayerlipp, Ralf Haekel, and Johannes Schlegel. London: Bloomsbury, 2023. 35-51.

• “Thick Redescription: Narrating Sociocultural Forms with Matthew Desmond’s Evicted.” Culture²: Theorizing Theory for the Twenty-First Century, Vol. 1. Ed. Frank Kelleter and Alexander Starre. Bielefeld: transcript, 2022. 249-62.
  Open Access Version

• “Reading the Small American Novel: The Aesthetic Agency of the Short Book in the Modern Literary Marketplace.” The Novel as Network: Forms, Ideas, Commodities. Ed. Tim Lanzendörfer and Corinna Norrick-Rühl. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020. 299-322.

• with Heike Schaefer. “The Printed Book, Contemporary Media Culture, and American Studies.” The Printed Book in Contemporary American Culture: Medium, Object, Metaphor. Ed. Alexander Starre and Heike Schaefer. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019. 3-28.

• "Buchwerke: Paratext und post-digitale Materialität in der amerikanischen Gegenwartsliteratur." Das Werk: Zum Verschwinden und Fortwirken eines Grundbegriffs. Ed. Lutz Danneberg, Annette Gilbert and Carlos Spoerhase. Berlin: DeGruyter, 2019. 169-90.
• with Frank Kelleter. "Preface." Projecting American Studies. Ed. Frank Kelleter and Alexander Starre. Heidelberg: Winter, 2018. 9-13.
• with Ruth Mayer. "Media/Knowledge: American(ist) Epistemic Formats 1900/2000." Projecting American Studies. Ed. Frank Kelleter and Alexander Starre. Heidelberg: Winter, 2018. 273-285.
• "Social Texts: How to Account for the Cultural Work of Carrier Media." Writing Matters. Ed. Irene Berti et al. Berlin: de Gruyter, 2017. 27-42. 
  Full Text Download
• "Professionelle Kondensierung: Die Annotation als Wissensformat im Catalog der American Library Association (1893-1926)." Kurz & Knapp: Zur Mediengeschichte kleiner Formen vom 17. Jahrhundert bis zur Gegenwart. Ed. Michael Gamper and Ruth Mayer. Bielefeld: transcript, 2017. 119-129.
  Open Access Version
• "Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close." The American Novel of the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries. Ed. Timo Müller. Berlin: de Gruyter, 2017. 401-413.
• with Julia Leyda, Kathleen Loock, Thiago Pinto Barbosa, and Manuel Rivera. "The Dystopian Impulse of Contemporary Cli-Fi." IASS Working Paper. Postdam: Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies, 2016. 
  Full Text Download 
• "Building Knowledge: Carnegie Libraries as Epistemic Spaces." Knowledge Landscapes North America. Ed. Christian Kloeckner, Simone Knewitz, and Sabine Sielke. Heidelberg: Winter, 2016. 67-84.
• "Organic Book Design from Dwiggins to Danielewski: The Metamedial Aesthetics of Embodied Literature in American Trade Publishing." Publishing as Artistic Practice. Ed. Annette Gilbert. Berlin: Sternberg, 2016. 74-87.
  [Review: The Brooklyn Rail, 1 April 2017] 
• "The Pleasures of Paper: Tethering Literature to Obsolete Material Forms." Cultures of Obsolescence in North America: History, Materiality, and the Digital Age. Ed. Babette B. Tischleder and Sarah Wasserman. New York: Palgrave, 2015. 127-144.
• "Normative Kanontheorien: Kontextbezogene Modelle;" "Genreliteraturen: Das Beispiel Comics." Handbuch Kanon und Wertung. Ed. Gabriele Rippl and Simone Winko. Stuttgart: Metzler, 2013. 58-66; 345-50.
• with Andreas Jahn-Sudmann. "Die Experimente des 'Quality TV' - Innovation und Metamedialität in neueren amerikanischen Serien." Transnationale Serienkultur. Theorie, Ästhetik, Narration und Rezeption neuerer Fernsehserien. Ed. Susanne Eichner, Lothar Mikos, and Rainer Winter. Wiesbaden: VS Verlag, 2013. 103-119.
• "Teaching the Comics Anthology: The Readers, Authors, and Media of McSweeney’s 13." Teaching Comics and Graphic Narratives: Essays on Theory, Strategy and Practice. Ed. Lan Dong. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2012. 40-52.
• "American Comics Anthologies: Mediality—Canonization—Transnationalism." Transnational American Studies. Ed. Udo Hebel. Heidelberg: Winter, 2012. 541-60.
• "The Materiality of Books and TV: House of Leaves and The Sopranos in a World of Formless Content and Media Competition." The Metareferential Turn in Contemporary Arts and Media: Forms, Functions, and Attempts at Explanation. Ed. Werner Wolf. Studies in Intermediality 5. Amsterdam/New York: Rodopi, 2011. 195-215.
• "Always already green: Zur Entwicklung und den literaturtheoretischen Prämissen des amerikanischen Ecocriticism." Ökologische Transformationen und literarische Repräsentationen. Ed. Maren Ermisch, Ulrike Kruse, Urte Stobbe. Göttingen: Universitätsverlag, 2010. 13-34.
  Full Text Download

Encyclopedia Articles

• “Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois.” Kindlers Literatur Lexikon. 3rd ed. (Online Supplement) Ed. Christiane Freudenstein-Arnold. Stuttgart: Metzler, 2024.

• “Patricia Lockwood, No One Is Talking about This.” Kindlers Literatur Lexikon. 3rd ed. (Online Supplement) Ed. Christiane Freudenstein-Arnold. Stuttgart: Metzler, 2023.

• “Jenny Offill, Weather.” Kindlers Literatur Lexikon. 3rd ed. (Online Supplement) Ed. Christiane Freudenstein-Arnold. Stuttgart: Metzler, 2022.

• “Dave Eggers.” The Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Fiction, 1980-2020. Ed. Patrick O’Donnell, Stephen J. Burn, and Lesley Larkin. Chichester: Wiley Blackwell, 2022. 398-403.

• “McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern.” The Routledge Companion to the British and North American Literary Magazine. Ed. Tim Lanzendörfer. New York: Routledge, 2022. 411-19.

• “Saidiya Hartman, Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments”; “Chris Ware, Rusty Brown.” Kindlers Literatur Lexikon. 3rd ed. (Online Supplement) Ed. Christiane Freudenstein-Arnold. Stuttgart: Metzler, 2021.

• “Colson Whitehead, The Underground Railroad.” Kindlers Literatur Lexikon. 3rd ed. (Online Supplement) Ed. Christiane Freudenstein-Arnold. Stuttgart: Metzler, 2018.

• "Garth Risk Hallberg, City on Fire." Kindlers Literatur Lexikon. 3rd ed. (Online Supplement) Ed. Christiane Freudenstein-Arnold. Stuttgart: Metzler, 2017.

• “Claudia Rankine, Citizen: An American Lyric“. Kindlers Literatur Lexikon. 3rd ed. (Online Supplement) Ed. Christiane Freudenstein-Arnold. Stuttgart: Metzler, 2016.

• “Chris Ware, Building Stories,” “John D’Agata/Jim Fingal, The Lifespan of a Fact,” “James Salter, All That Is.” Kindlers Literatur Lexikon. 3rd ed. (Online Supplement) Ed. Christiane Freudenstein-Arnold. Stuttgart: Metzler, 2014.

• “Timothy Donnelly, The Cloud Corporation”; “Karen Russell, Swamplandia!.” Kindlers Literatur Lexikon. 3rd ed. (Online Supplement) Ed. Christiane Freudenstein-Arnold. Stuttgart: Metzler, 2013.

• “Chad Harbach, The Art of Fielding;” “Jennifer Egan, A Visit from the Goon Squad”; “Philip Roth, Nemesis.” Kindlers Literatur Lexikon. 3rd ed. (Online Supplement) Ed. Christiane Freudenstein-Arnold. Stuttgart: Metzler, 2012.

• “Colson Whitehead, Sag Harbor.” Kindlers Literatur Lexikon 3rd ed. (Online Supplement) Ed. Christiane Freudenstein-Arnold. Stuttgart: Metzler, 2011.

• “Colson Whitehead, John Henry Days and The Intuitionist; “Nathan Englander, For the Relief of Unbearable Urges.” Kindlers Literatur Lexikon. 3rd ed. (Online Supplement) Ed. Christiane Freudenstein-Arnold. Stuttgart: Metzler, 2010.

• "Nella Larsen, Passing" (Vol. 9, 658-659), "Thomas Harriot, A Brief and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia" (Vol. 7, 106-107), "Abraham Lincoln, Das Prosawerk" (Vol. 10, 165), "Thomas Morton, New English Canaan" (Vol. 11, 516-517), "Roger Williams, A Key into the Language of America" (Vol. 17, 454-455).Kindlers Neues Literatur Lexikon. Ed. Heinz Ludwig Arnold. Stuttgart: Metzler, 2009.

• 9 additional revised and co-authored articles and biograms for Kindlers Literatur Lexikon. 3rd ed. 18. Vols. Ed. Heinz Ludwig Arnold. Stuttgart: Metzler, 2009.

 Reviews

• Benesch, Klaus. Mythos Lesen: Buchkultur und Geisteswissenschaften im Informationszeitalter. Amerikastudien/American Studies 68.1 (2023).
  Full Text Download

• Liliana M. Naydan, Flat-World Fiction: Digital Humanity in Early Twenty-First-Century America. American Literary History. 35.1 (2023): 668-71.
  Full Text Download

• Senchyne, Jonathan. The Intimacy of Paper in Early and Nineteenth-Century American Literature. Anglia 139.1 (2021): 274-278.
  Full Text Download

• Jordan, Rieke. Work in Progress: Curatorial Labor in Twenty-First-Century American Fiction. ZAA 68.3 (2020): 339-41.
  Full Text Download

• Pressman, Jessica. Digital Modernism: Making It New in New Media. Review of English Studies 273 (2015): 200-01.
• Bergthaller, Hannes, and Carsten Schinko, eds. Addressing Modernity: Social Systems Theory and U.S. Cultures. Amerikastudien/American Studies 59:1 (2014): Web.
  Full Text Download
• "'Serielle Formen' – Internationale Tagung am Seminar für Filmwissenschaft der Universität Zürich, 4.-6.6.2009" (Tagungsbericht). Zeitschrift für Medienwissenschaft Online (2009): Web.

 

Blog

Book History and Print Culture Network: Interdisciplinary Perspective from German-Area Scholars. (Founder and Administrator, with Corinna Norrick-Rühl, Doris Lechner, and Simone Zweifel).