Prof. Dr. Carsten Junker
| Since 2019 | University professor of American Studies with a Focus on Diversity Studies, TU Dresden |
| 2022 | Visiting professor, American Studies Center, University of Warsaw |
| 2018–2019 | John W. Kluge Center German Federal Fellow, Library of Congress |
| 2018–2019 |
Deputy head of chair of North American Literature, TU Dresden |
| 2015–2018 | Acting chair of American Literary Studies, Leipzig University |
| 2015 |
Habilitation, venia legendi for American Literary Studies and Cultural Studies, University of Bremen |
| 2012 | Visiting professor, American Studies Center, University of Warsaw |
| 2011 | Christoph Daniel Ebeling fellow, American Antiquarian Society, Mass. |
| 2009 |
Dr. phil., “summa cum laude,” North American Literature and Culture, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin |
| 2008–2015 | Assistant professor (wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter) of English-speaking Cultures/American Studies and research fellow at the Institute for Postcolonial and Transcultural Studies (INPUTS), University of Bremen |
| 2003 | M.A., English and American Studies, German Studies, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin |
- North American literatures and cultures (incl. Canada and the Caribbean, 17th century to the present)
- Epistemologies and ethics of difference, diversity, and decoloniality
- Theories and history of authorship, genre and media theory (esp. autobiography, essay, manifesto, interview, social media), narratology
- Critical Race Studies (esp. Critical Whiteness Studies, African American and Black Diaspora Studies)
- Gender and Queer Studies (esp. theories of intersectionality; queer theory)
- Structural violence and its articulations (esp. the history and legacy of transatlantic enslavement, settler colonialism, war in North America)
- North American popular culture, visual culture, music
- Contradiction Studies
The project considers modes of formalizing diversity in structurally dialogic forms such as essay, interview, pamphlet, and manifesto. It examines the potential effects of narrativized dimensions of social tensions, oftentimes violent dissent, as well as agonistic orders of knowledge and the patterns that constitute publics and counter-publics.
Research project: “The Upsurge of the Manifesto in Contemporary Debates on Diversity in the United States,” funded by German Research Foundation (DFG), Individual Research Grant, since Oct. 2022.
Book chapter: Handl, Laura, and Carsten Junker. “Gaga Meta-manifesto.” Activist Writing: History, Politics, Rhetoric, edited by Pierre-Héli Monot, David Bebnowski, and Sakina Shakil Gröppmaier, intercom, 2024, pp. 173–184, www.intercom-mono.com/160/Activist_Writing.
Edited volume: Carsten Junker, editor. Inspecting the Interview: A Companion. De Gruyter, 2024. Diskursmuster / Discourse Patterns, vol. 35, doi.org/10.1515/9783111086484.
Book chapter: Junker, Carsten. “The Interview as Genre: Notes on Form, Praxeology, and Epistemology.” Inspecting the Interview: A Companion, edited by Carsten Junker. De Gruyter, 2024, pp. VII–XXII. Diskursmuster / Discourse Patterns, vol. 35, doi.org/10.1515/9783111086484-001.
Journal article: Junker, Carsten. “Traversing Time: Dialectical Temporal Gestures in the Blended Genre of the Essay Manifesto.“ The Time of the Essay, special issue of CounterText, edited by Mario Aquilina, vol. 9, no. 3, 2023, pp. 373–89, doi.org/10.3366/count.2023.0321.
Journal article: Junker, Carsten. “Claiming Class: The Manifesto between Categorical Disruption and Stabilization.” Culture, Theory and Critique, vol. 63, nos. 2–3, 2023, pp. 189–205, doi.org/10.1080/14735784.2023.2214860.
Workshop: “Das Interview: Form, Praxis, Epistemologie.” TU Dresden, Nov. 2019.
Book chapter: Junker, Carsten. “Of Cross and Crescent: Analogies of Violence and the Topos of ‘Barbary Captivity’ in Samuel Sewall’s The Selling of Joseph (1700), with a Postscript on Benjamin Franklin.” Mediterranean Slavery and World Literature: Captivity Genres from Cervantes to Rousseau, edited by Mario Klarer, Routledge, 2020, pp. 259-76.
Book chapter: Junker, Carsten. “Interrogating the Interview as Genre: Five Cases over Two Hundred Years.” Postcoloniality—Decoloniality—Black Critique: Joints and Fissures, edited by Sabine Broeck and Carsten Junker, Campus, 2014, pp. 311-29.
Book chapter: “Essay.” Wie Rassismus aus Wörtern spricht: Kerben des Kolonialismus im Wissensarchiv deutsche Sprache: Ein kritisches Nachschlagewerk, edited by Susan Arndt and Nadja Ofuatey-Alazard, Unrast, 2011, pp. 272-84.
Monograph: Junker, Carsten. Frames of Friction: Black Genealogies, White Hegemony, and the Essay as Critical Intervention. Campus, 2010. Nordamerikastudien, vol. 27, www.campus.de/buecher-campus-verlag/wissenschaft/kulturwissenschaften/frames_of_friction.
The project treats American Studies as a site ideally suited for theorizing and researching the production of knowledge, given the strong impact which the proliferation of categories of analysis has had on American Studies in the wake of social movements and discursive struggles over interpretation. It interrogates the epistemological potentials of difference, decoloniality, and diversity as well as of perspectives related to critiques of hegemony as they become manifest in the history, objects, methodologies, and ethics of the field.
International Conference: Tracing Forms of De/Marginalization. European Research Network on Discourses of Marginality and Demarginalizations (DeMarg 5), TU Dresden, Juni 2023, demarg.eu/activities/.
Book chapter: Acke, Hanna, Bonacchi, Silvia, Junker, Carsten, Seiler Brylla, Charlotta and Warnke, Ingo H. "Minorities and Majorities, Marginality and Centrality: An Introduction." Religious and National Discourses: Contradictory Belonging, Minorities, Marginality and Centrality, edited by Hanna Acke, Silvia Bonacchi, Charlotta Seiler Brylla and Ingo H. Warnke. Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter, 2023, pp. 1-8. Diskursmuster / Discourse Patterns, vol. 33, doi.org/10.1515/9783111039633-001.
Journal contribution: Junker, Carsten. “Rethinking the Authority of Experience: Mobile Field Noting as a Method of American Diversity Studies.” “Forum: ‘Method as Practice’,” edited by Ilka Brasch and Alexander Starre. Amerikastudien/American Studies: A Quarterly, vol. 67, no. 1, 2022, pp. 5-34, 27-29, doi.org/10.33675/AMST/2022/1/4.
Book chapter: Junker, Carsten. “Pernicious Plurability: Liberty’s Kids’ Militainment and the Lure of Diversity.” U.S. American Culture as Popular Culture, edited by Astrid Böger and Florian Sedlmeier, Winter, pp. 99-115, 2022.
Handbook chapter: Junker, Carsten. “Experience as Moving Methodology—Notations on the Study of Urban Diversity.” Handbuch Sprache im urbanen Raum/Handbook of Language in Urban Space, edited by Beatrix Busse and Ingo H. Warnke, De Gruyter, 2022, pp. 86-117. Handbücher Sprachwissen, vol. 20, doi.org/10.1515/9783110296334-005.
Workshop: “Diversity Chic? Popular Culture between Empowerment and Exploitation.” TU Dresden, Nov. 2021.
Journal article: Junker, Carsten. “Invocations of Indigeneity in the Colonial Red/White/Black Triad.” Indigenous Knowledges in North America, special issue of Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik: A Quarterly of Language, Literature and Culture, edited by Birgit Däwes and Kerstin Knopf, vol. 68, no. 2, 2020, pp. 145-158, doi.org/10.1515/zaa-2020-0016.
Handbook chapter: Junker, Carsten, and Julia Roth. “Intersektionalität als diskurskritisches Basiskonzept.” Handbuch Diskurs, edited by Ingo H. Warnke, de Gruyter, 2018, pp. 158-70. Handbücher Sprachwissen, 6, doi.org/10.1515/9783110296075-007.
Journal article: Junker, Carsten. “The 4D List: Knowledge Production of Difference, Diversity, Decolonization, and Destruction.” Voices from Around the World, no. 1, 2018, gssc.uni-koeln.de/wissenstransfer/voices-from-around-the-world/controlling-knowledge-and-the-role-of-engaged-intellectuals.
Edited special issue: Junker, Carsten, and Marie-Luise Löffler, editors. Black Studies—Paradigm Shifts, special issue of Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik: A Quarterly of Language, Literature and Culture, vol. 65, no. 2, 2017, www.degruyter.com/journal/key/zaa/65/2/html.
Monograph: Junker, Carsten. Patterns of Positioning: On the Poetics of Early Abolition. Winter, 2016. American Studies—A Monograph Series, vol. 271, www.winter-verlag.de/de/detail/978-3-8253-6606-3/Junker_Patterns_of_Positioning/.
Journal article: Junker, Carsten. “Self-Aggrandizement: Discursive Effects of Early Abolitionist Self-Positioning.” Journal for Discourse Studies/Zeitschrift für Diskursforschung, vol. 3, 2016, pp. 241-64, resolver.sub.uni-goettingen.de/purl?fidaac-11858/2812.
Journal article: Junker, Carsten, and Ingo Warnke. “Marguerite Stix and the Shell: Notes on Disciplinarity and Contradiction.” Quaderna, no. 3, 2015, quaderna.org/3/marguerite-stix-and-the-shell-notes-on-disciplinarity-and-contradiction/.
Edited volume: Broeck, Sabine, and Carsten Junker, editors. Postcoloniality—Decoloniality—Black Critique: Joints and Fissures. Campus, 2014, , www.campus.de/buecher-campus-verlag/wissenschaft/kulturwissenschaften/postcoloniality_decoloniality_black_critique-8578.html.
Monograph: Junker, Carsten, and Julia Roth. Weiß Sehen: Dekoloniale Blickwechsel mit Toni Morrison und Zora Neale Hurston. Helmer, 2010, www.ulrike-helmer-verlag.de/buchbeschreibungen/carsten-junker-julia-roth-hg-weiß-sehen/.
This research project aims to recover and review—classify, historicize, and theorize—co-written texts that were published in book form in the United States from the late eighteenth century to the present. It seeks to contribute to debates on the nexus of authorship and cultural authority that address the privileging of notions of singular authorship over models of literary collaboration which continue to challenge normative dimensions of singular authorship in fields of literary production.
Publication: Junker, Carsten. “Innovation and Iteration: Queer Machines and the Tension between Manifesto and Manifestor.” Queer Reflections on AI: Uncertain Intelligences, edited by Michael Klipphahn-Karge, Ann-Kathrin Koster, and Sara Morais dos Santos Bruss, Routledge, 2023, pp. 145-61, doi.org/10.4324/9781003357957.
Fellowship: John W. Kluge Center Fellowship an der Library of Congress (LoC), verliehen durch die Deutsche Gesellschaft für Amerikastudien und die LoC (2018-19)
Publication: Junker, Carsten. “Vicarious Writing, Or: Going to Write It for You,“ Amerikastudien/American Studies: A Quarterly, vol. 65, no. 3, 2020, pp. 325-45, doi.org/10.33675/AMST/2020/3/7, doi.org/10.33675/AMST/2020/3/7.
Publication: Junker, Carsten, and Marie-Luise Löffler. “Ghostwriting and Its Contradictions, Or: Meet the Trumps.” Spaces of Dissension: Towards a New Perspective on Contradiction, edited by Julia Lossau, et al., Springer, 2020, pp. 39-66, doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-25990-7_3.