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Research at the Chair of North American Literature

As a field of American Studies, North American literature is a central place for both the study and scholarly reflection of the literary, cultural, and medial formalization of a globalized, increasingly digitized world. By questioning the distinction between approaches to literary theory and cultural studies, faculty members at the Chair of North American Literature investigate the relationship between canonical and popular text archives, the potential effects of the narrative dimensions of knowledge, and historically shaped phenomena of text-, sound-, as well as image-based manifestations of social discourses.

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KEY RESEARCH PROJECTS

Collaborative Authorship in US American Culture

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.

Epistemologies of Difference, Diversity, and Decoloniality

The project considers American Studies to be a predestined place for the theorization and exploration of the production of knowledge, in view of the strong impact which the establishment of proliferating categories of analysis 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 and their related perspectives of a critique of hegemony, as they become manifest in the history, objects, methodologies, and ethics of the field.

CRC-Project: Toward the Poetics and Politics of Disparagement in US-American Popular Culture

This project, which is part of Collaborative Research Center 1285, is interested in the form(s) that disparagement takes in American popular culture and in the cultural work that it does. Its initial focus rests on disparagement culture in contemporary television.

Weiter sehen

We are actively engaged in establishing 'Weiter sehen' - a network of scholars in the social sciences, literary and cultural studies at TU Dresden who work in the field of tv seriality studies.

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Research Approach

Research at the Chair of North American Literature is dedicated to a broad understanding of literature. What our thematically diverse research activities have in common is an interest in the social and cultural relevance and functions of literature and other forms of cultural expression in historical contexts. We ask how texts, as formalized practices, provide frameworks for constituting and interpreting individual realities and social, often conflict-laden dynamics and for probing alternative ways of thinking. We ask about the historical, material conditions and the discursive effects of texts and the formal strategies, narrative patterns, and literary means by which these effects are potentially achieved.

Postdoc- und Promotionsprojekte

PhD-Project: Gesine Wegner, M.A.

"Becoming Disabled: Multi-Modal Mediations of Disability and Trauma in 21st Century American Literature"

PhD-Project: Michaela Beck, M.A.

"‘Undetermined Narration’ in Contemporary American Novels"

Postdoc-Project: Dr. Frank Usbeck

"US Milblogs and 'Homecoming Scenarios'"