In addition to some faculty members' (post)doctoral research, an important portion of American Studies Leipzig's academic output is produced by (post)doctoral candidates and fellows, in dissertations and Habilitationen (postdoctoral theses/second PhDs).
Current (Post)Doctoral Candidates
At American Studies Leipzig, the following scholars currently work on dissertations, postdoctoral theses, and other research projects through external funding:
Dissertations
- Sophia Cosby: “Sympathy for the Rich: Suffering and Class in Contemporary US Literature”
- Ella Ernst: “Enfreakment in the Superhero Genre” as part of the DFG Research Project “Enfreakment as an Invective Mode in US-American Popular Culture”
- Konstantin Gross: "Collective Nature Perceptions in the USA in the 1970s to 1990s: A Discourse-Historical Investigation of Nature-Culture Conflicts in US-American Blockbuster Movies"
- Leonie M. J. Kratzenstein: “Affective Rites: Ritual in 21st-Century Queer Conversion Therapy Narratives”
- Anne Krenz: "The Poetics and Politics of the Invective Mode in Contemporary US-American Television: The Makeover Show" as part of the Collaborative Research Center 1285 "Invectivity: Constellations and Dynamics of Disparagement"
- Milo Miller: "Haunted Technology and Corrupted Nostalgia: Affect and Reality in New Media Horror"
- Claudia Müller: "The Cultural Image of the Fat Poor in Contemporary American Literature and Culture"
- Christoph Nostitz: “Dangerous Spaces – Narratives of Securitization in Post-9-11 US Literature and Culture”
- Laura Pröger: “Enfreakment in the Genre of Regional Exploitation” as part of the DFG Research Project “Enfreakment as an Invective Mode in US-American Popular Culture”
- Samir Taher: “Liminalities of Symbolic Forms in Right-Wing Conspiracism in the US”
Habilitationen (Postdoctoral Projects)
- Dr. Steffen Wöll: "The Space Between Oceans: Mobilizing America’s Transhemispheric Empire" as part of the Collaborative Research Center 1199 "Processes of Spatialization under the Global Condition"
Associated Research Fellows
Completed Dissertations and Habilitations
The following dissertations and Habilitationen (postdoctoral projects) have been completed at American Studies Leipzig in the past:
2023
- Mascha Helene Lange: "Transmedia Negotiations of Gendered Violence in Contemporary US-American Literature and Culture" (Dissertation)
2022
- Thorsten Burkhardt: "Gothic Realism as Political Fiction in Contemporary American Novels about the Small Town" (Dissertation)
- Katja Schulze: "The Poetics and Politics of Invective Humor: Textual Strategies of Disparagement in Contemporary US Sitcoms" (Dissertation)
2021
- Alyn Euritt: "Podcasting Intimacy: Community and the Sound of Closeness" (Dissertation)
- Sebastian M. Herrmann: "Data Imaginary: Literature, Data, and the Contours of Literariness in Nineteenth-Century US Culture" (Habiliation)
2020
- Deniz Bozkurt-Pekár: "Imaging Southern Spaces: Hemispheric and Transatlantic Souths in Antebellum US Writings" (Dissertation)
- Steffen Wöll: "The West and the Word: Imagining, Formatting, and Ordering the American West in Nineteenth-Century Cultural Discourse" (Dissertation)
2019
- Diana Labisch: "From Critical Race Theory to Critical Religion Theory: An Adaption for In-Country Struggles based on Race, Religion, Skin Color, and Capitals. A Globalized Cultural, Social, Political, Educational, Historical, and Contemporary „East versus West“ Crisis." (Dissertation)
- Eleonora Ravizza: "The Fifties in Contemporary US Popular Culture: Self-Reflexivity, Melodrama, and Nostalgia" (Dissertation)
2018
- Stefan Schubert: "Narrative Instability in Contemporary American Popular Culture" (Dissertation)
2016
- Anja Eifert: "Crafting an Effective US Public Diplomacy Strategy for Indonesia: An Analysis for Theorists and Practitioners" (Dissertation)
2015
- Florian Bast: "Agency in Works by Octavia E. Butler" (Dissertation)
- Franziska Kloth: "The Deconstruction of Good and Evil in Contemporary American Crime Series" (Dissertation)
2012
- Sebastian M. Herrmann: "Presidential Unrealities: Epistemic Panic, CUltural WOrk and the US Presidency" (Dissertation)
- Marie-Luise Löffler: "When the Margins Bite Back: Fantastic Re-conceptualizations of Interracial Relationships in Contemporary African American Women's Fiction" (Dissertation)
- Dominik Pütz: "Qualified Welcome: The American Response to Human Displacement and the Discourse on Refugeehood in the 21st Century" (Dissertation)
2010
- Zoe Antonia Kusmierz: "Charmed Worlds. Reading the American Shopping Mall from Texture to Text" (Dissertation)
- Frank Usbeck: "Fellow Peoples. The Influence of the German Image of Indians on German National Identity and its Appropriation by National Socialism in German Periodicals 1925-1945" (Dissertation)
2009
- Carsten Haake: "Watching America. The Significance of the Frontier in American Television" (Dissertation)
- Katja Kanzler: "Unseparate Spheres: Gender and Class in Antebellum Writing of the Kitchen and the Factory" (Habilitation)
- Lidia Martínez Murillo: "Mexican Competitiveness in the U.S. Furniture Market versus China" (Dissertation)
2008
- Katja Schmieder: "Reconciling the 'Two Cultures' - Science in Contemporary American Crime Fiction" (Dissertation)
2006
- Anja Becker: "For the Sake of Old Leipzig Days. Academic Networks of American Students at a German University, 1781-1914" (Dissertation)
2004
- Catrin Gersdorf: "The Poetics and Politics of the Desert: Landscape and the (Re-)Construction of America" (Habilitation)
- Heike Paul: "Kulturkontakt und Racial Presences: Afro-Amerikaner und die deutsche Amerika-Literatur, 1815-1914" (Habilitation)
- Gabriele Pisarz-Ramirez: "MexAmerica: Genealogien und Analysen postnationaler Diskurse in der kulturellen Produktion von Chicanos/as" (Habilitation)
2003
- Änne Troester: "A Momentary Stay Against Confusion: Selfhood and Authorship in the Work of Paul Auster" (Dissertation)
2002
- Katja Kanzler: "Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations: The Multicultural Evolution of Star Trek" (Dissertation)
2000
- Martin Öfele: "'I do not wish to take the field with any better men': Deutschsprachige Einwanderer als Offiziere afro-amerikanischer Truppen im amerikanischen Bürgerkrieg" (Dissertation)
1997
- Heike Paul: "Mapping Migration: Women’s Writing and the American Immigrant Experience" (Dissertation)
For more information on some of these dissertations and Habilitationen, please also see our page on Research Projects.