Leonie M.J. Kratzenstein

Leonie M.J. Kratzenstein

Doctoral Candidate

I received my MA in American Studies from Leipzig University in 2024, after obtaining my BA in British and American Studies from the University of Konstanz. Before this, I completed a voluntary year of social service (FSJ Kultur) at the Staatstheater Hannover in 2017/18 and
subsequently spent the first year of my undergraduate degree at Hannover University’s English department. My BA thesis was concerned with digitality and migration in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Americanah, and I wrote my MA thesis on queer conversion practices in the Bible Belt and other rural areas of the United States, with specific attention to the regions’ camp-like structures. My doctoral dissertation builds on this topic, as I examine rituals in queer conversion therapy narratives, particularly through a focus on non-narrative strategies such as performativity, spectacle, and other affective processes. During my master’s at Leipzig University, I served as a seminar instructor for the American Studies BA program and as a graduate research assistant (WHK) in a project on digitalization in higher education (HDS Leipzig).

  • In project: “Digitalisierung in Disziplinen Partizipativ Umsetzen: Competencies
    Connected“/ “D2C2“) (collaborative research project at Hochschuldidaktik Sachsen). July 2022- Sept. 2023.
  • Student research assistant at the Department of American Studies (University of
    Konstanz). Oct. 2020-Sept. 2021.
  • In project: “Geschlecht und Wissenschaftssprache” (“Gender and Academic
    Language”) at Leibniz Center of Science and Society; Leibniz University of Hannover, Applied Linguistics. Dec. 2018-March 2019.
  • Kratzenstein, Leonie M. J. “Community Making Through Bodily Affect in Ari Aster’s Midsommar,” aspeers: emerging voices in american studies, vol. 16, 2023, pp. 35-49. https://www.aspeers.com/2023/kratzenstein.
  • With Richard Aude, et al. “Introduction: American Bodies.” aspeers: emerging voices in american studies, vol. 15, 2022, pp. 1-11, https://doi.org/10.54465/aspeers.15-02.
  • With Richard Aude, et al., eds. aspeers: emerging voices in american studies, vol. 15, 2022, 10.54465/aspeers.15.
  • “Rituals of Injury: An Affective Perspective on Chris Bachelder’s The Throwback Special and the Joe Theismann Case” International English Student Conference Anglophonia: Endlessness. Zagreb, Croatia. May 11-15, 2023. Conference presentation.

• “Narratives Across Media” Winter Semester 2023/24
• “Introduction to Literature and Culture I” Winter Semester 2022/23

Next to my PhD, I continue to work with LKJ Niedersachsen (Landesvereinigung Kulturelle
Jugendbildung e.V.) in a co-leadership role for a seminar group of young volunteers in their
FSJ and BFD (voluntary year of social service in the field of culture, politics, and education).
Here, I co-organize and lead week-long seminars for young adults, in which we reflect on
democracy and culture, as well as career and life orientation. Additionally, I volunteer for
QuartierPflege Leipzig, which, under the patronage of Gesellschaft für Gemeinsinn e.V. and
ABE Zuhause gGmbH, provides at-home care assistance to elderly and disabled people in
Leipzig.