Seminar für Englische Philologie

Dr. Susanne Hamscha

Research Interests


  • 19th and 20th Century U.S.-American Literature and Culture
  • American Popular Culture
  • Film Studies
  • Performance Studies
  • Body, Gender, and Queer Studies
  • Disability Studies



Current Project

"Freakish Matters: Towards an Aesthetics of the Grotesque in American Culture" (Habilitation) Gefördert mit Dorothea-Schlözer-Forschungsstipendium (2012-2014) und mit DFG-Forschungsstipendium (2014-2015)


Dissertation

"The Fiction of America: Performing the Cultural Imaginary in American Literature and Culture"


Publications

Monographs


  • The Fiction of America: Performance and the Cultural Imaginary in Literature and Film. Frankfurt/Main: Campus, 2013.
    Publisher's Website



Edited Books


  • Is It 'Cause It's Cool? Affective Encounters With American Culture. Ed. Astrid M. Fellner, Susanne Hamscha, Klaus Heissenberger, and Jennifer Moos. Münster & Wien: LIT Verlag, 2014.
    Publisher's Website
  • Freakery: Cultural Spectacles of the Extraordinary Body Vol 2. Ed. Rosemarie Garland Thomson and Susanne Hamscha. New York: NYU Press (in preparation)



Articles


  • "The Dinosaur in the Garden: From Walden Pond to Jurassic Park." Rereading the Machine in the Garden. Ed. Eric Erbacher, Nicole Schröder, and Florian Sedlmeier. Frankfurt/Main: Campus (forthcoming 2014)
  • "The Ballad of the Hunchback: American Literature of the South and a Crip Body Politic." Disabilities in Literature. Ed. John J. Han and Carol Austin. Amsterdam: Rodopi (forthcoming 2014)
  • "Austria: The Long and Winding Road Towards the Institutionalization of Women's and Gender Studies." The European History of English Studies: Anglicist Women's and Gender Studies of Continental Europe. Ed. Renate Haas. Leicester: The English Association, for ESSE. (forthcoming 2014)
  • "The Ghost of Bob Dylan: Spectrality and Performance in I'm Not There." ReFractions of Bob Dylan. Ed. Eugen Banauch and Christopher Meiller. Manchester: Manchester University Press (forthcoming 2014)
  • "Coolness Has a Number: The Americana Cool of Beverly Hills, 90210." Is It 'Cause It's Cool? Affective Encounters With American Culture. Ed. Astrid M. Fellner, Susanne Hamscha, Klaus Heissenberger, and Jennifer Moos. Münster & Wien: LIT Verlag, 2014. 95-116.
  • "Introduction." Together with Astrid M. Fellner, Klaus Heissenberger, and Jennifer Moos. Is It 'Cause It's Cool? Affective Encounters With American Culture. Ed. Astrid M. Fellner, Susanne Hamscha, Klaus Heissenberger, and Jennifer Moos. Münster & Wien: LIT Verlag, 2014. 9-22.
  • "Thirty Are Better Than One: Marilyn Monroe and the Performance of Americanness." ConFiguring America: Iconic Figures, Visuality, and American Culture. Ed. Klaus Rieser, Michael Fuchs, and Michael Phillips. Bristol: Intellect Books, 2013. 115-132.
  • "Localizing Silicon Valley." With Eugen Banauch and Astrid M. Fellner. Contact Spaces of American Culture: Localizing Global Phenomena. Ed. Petra Eckhard, Klaus Rieser, and Silvia Schultermandl. Münster & Wien: LIT-Verlag, 2012. 229-244.
  • "Losing Nemo, Finding Alternatives: Queer Theory and the Postmodern Subject." Landscapes of Postmodernity: Concepts and Paradigms of Critical Theory. Ed. Petra Eckhard and Michael Fuchs. Münster & Wien: LIT-Verlag, 2010. 159-177.
  • "Polymorphous Subjectivities: An Introduction." Landscapes of Postmodernity: Concepts and Paradigms of Critical Theory. Ed. Petra Eckhard and Michael Fuchs. Münster & Wien: LIT-Verlag, 2010. 153-157.
  • "'Mohr' No More? Advertising the Other in German-Speaking Europe." In Medias Res: A MediaCommons Project. Theme Week on "Otherness." October 29, 2009.
    Online Access>
  • "The Wilderness of the Body: Djuna Barnes and the Politics of Sexual Difference." Exploring Spaces: Practices and Perspectives. Ed. Dorothea Steiner and Sabine Danner. Münster & Wien: LIT-Verlag, 2009. 209-229.
  • "Zerstückelter Körper—Zerrissenes Geschlecht. Eine kulturelle Topographie des queeren Körpers in rezenter U.S. amerikanischer Literatur." with Astrid M. Fellner. Körperkonstruktionen und Geschlechtsmetaphern: Zum Zusammenhang von Rhetorik und Embodiment. Ed. Marlen Bidwell-Steiner and Veronika Zangl. Innsbruck: StudienVerlag, 2009. 25-44.
  • "Parodying Lesbianism: Deconstruction in Djuna Barnes' Ladies Almanack." MP: An Online Feminist Journal 1.1: Gender and the Body (December 21, 2004).
    Online Access



Internet Anthology


  • In A Different Light: An Anthology of Students' Projects on Queer Theory (edited together with Astrid M. Fellner). Online Access



Translations


  • Davis, Kathy. "'Eine fragwürdige Gleichstellung': Männer, Frauen und Kosmetische Chirurgie." Körperregime und Geschlecht. Ed. Maria Katharina Wiedlack and Katrin Lasthofer. Innsbruck: StudienVerlag, 2011. 11-33.
  • Parayre, Caterine. "Bilder der Absenz: Brustkrebs in der Produktion von Wort und Bild." Körperregime und Geschlecht. Ed. Maria Katharina Wiedlack and Katrin Lasthofer. Innsbruck: StudienVerlag, 2011. 83-97.
  • Rohman, Carrie. "'Dämonische Reife': Identität, Verzehr und der Diskurs der Arten in Die gefiederte Schlange." Über die Grenzen des natürlichen Lebens: Inszenierungsformen des Mensch-Tier-Maschine Verhältnisses in der Iberoromania. Ed. Claudia Leitner and Christopher Laferl. Wien: LIT-Verlag, 2009. 97-108.



Conference Presentations and Guest Lectures


  • "Hurry, Hurry, Or You'll Miss the Hottentot Venus! Coney Island and the Sideshow Tradition." 45th annual NeMLA Conference (Harrisburg, PA, April 5, 2014)
  • "Crip Aesthetics: Failure, Negativity, and the Freakish Body." VariAbilities: A Conference on the History and Representation of the Body in all its Varieties. (Atlanta, GA, July 5, 2013)
  • "The Dinosaur in the Garden: From Walden Pond to Jurassic Park." 60th annual DGfA Conference "Rural America" (Erlangen, June 1, 2013)
  • " Aren't We All A Little Gaga? Cripping the Normal in Contemporary Pop Culture", University of Aarhus (April 15, 2013)
  • " Spectacles of Deformity: The Eventfulness of the Freakish Body in American Culture", University of Aarhus (April 15, 2013)
  • "The Southern Grotesque in Early America." Society of Early Americanists, 8th Biennial Conference. (Savannah, GA, March 2, 2013)
  • "Bodies of Failure: Freak Shows and the Economy of the Disfigured Body." Postgraduate Forum of the DGfA (Marburg, November 2, 2012)
  • "Bad Romance with America? Approaching America Through Pop Culture." 9th International Conference "Crossroads in Cultural Studies" (Paris, July 6, 2012).
  • "Towards an Aesthetics of the Grotesque: Freak Shows and Precarious Monstrosity." Interdisciplinary Conference "Sensualising Deformity: Communication and Construction of Monstrous Embodiment" (Edinburgh, June 16, 2012).
  • "Gaga Ooh La La: Lady Gaga and the Pleasures of Being a Freak." Interdisciplinary Conference "Monsters: Subject, Object, Abject" (Manchester, April 12, 2012).
  • "Coolness has a Number: The Politics of Self-Fashioning in Beverly Hills 90210." AAAS Conference "Is It 'Cause It's Cool? Affective Encounters with American Culture" (Salzburg, November 6, 2011)
  • "Brauchen Kulturen noch Staaten? Performanz und nationale Identität im US-amerikanischen Kontext" IFK/ISA Workshop "Brauchen Staaten noch Kulturen?" (Vienna, July 7, 2011)
  • "The Ghost of Bob Dylan: Spectrality and the Performance of America in I'm Not There." Refractions of Bob Dylan: Cultural Appropriations of an American Icon (Vienna, May 20, 2011)
  • "The Art of Being GaGa: Visualizing the Aesthetics of the Grotesque Body." AAAS/SANAS Conference "The Visual Culture of Modernism" (Innsbruck, November 13, 2010)
  • "The Wilderness of Walden Pond: Emerson, Thoreau, and the American Mind" at Saarland University, Saarbruecken (June 23, 2010)
  • "Refounding the Nation: Barack Obama, Declare Yourself, and the Reenactment of 1776." EAAS Conference "Forever Young?" (Dublin, March 27, 2010)
  • "Is Marilyn a Soup Can? Or: 'Thirty Are Better Than One': Pop Art and the Performance of America." Austria's Young Americanists Graduate Student Retreat (Graz, October 25, 2009)
  • "Networlds: Localizing Silicon Valley." AAAS Conference "Contact Spaces of American Culture: Localizing Global Phenomena" (Graz, October 22-25, 2009)
  • "A Poetics of the Flesh: Representation, De/Colonialization, and Resistance in U.S. American Literature" (together with Astrid M. Fellner) Ringvorlesung Gendered Subjects VII: Körpermetaphern als Geschlechtsmetaphern (October 23, 2007)
  • "The Body-in-Pieces: The Dismemberment and Fragmentation of the Body in the Fiction of Djuna Barnes, Rebecca Brown, and Jeanette Winterson." AAAS Conference "American Studies in Austria" (Graz, November 3, 2007)
  • "Women of Color Feminism in Austria and Germany" at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst (October 19, 2004)
  • "Route 66." AAAS Conference "U.S. Icons and Iconicity" (Graz, November 8, 2003)




Fellowships and Grants

04/2014-03/2015Research scholarship awarded by the German Research Foundation (DFG)
10/2012-03/2014 Postdoc-scholarship awarded by the Dorothea-Schlözer-Fellowship Programme (University of Göttingen)
2008-2011Scholarship for completion of doctoral degree at the Graduate School of North American Studies (FU Berlin), funded by the DFG
2007“Leistungsstipendium" of the University of Vienna for extraordinary academic achievement in the academic year 2006/07
Student Award for extraordinary academic achievement in a Literature Seminar
2006 Grant of the University of Vienna (KWA) to conduct research for my M.A Thesis at Mt. Holyoke College, Massachusetts
Student Award for extraordinary academic achievement in a Literature Seminar
2004 Grant of the University of Vienna (Joint Study) to study at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst


Education:

10/2008-02/2012 Graduate School of North American Studies (FU Berlin)
Dissertation Project: “The Fiction of America: Performing the Cultural Imaginary in American Literature and Culture" (working title)
06/2007Mag. phil. (M.A.) English and American Studies, University of Vienna
Diploma Thesis: “'The Body-in-Pieces': The Dismemberment and Fragmentation of the Body in the Fiction of Djuna Barnes, Rebecca Brown, and Jeanette Winterson"
2004-2005Graduate Student at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst
Fellow in the Women's Studies program “Graduate Certificate in Advanced Feminist Studies"


Professional Experience:

04/2014-03/2015 Visiting Scholar, Department of English and Comparative Literature, Columbia University
since 10/2012Postdoctoral Researcher, English Department, University of Göttingen
10/2011-09/2012Lehrkraft für besondere Aufgaben, English Department, University of Göttingen


Affiliations


  • American Studies Association (ASA)
  • ACS (Association for Cultural Studies)
  • Austrian Association for American Studies (AAAS)
  • German Association for American Studies (DGfA)
  • Modern Language Association (MLA)



Courses Taught

2013Proseminar: "Circus Circus! 'Human Curiosities' in Photography and Film"
2012E-Proseminar: "Introduction to the Study of American Literature and Culture"
Introduction to American Cultural History I
Directed Reading Course: "Realism, Naturalism, Early Modernism: U.S. Literature from the Civil War to the Armory Show"
2011/12 Proseminar: “Re(dis)covering America: Emerson, Thoreau, and American Democracy
2 Directed Reading Courses: A Cultural History of American Literature III
2010 Proseminar: “Performance and Performativity: Foundational Scenarios in American Literature and Film" (John-F.-Kennedy Institut, FU Berlin)
2006/07 Tutorial: “Introduction to the Study of Literatures in English" (Department of English and American Studies, University of Vienna)
2006 Tutorial: “In a Different Light: Introduction to Queer Theory" (Department of English and American Studies, University of Vienna)