North American Literary and Cultural Studies

People

• Stein, Daniel (Univ.-Prof. Dr.) (Chair)
• Albrecht, Maxi (Dr.)
• Etter, Lukas (Dr.)
• Wiele, Lisanna (M.A.) (former member)
• Weber, Anna Maria (Secretary)

Courses

Vorlesungsverzeichnis Wintersemester 24-25 / comments winter term 24-25

Vorlesungsverzeichnis Sommersemester 24 / comments summer term 24

Vorlesungsverzeichnis Wintersemester 23-24 / comments winter term 23-24

Vorlesungsverzeichnis Sommersemester 23 / comments summer term 23

Vorlesungsverzeichnis Wintersemester 22-23 / comments winter term 22-23

Vorlesungsverzeichnis Sommersemester 22 / comments summer term 22

Vorlesungsverzeichnis Wintersemester 21-22 / comments winter term 21-22

Vorlesungsverzeichnis Sommersemester 21 / comments summer term 21

Vorlesungsverzeichnis Wintersemester 20-21 / comments winter term 20-21

Vorlesungsverzeichnis Sommersemester 20 / comments summer term 20

Vorlesungsverzeichnis Wintersemester 19-20 / comments winter term 19-20

Research

• Comics Studies / Graphic Narrative Studies
  

One of our main research interests in North American Literary and Cultural Studies is comics.
Comics have been a significant part of American culture since their emergence in the 1890s, when newspaper comic strips became a popular mass medium.
If you have a special interest in comics and wish to study their history and form, you will be able to do so in one of several comics-related courses we are offering in the BA program “Literature, Culture, Media” (BA LKM), the MA program “Advanced Literary Studies” (MA LiWi), and in the teaching program for English (“Lehramt”).
Past courses we have offered are:

• Graphic Narrative: Theory and Analysis
• Race and Ethnicity in U.S.-American Comics
• Black History in Graphic Narratives
• Contemporary Graphic Novels
• Disaster Drawn: War and Migration in Graphic Narrative
• Extra-ordinarity: Superheroes and Visual Culture
• Graphic Women
• Graphic Novels in Context
• Gender Studies and Comics Studies
• Intersectional Comics Studies
• Graphic Narrative as Historiography
  

• Popular Nineteenth-Century Serial Literature
  

• Daniel Stein was Director of the DFG research project
  Serial Politicization: On the Cultural Work of American City Mysteries, 1844-1860:
  (part of the Research Unit “Popular Seriality – Aesthetics and Practice”)
• Popular Culture – Serial Culture: Nineteenth-Century Serial Fictions in Transnational Perspective, 1830s-1860s
  (University of Siegen, April 28-30, 2016, conveners Daniel Stein and Lisanna Wiele)
• “Serial Circulation: The German-American Mystery Novel and the Beginnings of Transatlantic Modernity (1850-1855) (funded by the German Research Foundation, 2021-2024)
  The project starts October 1, 2021.

• Early American Studies

Lukas Etter and Marcel Hartwig research early science discourses and their impact on the literary work with a particular focus on arithmetic (Etter) and the modes of professionalization/ specialization in early medical developments in the British American colonies (Hartwig):

Publications of Dr. Etter:
Distinctive Styles and Authorship in Alternative Comics
Reader Superhelden. Theorie – Geschichte – Medien

Publications of Dr. Hartwig:

Rock Music Studies, Vol. 4, No. 1

Media Economies - Perspectives on American Cultural Practices  
Die traumatisierte Nation?  »Pearl Harbor« und »9/11« als kulturelle Erinnerungen

Networked David Lynch, eds. Andreas Rauscher, Marcel Hartwig and Peter Niedermüller. Edinburgh: EUP (forthcoming).

• African-American Literature and Culture

• Popular Culture

• Intermedia and Transmedia Studies

• Transnational Approaches 
  
  

Further Links

• Forschungsstelle Queery
• Forschungsstelle Populäre Kulturen

Book Series and Magazines

• Anglia: Journal of English Philology
• Anglia Book Series
• SieGN: Siegen Research in Graphic Narrative

Current / Completed Doctoral Candidates/Projects

• BROWN, Kieron. Half Serious: Toward a Typology of Playfulness in Comics
• DONADON, Lia Roxana. Im Kreuzfeuer des Zeitgeistes. Gesellschaftskritische Diskurse im argentinischen Tango und Comic des 20. Jahrhunderts
• KARLSSON, Isabella. The Transformation of Surveillance: Big Data and Social Control in Contemporary American Fiction
• KNOP, Yvonne. Sherlock Holmes and the (De-)Construction of Masculinity: A Comparative Analysis of Adaptations, Fanfiction and Fanart
• MAUÉ, Carla. Internalized Racism as America's Distorted Reality: Social Constructions and Popular Conceptions of Race, 1963-2016
• PAPAKI, Ioanna. The Development of Contemporary Graphic Narrativity: Greek Comics and Beyond
• REIMERS, Ute. Writing Academic English in Germany: German PhD Student Writer's Disciplinary Identities
• SHIRLEY, Julia. Plants in Animated Films
• TOMABECHI, Nao. The Significance of Supervillains in American Superhero Comics
• WIELE, Lisanna. City Politics, Seriality, and Popular Literature in Antebellum America – The City Mysteries by George Lippard, Ned Buntline and George Thompson

Current Post-Doctoral Candidates/Projects

• ETTER, Lukas. Word Problems: Discourse on Logics and Scientific Progress in Antebellum Literature

Conferences

• International Conference (2019): "David Lynch: Audiovisual Aesthetics and Shocking Standards"
• “Comics/Games: Aesthetic, Ludic, and Narrative Strategies“ (with Jan-Noël Thon and Andreas Rauscher), Tagungszentrum Schloss Herrenhausen (Nov. 5-7, 2018), funded by the Volkswagen Foundation
• “Migration and Immigration in Europe and the Americas” (June 4-5, 2018, Siegen)
• Student-Led Symposium (2017): The Bodies of Superheroes
• Summer School (2017): Transnational Graphic Narratives
• “Popular Culture – Serial Culture: Nineteenth-Century Serial Fictions in Transnational Perspective, 1830s-1860s.” University of Siegen, with Lisanna Wiele (April 28-30, 2016) (DGfA Regional Conference)
• International Conference (2016): "Encoding the Future: Perspectives on the Making of the Human in Ex_Machina"
• Digital Spaces: Game, Design, Art.” University of Siegen, with Judith Ackermann, Anke Lenk, Andreas Rauscher, (April 19, 2015)
• International Conference (2014): "American Rock Journalism" 

 Projects

• African Atlantic Research Group

• “Serial Circulation: The German-American Mystery Novel and the Beginnings of Transatlantic Modernity (1850-1855) (funded by the German Research Foundation, 2021-2024)
  The project starts October 1, 2021.

• "Serielle Politisierung: Zur kulturellen Arbeit amerikanischer City Mysteries, 1844-1860" (Teil der DFG-geförderten Forschergruppe "Ästhetik und Praxis populärer Serialität") / "Serial Politicization: On the Cultural Work of American City Mysteries, 1844-1860" (Part of the Research Group "Popular Seriality - Aesthetics and Practice" funded by the German Research Foundation, 2013-2017)

• "Autorisierungspraktiken seriellen Erzählens am Beispiel der Gattungsgenese von Batman- und Spider-Man Comics" (Teil der DFG-geförderten Forschergruppe "Ästhetik und Praxis populärer Serialität") / "Authorization Practices of Serial Narration: The Generic Development of Batman and Spider-Man Comics" (Part of the Research Group "Popular Seriality - Aesthetics and Practice", funded by the German Research Foundation, 2010-2013

• "Voices & Agencies: America and the Atlantic, 1600-1865", funded by the German Research Foundation
  Dr. Etter and Dr. Hartwig - The project runs till 2024.