Early American Studies at Mainz

The American Studies Bachelor and Master programs at Johannes Gutenberg-University Mainz offer a well-established curriculum in Early American Studies that encompasses both intensive research and teaching from the colonial period to nineteenth-century America. Given the expanding transnational and oceanic approaches in present scholarship, Early American Studies at Mainz promotes research projects that explore the textual and material grounds on which the many cultures – both Western and Non-Western – meet in the Atlantic and Pacific worlds.

Early American Studies at Mainz promotes interdisciplinary research co-operations and organizes con­ferences, visiting professorships, and lecture series that give the American Studies program at Mainz national and international visibility and launch research projects funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG), the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), Fulbright, and other private foundations and university funding programs.

 

Research Projects, funded by the German Research foundation (DFG)

• Life Writing in Early American Periodicals (SCHE1616-4-1; Funding 11/2010-10/2012)
• Early American Short Narratives before 1800 (SCHE1616-5-1; Initial Funding 01/2011-02/2013; Extended Funding to 02/2014)

 

Current Publications

• Lanzendörfer Tim and Oliver Scheiding (eds.). American Lives: An Anthology of Transatlantic Life Writing from the Colonies to 1850. Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier, 2015.
• Oliver Scheiding and Martin Seidl (eds.). Worlding America: A Transnational Anthology of Short Narratives before 1800. Stanford: Stanford UP, 2014.
• Jan Stievermann and Oliver Scheiding (eds.). Peculiar Mixture: German-Language Cultures and Identities in Eighteenth-Century America. University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2013 (The Max Kade Research Institute Series: Germans Beyond Europe).

 

Current Research

Materiality, Networks, and Agency in the Early Americas

Visiting Professorships

Obama Fellow

Prof. Martin Erben (Associate Professor of English; University of West Georgia)
Obama Fellow, May-July 2016

 

DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service)

Prof. Elizabeth West (Associate Professor of English, Georgia State University, Atlanta)
DAAD Guest Professor, Oct. 2013-Feb. 2014)

Prof. Jared Gardner (Associate Professor of English & Film Studies, OSU)
DAAD Guest Professor, May-August 2011

 

Fulbright

Prof. Rachel Wheeler (Associate Professor of History, University of Indiana)
Fulbright Senior Lecturer, October 2011-July 2012

Prof. Elizabeth Hewitt (Associate Professor of English, OSU)
Fulbright Senior Lecturer, June-July 2011

Prof. Warren Hofstra (Professor of History, Shenandoah University)
Fulbright Senior Lecturer, October-December 2009

Prof. Kristina Bross (Associate Professor, Purdue University)
Fulbright Senior Lecturer, April-July 2007

 

SOCUM (Center of Social and Culture Studies at Mainz)

Prof. Martin Brückner (Full Professor, Center for Material Studies, University of Delaware) SOCUM Fellow, May 2015

Prof. Martin Brückner (Associate Professor, English and American Literature, University of Delaware)
SOCUM Fellow, June 2011

 

Hans Galinsky (1909-1991) Memorial Prize

Since 1992, a jury of faculty members annually awards the Hans Galinsky Memorial Prize to the best student work in the field of Early American Studies. The prize commemorates Professor Galinsky’s outstanding achievements in the field of Early American Studies, his chief area of research. Awardees and the titles of their prizewinning essays can be found here.