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.
Research Projects and Programs
DFG Research Projects:
- Between Authenticity and the Market
- Biopolitics and Native American Life Writing
- Body and Metaphor in Medical Humanities
- Cultural Performance in Transnational American Studies
- Early American Short Narratives
- Life Writing in Early American Periodical
- Pedagogical Writing and Social Practice in the Age of American Romanticism
- Un/doing Differences. Praktiken der Humandifferenzierung
Further Projects:
- Early American Studies at Mainz
- Center for Comparative Native and Indigenous Studies
- DGF Research Training Group “Life Sciences – Life Writing”
- Political and Intellectual History
- Religion and American Culture
- Center for Social and Cultural Studies (SOCUM)
- Material Culture Studies at Mainz
- Historische Kulturwissenschaften Uni Mainz