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

• Oliver Scheiding. “Re-Visioning the Past: Charles Brockden Brown’s Historical Tales and the Pleasures of Dissecting.” Studies in the American Short Story 1 (2020): Forthcoming
• Oliver Scheiding. “Material Religion and Print Culture in the Early German-Language Atlantic World.” Elusive Archives: Material Culture Studies in Formation. Eds. Martin Brueckner and Sandy Isenstadt. Newark: University of Delaware Press. Forthcoming.
• Oliver Scheiding. “Nineteenth-Century American Indian Newspapers and the Construction of Sovereignty.” The Cambridge History of Native American Literature.” Ed. Melanie Benson Taylor. Cambridge: Cambridge University Pres, 2020. 89-112.
• Oliver Scheiding. “Charles Brockden Brown and Classicism.” The Oxford Handbook of Charles Brockden Brown. Eds. Phillip Barnard, Hilary Emmett, and Stephen Shapiro. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019. 455-468.
• Oliver Scheiding. “Charles Brockden Brown, Wieland (1798).” Handbook of the American Novel of the Nineteenth Century. Ed. Christine Gerhardt. Vol. 7. Handbooks of English and American Studies. Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter. 2018. 157-173.
• Oliver Scheiding. “Native Letters and North American Indian Wars.” The Routledge Companion to Native American Literature. Ed. Deborah L. Madsen. New York, London: Routledge, 2016. 135-145.
• Oliver Scheiding. “The Poetry of British America: Francis Daniel Pastorius and Richard Lewis.” A History of American Poetry: Contexts – Developments – Readings. Ed. Oliver Scheiding, René Dietrich, Clemens Spahr. Handbücher zum Literatur­wissen­schaft­li­chen Studium. Bd. 19. Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier, 2015. 23-36.
• Oliver Scheiding. “‘Small Tales’: Brevity and Liminality in Early American Magazines.” Liminality and the Short Story: Boundary Crossings in American, Canadian, and British Writing. Eds. Jochen Achilles and Ina Bergmann. New York and London: Routledge, 2015. 121-133.
• Oliver Scheiding. “Migrant Fictions and the Early Story in North American Magazines.” REAL – Yearbook of Research in English and American Literature, vol. 28, Mobility in English and American Literature 1500-1900. Tübingen: Narr, 2012. 197-218.
• Oliver Scheiding. “The World as Parish: Cotton Mather, August Hermann Francke, and Transatlantic Religious Networks.” Cotton Mather and Biblia Americana – America’s First Bible Commentary: Essays in Reappraisal. Ed. Reiner Smolinski, Jan Stievermann. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2011. 133-161.
• Seibert, Johanna. “Island Media: Early African Caribbean Newspapers in the Era of Emancipation, 1827-1838” (2020; Dissertation, University of Mainz)

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.

Contact

Prof. Dr. Oliver Scheiding
Philosophicum II
Jakob-Welder-Weg 20
Room 02.226

Phone: +49-6131-39-22357
scheiding@uni-mainz.de