Dr. Sonja Georgi

I am lecturer and academic student advisor in the American Studies and English programs. My major interests in teaching include literary and cultural studies, especially the fields of African American and Native American literature and history, transnational migration, science fiction, and film and media studies. The courses I offer range from the introductory level to seminars, the bachelor colloquium, and advanced cultural studies classes, and they regularly focus on topics like contemporary immigration, slavery and the nineteenth century, cultural memory and trauma studies, and film analysis. I supervise and co-supervise Bachelor and Master theses on a variety of subjects, genres, media, and historical moments pertaining to the United States and North America.

I am Erasmus-coordinator for student and faculty exchanges with the American Studies division’s partner universities across Europe. Furthermore, I am academic coordinator and a member of the examination board of the binational program Mainz-Dijon (BA/MA American Studies and BEd/MEd English). In addition, I advise high school students interested in taking courses in American Studies, English Literature and Culture, and English as part of JGU’s initiative Frühstudium.

In my research, I am currently working on a book project on inter-cultural identity negotiations in African American and Native American literary and culture productions such as autobiographies, novels, essays, and plays, from the late eighteenth century to the present. I am also interested in the development of migration narratives in the context of Transnational American Studies.

As I consider mentoring students in their research and writing projects an important aspect of my teaching, I am a member of the Department of English and Linguistics’ Community of Practice “Feedback-Portfolio,” where we devise, together with students and student tutors, writing activities and feedback rubrics for student papers.

 

Academic Background

Doctoral degree in American Studies, Universität Siegen, 2010.
Title of dissertation:
Bodies and/as Technology: Counter-Discourses on Ethnicity and Globalization in the Works of Alejandro Morales, Larissa Lai, and Nalo Hopkinson. Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter, 2011.

Master of Arts degree in American Studies, Applied Linguistics, and Economics, Universität Siegen, 2005.

 

Selected Publications

“Female Cyborgs, Gender Performance, and Utopian Gaze in Alex Garland’s Ex Machina.” The Problems of Literary Genres, 63, 1, 2020, 41-49.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.26485/ZRL/2020/63.1/3.

“Posthuman Dystopia/Critical Dystopia: Octavia E. Butler‘s Parable Series (1993,1998) and Xenogenesis Trilogy (1987-89).” Dystopia, Science Fiction, Post-Apocalypse: Classics, New Tendencies, Model Interpretations. Ed. Eckart Voigts and Alessandra Boller. WVT Handbücher zum Literaturwissenschaftlichen Studium Band 17. Trier: WVT, 2015. 253-267.

“‘IndiVisible’ Identities: Mediating Native American and African American Encounters and Transethnic Identity in A Thrilling Sketch of the Life of Okah Tubbee.” Mediating Indianness. Ed. Cathy Covell Waegner. East Lansing: Michigan State UP, 2015. 27-43.

with Pia Wiegmink. “Coloured in South Africa: An Interview with Filmmaker Kiersten Dunbar Chace and Photojournalist Rushay Booysen.” Migrating the Black Body: The African Diaspora and Visual Culture. Ed. Leigh Raiford and Heike Raphael-Hernandez. Seattle: U of Washington P, 2017, 221-235.

with Julia Ilgner, Isabell Lammel, Cathleen Sarti, Christine Waldschmidt, eds. Geschichtstransformationen. Medien, Verfahren und Funktionalisierungen historischer Rezeption. Mainzer Historische Kulturwissenschaften Band 24. Bielefeld: Transcript, 2015.

“Transcultural Remembrance: Stolpersteine, Silent Promises, and the European Capital of Culture RUHR.2010.” Transculturality and Perceptions of the Immigrant Other: “Come-Heres” and “From-Heres” in Virginia and North Rhine-Westphalia. Ed. Page R. Laws, Geoffroy De Laforcade, Cathy C. Waegner. Cambridge: Cambridge Scholar Publishing, 2011.

Contact

Dr. Sonja Georgi
Philosophicum II
Jakob-Welder-Weg 20
Room 02.228

Phone: +49-6131-39-27215
georgis@uni-mainz.de

Office hours:
Tue, 14-15 in the office
Wed, 9.30-10.30 on MS Teams
Please make an appointment via email.