Early American Short Narratives
DFG Funded Research Project “Early American Short Narratives: Erschließen eines Korpus kurzer Erzählformen in der amerikanischen Literatur vor 1800″
(SCHE1616-5-1; Initial Funding 01/2011-02/2013; Extended Funding 02/2014)
Director: Prof. Dr. Oliver Scheiding
The project analyzes early forms of short narration in American literature prior to 1800. Building on previous research, which has concentrated on texts from literary magazines between 1740 and 1820, the project extends its scope to the colonial period (17th and early 18th centuries) as well. Along with short prose in English, multilingual sources from the colonial and early national period will be included and surveyed systematically for the first time. While research has so far widely neglected or made only passing references to the various forms of colonial short narration, the project aims at demonstrating the multiple practices of brevity and the business behind them. A critical edition and systematic survey of early American short narrative will offer a textual basis for further research on writing practices and magazine literature.
Project Publication
Oliver Scheiding and Martin Seidl, eds. Worlding America: A Transnational Anthology of Short Narratives before 1800. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2014.
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