Prof. Dr. Heike Schäfer, i. R.

Research and Teaching Interests

• North American literature and culture
• Comparative media approaches to literary studies: exchanges between literature and visual media; the analogue and digital media of literature
• Literary theory, aesthetics, and knowledge cultures (esp. feminist and postcolonial theories, network theory, ecocriticism, the dialogue between the humanities, arts, and natural sciences)
• Visual culture, popular culture
• Gender Studies
• Critical Race Theory

Current Research Projects

Out now!

American Literature and Immediacy: Literary Innovation and the Emergence of Photography, Film, and Television. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020.

https://www.cambridge.org/gb/academic/subjects/literature/american-literature/american-literature-and-immediacy-literary-innovation-and-emergence-photography-film-and-television?format=HB

With chapters on Ralph Waldo Emerson, Walt Whitman, Gertrude Stein, John Dos Passos, Robert Coover, David Forster Wallace, Don DeLillo.

Out now!

The Printed Book in Contemporary American Culture: Medium, Object, Metaphor. Ed. Heike Schaefer and Alexander Starre. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019.

https://www.palgrave.com/gp/book/9783030225445#aboutBook

With essays by Aleida Assmann, Christoph Bläsi, Alison Gibbons, Antje Kley, Jessica Pressman, Janice Radway, Monika Schmitz-Emans, Regina Schober, Garrett Stewart, Kiene Brillenburg Wurth.

Current projects

The Senses of Literature: The Media and Materialities of Literature in the Digital Age.

Serious Literary Gaming: Zur kulturellen Arbeit von Lese- und Schreibspielen in der experimentellen Literatur des 20. und 21. Jahrhunderts.

Now! A Cultural History of the Present Moment for the Digital Age.

Publications

Monographs, Edited Books, and Special Issues

American Literature and Immediacy: Literary Innovation and the Emergence of Photography, Film, and Television. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020.

The Printed Book in Contemporary American Culture: Medium, Object, Metaphor. Ed. Heike Schaefer and Alexander Starre. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019.

Literary Knowledge Production and the Life Sciences. Special issue of LWU. Literatur in Wissenschaft und Unterricht 48.3 (2015, published 2017). Ed. Karin Hoepker and Heike Schaefer.

Network Theory and American Studies. Special issue of Amerikastudien / American Studies 60.2 (2015, published 2016). Ed. Ulfried Reichardt, Heike Schaefer, and Regina Schober.

America and the Orient. Ed. Heike Schaefer.  Heidelberg: Winter, 2006.
Reviewed in: European Journal of American Studies (2008); Arbeiten aus Anglistik u. Amerikanistik 32.2 (2007): 335-36; American Literary Scholarship (2006): 476; Deutsch-Maghrebinische Gesellschaft. Medienspiegel (Juni 2006): 5-6.

Mary Austin’s Regionalism: Reflections on Gender, Genre, and Geography. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2004.
Reviewed in: Amerikastudien / American Studies 53.2 (2008): 224-27; Arbeiten aus Anglistik u. Amerikanistik 32.2 (2007): 363-66; Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature 25.1 (Spring 2006): 170-72; The Year’s Work in English Studies 85 (2006): 891-92; Legacy 22.2 (2005): 206-8; Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and the Environment 12.2 (Summer 2005): 304-5; American Literature 77.1 (March 2005): 213; American Literary Scholarship (2004): 325; Choice 42.4 (Dez. 2004): 662.

Essays

“The Printed Book, Contemporary Media Culture, and American Studies” (with Alexander Starre). The Printed Book in Contemporary American Culture: Medium, Object, Metaphor. Ed. Heike Schaefer and Alexander Starre. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019. 3-28.

“Reading and Teaching Avant-garde Modernist Literature from a Comparative Media Perspective.” Modernities and Modernization in North America. Ed. Ilka Brasch and Ruth Mayer. Heidelberg: Winter, 2019. 85-100.

“’Mind is primarily a verb’: Experiential Knowledge in John Dewey’s Pragmatist Evolutionary Thinking and in Modernist Poetry.” Literary Knowledge Production and the Life Sciences. Ed. Karin Hoepker and Heike Schaefer. LWU. Literatur in Wissenschaft und Unterricht 48.3 (2017): 179-94. Abbreviated and updated version of “A World Which Is Not All In” (2014).

“Literary Knowledge Production and the Life Sciences: Introduction” (with Karin Hoepker). Literary Knowledge Production and the Life Sciences. Ed. Karin Hoepker and Heike Schaefer. LWU 48.3 (2017): 157-64.

“Wie erzählt man vom Augenblick? Präsenzeffekte, Serialität und ‘Zeit-Wissen’ in Gertrude Steins literarischen Kurzportraits.” (“How to Narrate the Present Moment: Presence, Seriality, and ‘Time-Knowledge’ in Gertrude Stein’s Literary Portraits.”) Kurz & Knapp. (Knowledge Production in Short Literary Forms.)  Ed. Michael Gamper and Ruth Mayer. Bielefeld: transcript, 2017. 109-27.

“Nature, Media Culture, and the Transcendentalist Quest for the Real.” America After Nature: Democracy, Culture, Environment. Ed. Catrin Gersdorf and Juliane Braun. Winter: Heidelberg, 2016. 311-30.

“The Novel as ‘the Most Complex Artifact of Networking’: The Relevance of Network Theory for the Study of Transcultural Fiction.” Network Theory and American Studies Ed. Ulfried Reichardt, Heike Schaefer, and Regina Schober. Special issue of Amerikastudien / American Studies 60.2 (2015, published 2016): 139-56.

“Introduction: Network Theory and American Studies” (with Ulfried Reichardt and Regina Schober). Network Theory and American Studies. Ed. Ulfried Reichardt, Heike Schaefer, and Regina Schober. Amerikastudien / American Studies 60.1 (2015, published 2016): 11-15.

“Poetry in Transmedial Perspective: Rethinking Intermedial Literary Studies in the Digital Age.” Intermediality, Narrativity, Emotion. Ed. Agnes Petho. Special issue of Acta Universitatis Sapientiae, Film and Media Studies 10 (2015): 169-82.

“’A World Which Is Not All In, And Never Will Be’: Darwinism, Pragmatist Thinking, and Modernist Poetry.” America’s Darwin: Darwinian Theory in U.S. Culture, 1859-Present. Ed. Lydia Fisher and Tina Gianquitto. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2014. 127-47.

“Daring to Care: Body Politics, Social Justice, and the Drama of Health Care in Contemporary US American Theater.” The Health of the Nation. Ed. Meldan Tanrisal and Tanfer Emin Tunc. Heidelberg: Winter, 2014. 231-45.

“The Parodic Play with Realist Aesthetics and Authenticity Claims in Cheryl Dunye’s Black Queer Mockumentary The Watermelon Woman.” Realisms in Contemporary Culture: Theories, Politics, and Medial Configurations. Ed. Dorothee Birke and Stella Butter. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2013. 195-213.

“The Pursuit of Happiness 2.0: Consumer Genomics, Social Media, and the Promise of Literary Innovation in Richard Powers’ Novel Generosity: an Enhancement.” Ideas of Order: Narrative Patterns in the Novels of Richard Powers. Ed. Antje Kley and Jan Kucharzewski. Heidelberg: Winter, 2012. 263-84.

“The Cinema and Modernist Innovation: Serial Representation and Cinematic Immediacy Effects in Gertrude Stein’s Early Portraits.” The Visual Culture of Modernism. Ed. Deborah L. Madsen and Mario Klarer. Tübingen: Narr, 2011. 169-83.

“Choosing to Evolve: Evolutionary Theory, Pragmatism, and Modernist American Poetry.” Literatur, Wissenschaft und Wissen seit der Epochenschwelle um 1800. Ed. Thomas Klinkert and Monika Neuhofer. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2008. 219-36.

“America and the Orient: Preface.” America and the Orient. Ed. Heike Schaefer. Heidelberg: Winter, 2006. ix-xvii.

“‘Man Is Not Himself Only’: Senses of Place in American Nature Writing.” Space in America: Theory, History, Culture. Ed. Klaus Benesch and Kerstin Schmidt. Amsterdam, New York: Rodopi, 2005. 327-39.

“Naturalized History? Mary Austin’s Utopian Regionalism.” Millennial Perspectives: Lifeworlds and Utopias. Ed. Brigitte Georgi-Findlay and Hans Ulrich Mohr. Heidelberg: Winter, 2003. 183-96.

“‘Keeping Faith with the Land’: Das dialogische Natur- und Kulturverständnis der amerikanischen Regionalistin Mary Austin.” Übergänge: Lektüren zur Ästhetik der Transgression. Ed. Peter Brandes and Michaela Krug. Münster: LIT, 2003. 49-76.

“Wild Years: From the Environmental Literature of the Sixties to the Ecological Criticism of the Nineties.” The Sixties Revisited. Culture – Society – Politics. Ed. Jürgen Heideking, Jörg Helbig, and Anke Ortlepp. Heidelberg: Winter, 2001. 427-49.

“The Poet’s Poet: Adrienne Rich and Emily Dickinson.” ZAA. Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik 43.3 (1995): 244-52.

Short CV

Professional Appointments 

Full Professor, Department of American Studies, Goethe University Frankfurt, 2022 –

Full Professor, Department of English, University of Education Karlsruhe, 2013 – 2022 (on leave 2014-2018)

Full Professor, Department of American Studies, University of Konstanz, 2014 – 2018

Associate Professor, Department of American Studies, University of Mannheim, 2010 – 2013

Visiting Professor, John F. Kennedy Institute, Free University of Berlin, 2012

Visiting Professor, Department of English, Martin-Luther-UniversityHalle, 2011

Assistant Professor, Department of American Studies, University of Mannheim, 2003 – 2010

Visiting Assistant Professor, Department of English, University of Duesseldorf, 2002

Visiting Assistant Professor, Department of American Studies, University of Hamburg, 2001

Education

Doctor of Philosophy (summa cum laude), Department of American Studies, University of Hamburg, 2001

M.A., Departments of American Studies and German Studies, University of Hamburg, 1997

Awards and Fellowships

Fulbright American Studies Fellowship, University of California, Berkeley, Aug. 2007– July 2008

Fletcher Jones Foundation Fellowship, Huntington Library, San Marino, CA, Aug.-Sept. 2002

Karl Ditze Award for the Best Doctoral Thesis, University of Hamburg, 2002

Doctoral Fellowship, City of Hamburg, 1999 – 2001

Postgraduate Fellowship of the German Academic Exchange Service, University of Oregon, Eugene, Aug. 1997 – July 1998

American Studies Scholarship of the German Academic Exchange, University of California, Davis, Aug. 1992 – July 1993

International Research Stays

Visiting Scholar, Stanford University, Sept. 2018

Visiting Scholar, Columbia University, Sept. 2017

Visiting Scholar, New York University, Sept. 2016

Visiting Scholar, Fordham University, Sept. 2015

Visiting Scholar, University of California, Berkeley, Sept. – Oct. 2014

Fulbright Fellow, University of California, Berkeley, Aug. 2007– July 2008

Fellow, Huntington Library, San Marino, CA, Aug.-Sept. 2002

Visiting Scholar, University of Oregon, Eugene, Aug. 1997 – July 1998

Exchange Student, University of California, Davis, Aug. 1992 – July 1993

Recent Teaching Cooperations

International Guest Professorships, funded by the German Excellence Initiative:

Garrett Stewart (University of Iowa): Surveillance in American Literature and Film, seminar, University of Konstanz, summer 2018.

John Carlos Rowe (University of Southern California): Transnational American Studies, seminar, University of Konstanz, summer 2017.

Leonard Cassuto (Fordham University): American Crime Fiction, seminar, University of Konstanz, summer 2016.

Joint Teaching

Feminist Literature and Theory. With Prof. Dr. Amy Garnai, Kibbutzim College of Education, Tel Aviv. Joint class with Israeli and German students at the University of Education Karlsruhe, summer 2020. Postponed.

Discourses and Cultures of Dissent. With Prof. Götz Schwab. Parallel Courses in American Studies, University of Konstanz, and English Linguistics, University of Education Karlsruhe, and joint student conference in Konstanz, summer 2017.

Ecocritical Perspectives on Literature and Film. With Prof. Beate Ochsner (Media Studies). Seminar, University of Konstanz, summer 2016.

Cinematic Configurations of Writing. With Prof. Beate Ochsner (Media Studies). Seminar, University of Konstanz, summer 2015.

Performing Identities.With Prof. Götz Schwab. Parallel Courses in American Studies, University of Konstanz, and English Linguistics, University of Education Karlsruhe, and joint student conference in Konstanz, Winter 2014/15.

Performing Identities. Workshop in cooperation with the Theater Konstanz, January 2015.

Member of the Advisory Board of the German Association for American Studies (DGfA/GAAS)

Reviewer: Amerikastudien / American Studies; European Journal of American Studies; Oxford Bibliographies in American Literature.

Reviewer: German Research Foundation, Austrian Academy of Science.