PD Dr. Stefanie Schäfer
PD Dr. Stefanie Schäfer
Research interests
North American Literature and Culture
Feminist and Gender Studies
Visual and Popular Culture
Settler Colonial Studies
Mobility Studies
Canadian Studies
Current Research Projects
- Transatlantic Cowgirl Mobilities and European Western Myth
- Power and Gender: First Ladies in the Cultural Imaginary
Education
2017: Habilitation; Venia legendi: North American Literature and Culture, FSU Jena
2009: Dr. phil. (Anglistik), Heidelberg University
2005: State teacher’s degree and MA in English and French Philology, Trier University
2003: University of Minnesota, ISEP exchange program
Employment
- From Oct 2023: visiting chair American Studies (Culture; Lehrstuhlvertretung), FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg (Prof. Heike Paul)
- Summer 2023: visiting Professor, British and North American Media Studies, Philipps-Universität Marburg
- Summer 2022: visiting chair American Studies (Culture; Lehrstuhlvertretung), FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg (Prof. Heike Paul)
- 2020-22023: Executive Director, Centre for Canadian Studies/Centre d’Études Canadiennes, University of Vienna
- Summer 2020: visiting chair of American Studies (Lehrstuhlvertretung), Augsburg University (Prof. Katja Sarkowsky)
- 2018-2019: visiting chair American Studies (Culture; Lehrstuhlvertretung), FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg (Prof. Heike Paul)
- 2010-2020: Assistant Professor of American Studies, FSU Jena (Prof. Caroline Rosenthal)
- 2015-2016: Parental leave
- 2007-2010: research assistant, chair of English Literature and Culture, Heidelberg University (Prof. Vera Nünning)
Fellowships, Grants, Awards
- 2020-2023: Marie -Curie European Fellowship, Universität Wien (Projekt TACOMO) https://anglistik.univie.ac.at/research/research-projects/tacomo/
- 2012 -2013: Kluge Center Fellowship at the Library of Congress and German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) Postdoc Fellowship, Washington DC
Publications
Authored Books
- Yankee Yarns. Storytelling and the Invention of the National Body in Nineteenth-Century American Culture. Edinburgh Critical Studies in Atlantic Literatures and Cultures Series. Edinburgh University Press, 2021. https://edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-yankee-yarns.html. Reviews: American Literary History (2022): https://academic.oup.com/alh/article/34/4/1536/6809267; Amerikastudien/American Studies (2023): https://amst.winter-verlag.de/article/amst/2023/3/11/display/html
- ‘Just the Two of Us’. Self-Narration and Recognition in the Contemporary American Novel. Trier, WVT 2011.
Recent and Forthcoming Publications
- “This Isn’t Happening, Right? Satire and the Spectacle of American Populist Politics in Don’t Look Up (2021)”, in: Comparative Literature, special issue “Representations of New Right Thought in European and American contemporary fiction”, ed. Lena Seauve, 2025. In preparation.
- “Feeling Barbie: Mothers, Daughters, and the Afterlives of White Feminist Genealogies”, in: Feminist Theory, special issue: “Intergenerational Feminisms”, ed. Jennifer C. Nash and Samantha Pinto, 2025. In Preparation, with Katharina Gerund.
- “Vanguard Wheel Estate: Property, Grief, and the American Road Myth in Chloe Zhao’s Nomadland (2020)”, in America and Ownership, ed. Gesa Mackenthun. Heidelberg, Winter, 2025. In preparation.
- Ladies in Arms. Women, Guns, and Feminisms in Contemporary Popular Culture. co-edited with Teresa Hiergeist. Bielefeld: transcript 2024. forthcoming. https://www.transcript-verlag.de/978-3-8376-6955-8/ladies-in-arms/?c=313000000
- “Cowgirling in Thuringia: The German Police Procedural Tatort goes Western“, in Ladies in Arms. Women, Guns, and Feminisms in Contemporary Popular Culture. ed. Teresa Hiergeist and Stefanie Schäfer. Bielefeld: transcript 2024, 181-196. forthcoming.
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“‘Grief became my friend, my work’: Mary Todd Lincoln’s Uneasy Union with Memory in LeAnne Howe’s Savage Conversations (2019).” New American Studies Journal 74(2023), special issue: “Women and Service in the Long 19th Century“, ed. Isabella Heinz, Kristeena Lute, Julia Nitz, Sandra Petrulionis, Esther Wetzel. https://nasjournal.org/NASJ/article/view/1391/1381
- “Not Form which You See, but Emotion which You Feel: Crisis, Time, and Hyperempathy in Octavia Butler’s Earthseed-Novels.” The Transformative Power of Literature and Narrative: Promoting Positive Change. Ed. Corinna Assmann, Jan Rupp, Christine Schwanecke. Tübingen, Narr 2023. 53-63.
- “Jackie (Pablo Larraín, 2016).” The Lexicon of Global Melodrama. Ed. Heike Paul, Sarah Marak, Katharina Gerund and Marius Henderson. Bielefeld: transcript 2022. 353-356.
- “The Donald, FLOTUS, and the Gendered Labors of Celebrity Politics at 1600, Pennsylvania Avenue.” Amerikastudien/American Studies, special issue “Common Grounds? Transatlantic Perspectives on the State of American Democracy”, ed. Cedric Essi, Heike Paul, and Boris Vormann, 66.1 (2021): 302-307.
- “Geraldine Brooks.“ Blackwell Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Fiction, 1980-2020, ed. Patrick O’Donnell, Stephen Burn, und Lesley Larkin. London: Wiley-Blackwell 2022.
- “Washington Irving.” De Gruyter Handbook of the American Short Story. Ed. Erik Redling and Oliver Scheiding. Berlin: De Gruyter 2022: 103-118.
Conference Talks and Guest Lectures (Recent Selection)
- Co-organizer, workshop “Indigeinous Futurism. A Workshop with Chelsea Vowel.” Centre for Canadidan Studes, University of Vienna, Feb 19, 2024. https://kalender.univie.ac.at/einzelansicht/?tx_univieevents_pi1[id]=31791
- “Haywire Girls. Storytelling, Gender, and the New Wild West.“ Guest Lecture, Trier University, Jul 12, 2023.
- “Buffalo Power: Origin Stories and Métis Futurisms in Chelsea Vowel’s “Michif Man“.“ Canada Day Lecture, Marburg Centre for Canadian Studies, Jul 4, 2023.
- “Vanguard Wheel Estate: Property, Grief, and the American Road Myth in Chloe Zhao‘s “Nomadland“ (2020).“ Invited paper, workshop “Spatial Movement and the Refusal of Ownership“; GAAS/DGfA Annual Meeting “America and Ownership: Territory, Slavery, Jubilee“, Jun 1-3 2023, Rostock.
- “Return of the Bison? Canadian Literature meets Indigenous Futurism in Chelsea Vowel’s Buffalo is the New Buffalo (2022)“; guest lecture, University of Innsbruck, Mar 21, 2023.
- “Rewriting the Cowgirl: Perspectives from Contemporary Indigenous Literature“; guest lecture; North American Literary History: A Survey; Prof. Alexandra Ganser, University of Vienna, Mar 28, 2023.
- “I must dress in costly materials: On First Lady Fashion and the Sentimental Labors of American Womanhood.“ Workshop, “Civil Sentimentalism in the Americas”, Nov 9-11 2022, LMU München.
- ““Chicks Who Love Guns“ and other Shooting Women in Quentin Tarantino’s American Pop Culture Historiographies.“ International Conference “Ladies in Arms. Representations of Shooting Women in Contemporary Popular Culture“, Oct 19-21, 2022, University of Vienna.
Podcast
- “LadyFiction”, Amerikazentrum Hamburg (20 episodes and counting). https://amerikazentrum.de/podcast/