2006

Thomas Austenfeld joined

Ø    the University of Fribourg's English department in September 2006. He left North Georgia College & State University where he had served as department head and professor for 3 and 6 years, respectively.  Before leaving, he was named "Alumni Distinguished Professor" at North Georgia  and delivered the commencement address.

In 2006, he published

Ø    "German Heritage and Culture in Louise Erdrich's The Master Butchers Singing Club" in Great Plains Quarterly26 (Winter 2006): 3-11. 

Ø    He also has three entries in The Facts on File Companion to the American Novel, ed. Abby H.P. Werlock. New York: Facts on File, 2006. The three entries concern Jean Stafford's "The Mountain Lion," Kay Boyle's "Plagued by the Nightingale," and Norman Maclean's "A River Runs Through It." 

He gave two conference papers

Ø    "The Spinet and the Coffin: Katherine Anne Porter and the Art of Music" at the ALA in San Francisco

Ø    "Sensations: The Hypertrophy of Aesthetics in Philip Roth's Everyman" at the SANAS conference in Geneva.

Nicole Frey Büchel has published a review of

Ø    Higgins, David. Romantic Genius and the Literary Magazine: Biography, Celebrity, Politics. Routledge Studies in Romanticism 6. London and New York: Routledge, 2005. In: Variations 14 (2006): 221-223.

Jürgen Grandt published

Ø    Rev. of Deep River: Music and Memory in Harlem Renaissance Thought, by Paul Allen Anderson, and Spirituals, Blues, and Jazz People in African American Fiction: Living in Paradox, by A. Yemisi Jimoh. South Atlantic Review 70.1 (2005): 157-61.

Ø    “(Un-)Telling Truth: An Interview with Tayari Jones.” Langston Hughes Review 19 (2005): 70-81.

and gave the following presentations:

Ø    “What Did He Do to Be so Black and Blue? Robert Johnson’s Crossroads and the Blackness of the Blues.” Institute of American Studies, Universität Bayreuth, Germany. 7 June 2006.

Ø    “Black to the Future: The Harlem Renaissance Then and Now.” Department of English, Universität Basel, Switzerland. 9 May 2006.

Ø    “Here and Now, Then and There: Walter Benjamin, the Aura of Jazz, and the Politics of Round Midnight.” Sixty-sixth Annual Convention of the College Language Association (CLA), University of Alabama-Birmingham, Birmingham, AL. 6 April 2006.

Ø    “African American Literary Jazz: The European Connection.” Institute of African American Studies, University of Georgia, Athens, GA. 3 April 2006.

Ø    “Blues and the Abstract Truth: Richard Wright, the Allman Brothers Band, and Literary-critical Practice.” Department of English, University of Georgia, Athens, GA. 31 March 2006.

Ø    “‘Wie? Die Welt war Jazz geworden?’ Hans Janowitz and Jazz in the Weimar Republic.” Annual Convention of the Collegium for African American Research (CAAR). Crossovers: African Americans and Germany, Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster, Germany. 23 March 2006.

Franziska Gygax published

Ø    “Erzählen von Krankheit als Autobiographie und Theorie.” In Narration und Geschlecht: Texte – Medien –Episteme. Ed. Sigrid Nieberle und Elisabeth Strowick. Köln: Böhlau Verlag, 2006. Pp. 409-22.

Ø    “Gertrude Stein.” In Encyclopedia of Women in World History. Ed. Bonnie G. Smith. New York: Oxford University Press. Forthcoming. (2007)

Ø    “The Portrait as Word and (A)Head: Gertrude Stein and the Staging of (Her)Self.” In Seeming and the Seen.Festschrift for Peter Halter. Ed. Beverly Maeder, Jürg Schwyter, and Ilona Sigrist. Bern, London, and New York: Peter Lang, 2006. Pp. 209-224.

Ø    “The Optimist’s Daughter: A Woman’s Memory.” In Eudora Welty. Ed. Harold Bloom. (Bloom’s Modern Critical Views.) Chelsea House Publ. 2006.

and gave the following papers

Ø    SLSA, Society for Science, Literature, and the Arts in Amsterdam: “Close Encounters.” Paper: “Displacement of Body and Voice: Illness Narratives and Cultural Knowledge”

Ø    SANAS conference Geneva, Nov.  2006): “American Aesthetics.” Paper: “The Aesthetics of Illness: Narratives as Empowerment”

Hartwig Isernhagen

Ø    is no longer co-editor of ICSELL

He published

Ø    Brockhaus Encyclopedia articles “Anglistik”, “Amerikanistik”, “Indianerliteratur“, “Momaday”, “Silko”, “Welch”

Ø    “Emma’s Attitudes: Melancholy and/as Representation.” The Seeming and the Seen: Essays in Modern Visual and Literary Culture, ed. Beverly Maeder, Jürg Schwyter, Ilona Siegrist, Boris Vejdovsky. Berne, etc.: Peter Lang, 2006. 253-276.

Ø    “Kulturwissenschaft(en) als Konfliktwissenschaft(en): Plädoyer für einen sanften Universalismus.” Kulturwissenschaften im Blickfeld der Standortbestimmung, Legitimierung und Selbstkritik, ed. Dariusz Aleksandrowicz & Karsten Weber. Kulturwissenschaften 4. Berlin: Frank & Timme, 2007. 135-152

Ø    “Überleben vorläufig garantiert: Nordamerikanische Indianerliteratur im Zustand der Normalität.” NZZ 257, 4./5. Nov., 2006. 6.

Ø    “NONAM - Nordamerika Native Museum: Ein Indianermuseum‚ zwischen Ethnologie und Kunst.” A4: Magazin für Außereuropäische Kunst und Kultur 02/06. 58-61

and presented papers

Ø    at the 2006 annual conventions of SANAS (Geneva) and AAAS (Vienna).

Christina Ljungberg published

Ø    “Mapping the Territories of Being: Art, the Body and Digital Media”. Semiotic Bodies, Aesthetic Embodiments, and Cyberbodies (Intervalle 10).  Ed. Winfried Nöth.  Kassel: Kassel University Press, 2006. 208-233.

Ø    “Rituals of Remembrance: Photography and Autobiography in Postmodern Text”. The Seeming and the Seen.Ed. Beverly Maeder and Boris Vejdovsky. Frankfurt and Bern: Peter Lang, 2006.  343-366.

Ø    “The End of Style”?  Stil als Zeichen. Funktionen – Brüche – Inszenierungen. Frankfurt (Oder) 2006. (Universitätsschriften – Schriftenreihe der Europa-Universität Viadrina, Band 24)./ CD-ROM (ISSN 0941-7540).

Ø    (review) Ascott, Roy. Telematic Embrace. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004. DeSignis 10 (2006): 231.

Ø    (review) Lischka, Gerhard Johann, and Peter Weibel, eds. Die Kunst der Medien, die Medien der Kunst. Bern: Benteli Verlag, 2004. DeSignis 10 (2006): 234-35.

And gave the following lectures

Ø    In February, she was invited to give a talk on “Cognition and Literary Interpretation” in the conference on Communication, Interpretation, Translation, International Colloquium at the University of Bari.

Ø    In March, she gave a guest lecture at the University Nagoya Gakuin on “Cognition and Interpretation.”

Ø    In May, she was Benjamin Meaker Fellow at the University of Bristol in the Performative / Space / Place project. She gave workshops, seminars and a guest lecture on “Cognition and Performativity.” She also gave a paper on “Urban Movement as Performative Utterance” at the symposium Movement, Mapping Mobility.

Ø    In June, she gave a keynote address on “Mapping the Territories of Being” in the First International Congress on Technological Esthetics at the Catholic University of São Paulo on the occasion of the opening of a new graduate course on Technologies of Intelligence and Digital Design.

Ø    She also gave a guest lecture at Centro Universitário SENAC - Campus Santo Amaro in São Paulo on “The logic of maps.”

Ø    In July she gave a keynote address on “Subjectivity as Performance in Literary Texts” in the section The Current State Of Literary Semiotics at the SIS in Imatra / University of Helsinki.

Sämi Ludwig gave the following papers

Ø    “The Aesthetics of Difference: American Dissent and Anti-Humanism.” Conference on American Aesthetics(Swiss Association for North American Studies). Geneva, November 2006.

Ø    “Dissent in Early 19th-century American Reformist Discourse.” Conference of the European Association for American Studies. Nicosia, Cyprus, April 2006.

Ø    “Utopian Moments in Chang Rae Lee’s Novels.” Utopian Concepts in Contemporary Anglophone Culture. Freiburg/Br., January 2006.

and published

Ø    “Ideology and Art: Pocahontas in Three Early American Plays.” US Icons and Iconicity. Eds. Walter Hölbling, Klaus Rieser, and Susanne Rieser. “American Studies in Austria.” Münster: LIT Verlag, 2006. 93-114.

Deborah Madsen

is a member of the Editorial Board of the new OUP journal, Contemporary Women Writers.

She published

Ø    The essay collection, co-edited with Michael Hanrahan, Textuality,  Teaching and Technology, Teaching the New English series (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006).

Ø    “‘No Place Like Home’: The Ambivalent Rhetoric of  Hospitality in the Work of Simone Lazaroo, Arlene Chai, and Hsu-Ming Teo,” Journal of Intercultural Studies, Vol. 27. No. 1-2 (Feb-May, 2006), pp. 117-32. 

Ø    “The Discursive  Dynamics of Chinese American Life Writing: Pardee Lowe and Jade Snow  Wong,” invited contribution to Amerikastudien, special issue: Asian American Studies in Europe, Vol. 51 No.  3 (2007), pp. 343-53.

Ø    “Chinese American Writers of the Real  and the Fake: Authenticity and the Twin Traditions of Life Writing,” Canadian  Review of American Studies, Vol. 36 No. 3 (2006), pp. 251-66.

Ø    “Multicultural Futures: Cultural  Diversity and the Desire of   Belonging,” in Transitions: Race, Culture, and the Dynamics of  Change, ed. Hanna  Wallinger (Vienna & Muenster: LT Verlag, 2006).

Ø    The Chinese edition of her monograph was published as Feminist Theory and Literary Practice, ed. Jin Li (Beijing: Foreign Language and Teaching and  Research Press, 2006).

Ø    “Nora Okja Keller: Telling Trauma in the Transnational Military (Sex)-Industrial Complex,” Interactions, special issue: Contemporary Asian American and Asian British Literatures, 15. 2 (Fall 2006), pp. 75-85.

She delivered the following lectures

Ø    In March she gave the keynote address at the American Indian Workshop conference, University  of Wales, Swansea, Place in Native American History,  Literature and Culture. Her lecture was entitled “On “The Spirit of Native Place”: An Encounter with the National Museum of the American Indian.”

Ø    In April she spoke at the British Association for American Studies  annual conference, University of Kent at Canterbury, with the paper “Native  Lessons for Western Theory: Trauma and the Case of Paula Gunn Allen’s The  Woman Who Owned the Shadows.”

Ø    Also in April, she participated in the Journée de Formation Continue, hosted at the University of Neuchâtel, speaking on the subject of “The Changing American Literary Canon: Pedagogy and Diversity.”

Ø    In May she spoke at the MESEA conference, at the University of Navarre, Pamplona, Spain, with the paper “The “Amy Tan Effect”: Canon Formation and Diasporic  Anglophone Chinese Life Writing.”

Ø    Also in May, she was hosted at Beijing Foreign Studies University, as part of the International Conference  on Asian American Literature in the 21st Century, where she gave the paper “The Rhetoric of the Double Negative : North American Diasporic Chinese Literatures.”

Ø    In September, she was a symposium leader at the Salzburg Seminar American Studies Alumni Association (SSASAA) meeting, Redefining America: Race, Ethnicity and  Immigration. She delivered the plenary lecture: “UnAmerican Exceptionalism”;  and led the workshop : “Transnational  Writers and the National Canon.”

Ø    In October she delivered the opening keynote address at the Canadian  Association for American Studies annual conference, Queen’s University, on American  Exceptionalism. Her lecture was entitled “Witch-hunting: American Exceptionalism and Global  Terrorism.”

Ø    Also in October, she visited the Department of American Studies, University of New Mexico, where she gave the lecture “From Trauma to  Narrative: Temporalizing Experience in Native American Literature.”

Ø    Again in October, she visited the research group “Project Narrative” hosted by the Departments of English and Comparative Studies, at the Ohio State University, and delivered the lecture “From Trauma to Narrative: Temporalizing Experience in American Ethnic Literatures.”

Beverly Maeder published

Ø    “Wallace Stevens and Linguistic Form.” Ed. John Serio. The Cambridge Companion to Wallace Stevens. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2006.

She also co-edited and is the co-author of the introduction of

Ø    Beverly Maeder, Jürg Schwyter, Ilona Sigrist and Boris Vejdovsky, eds. The Seeming and the Seen: Essays in Modern Visual and Literary Culture. Transatlantic Aesthetics and Culture, Vol. 1. Bern: Peter Lang, 2006.

Michael Prusse published

Ø    “Last Orders, by Graham Swift.” Dictionary of Literary Biography. Vol. 326. Booker Prize Novels: 1969-2005. Ed. Merritt Moseley. Detroit: Thomson Gale, 2006, pp. 276-286.

Ø     “Rites of Passage, by William Golding.” Dictionary of Literary Biography. Vol. 326. Booker Prize Novels: 1969-2005. Ed. Merritt Moseley. Detroit: Thomson Gale, 2006, pp. 120-128.

Ø    “The Siege of Krishnapur, by J. G. Farrell.” Dictionary of Literary Biography. Vol. 326. Booker Prize Novels: 1969-2005. Ed. Merritt Moseley. Detroit: Thomson Gale, 2006, pp. 40-47.

Ø    “Staying On, by Paul Scott.” In Dictionary of Literary Biography. Vol. 326. Booker Prize Novels: 1969-2005. Ed. Merritt Moseley. Detroit: Thomson Gale, 2006, pp. 89-99.

Ø    “Reading Matters.” IATEFL Voices. No. 188 (January-February 2006): p. 2.

Ø    “Extensiv und intensiv: Leseförderung in Mutter- und Fremdsprache.” PH-Akzente. No. 3 (September 2006): pp. 32-35. Repr. in Leseforum Schweiz, 15 (2006): pp. 20-23.

Ø    Review of: Bend it like Beckham. Film Studies. In: PH-Akzente. 4 (November 2006): p. 45.

and gave the following paper

Ø    “Brief Encounters Between Fictional Universes: John McGahern and Ernest Hemingway.” Rewriting/Reprising in Literature Conference, CERAN, Université Lumière Lyon 2, France, 13-14 October 2006

Manuela Rossini published

Ø    “To the Dogs: Companion speciesism and the new feminist materialism.” Kritikos: an international and interdisciplinary journal of postmodern cultural sound, text and image 3 (September 2006), ISSN 1552-5112. Available online: intertheory.org/rossini.

and gave the following conference paper

Ø    Greifswald, Ernst-Moritz-Arndt-Universität, 24-25 November 2006: Conference: Engineering Life. Narrationen vom Menschen in Biomedizin, Kultur und Literatur. Paper: “Imagineering Life: Evolution und Posthumane(s) Gestalten in zeitgenössischer Science/Fiction” (by invitation).

Ø    New York, 9-13 November 2005: SLSA Conference. Organiser and Chair of Session: Becoming-Posthuman: Machinic and Synesthetic Involutions on a Nature-Culture Continuum. Paper: “A Critical-Posthumanist Incredulity Towards Grand Evolutionary Narratives.”

She has become a

Ø    Member of the Editorial Board of Critical Posthumanisms (Rodopi book series; General Editors: Ivan Callus and Stefan Herbrechter) and a

Ø    Member of the Steering Committee of SLSA-Europe (the European chapter of the international Society for Science, Literature, the Arts),

organizing the conference

Ø    Close Encounters: ScienceLiteratureArts, The 4th European Biannual Conference of the SLSA, Amsterdam, 13-16 June 2006:

-       Programme Chair

-       introductory speech

-       organiser of Streams A (Revisions of Humanism – Visions of Posthumanism), B (Feminism, Science, Science Fiction), D (Images, Imaging, Imagination), E (Narratives and Narrations), I (Companion Species: Ecology and Art), as well as the panel discussion “Art as Re/Search”

-       chairperson of Sessions “Posthumans in Literature and Film” and “Science Fiction, Ecofeminism, and Science Studies”

Philipp Schweighauser published the following book

Ø    The Noises of American Literature, 1890-1985: Toward a History of Literary Acoustics. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2006

and the following articles

Ø    “An Anthropologist at Work: Ruth Benedict’s Poetry.” American Poetry from Whitman to the Present. Ed. Robert Rehder and Patrick Vincent. SPELL: Swiss Papers in English Language and Literature 18. Tübingen: Gunter Narr, 2006. 113-25.

Ø    “White Noise and the Web.” Approaches to Teaching DeLillo's White Noise. Ed. Tim Engles and John Duvall. New York: MLA, 2006. 94-102.

He gave the following invited talks

Ø    “Literature at a Crossroads: Some Reflections on the (Pre)modernity of the Early American Novel.” Freie Universität Berlin, 10 November 2006.

Ø    “Aesthetics, the Early American Novel, and the Transformation of Visual Culture in the New Republic / The Collected Poetry of Margaret Mead, Ruth Benedict, and Edward Sapir.” Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, 3 November 2006.

Ø    “Whose Postmodernism? Hutcheon, Jameson, and E.L. Doctorow’s Ragtime.” University of Lausanne, 20 March 2006

and the following conference talks

Ø    “Modern/Premodern Tensions in the Early American Novel: A Systems-Theoretic Account.” American Aesthetics. Conference of the Swiss Association of North American Studies at the University of Geneva. 11-12 November 2006.

Therese Steffen did a

Ø    Lehrstuhlvertretung for Prof. Ribbat at the University of Basle (April 2007 – June 2008)

and received another grant from the

Ø    Carl Schlettwein Stiftung, which supports her for another three years with a Lehrauftrag ad personam to teach and do research on the “Literature and Culture of South Africa” at the University of Basle.

She was, moreover,

Ø    a regular participant in the Radio show of the DRS2 book club 2006: “52 Beste Bücher.”