Englisches Seminar

Chair Prof. Dr. Astrid Franke

Welcome to the Chair of American Cultural and Literary Studies!

Our teaching and research covers a wide range of topics in American Literary and Cultural Studies, especially from the 19th to the 21st century. Systematically, our research focuses on the social functions of poetry, American painting and photography, African American and African Diaspora Studies, American race relations, and contemporary American novels.

Staff

Franke, Astrid, Dr., Prof.

Contact

astrid.frankespam prevention@uni-tuebingen.de
29-74536
Homepage

Room

508
Wilhelmstr. 50 (Brechtbau)

Office Hours

Wednesday, 14-15 h or by e-mail appointment

Obute, Anthony, Dr.

Contact

anthony.obutespam prevention@uni-tuebingen.de
29-74566
Homepage​​​​​​​

Room

507
Wilhelmstr. 50 (Brechtbau)

Office Hours

Per email appointment

Student Assistants

PhD Students

Yasin Ertas

  • Ertas, Yasin. “A New Contribution to Bildungsroman, “Erweiterungsromane:” Intertextual Continuity Across Characters” (working title).
    • This dissertation proposes a new theoretical model within the tradition of the Bildungsroman, termed Erweiterungsromane, that enables an intertextual and temporal reading of two artist novels: Charles Bukowski’s Ham on Rye (1982) and Ben Lerner’s Leaving the Atocha Station (2011). The central argument is that these coming-of-age novels, though written by different authors from distinct historical moments and environments, construct a continuous poetic self across non-overlapping life stages: Adam Gordon is not merely a postmodern poet figure in Lerner’s autofiction—he is an intertextual continuation of Henry Chinaski’s fractured artistic identity and he functions as Chinaski's unwritten future—not by inheritance or homage, but by a shared poetic condition that unfolds intertextually. 

Hannah Kontos

  • Kontos, Hannah. Performing the Global: Gender, Hybridity, and Cultural Strategy in K-pop’s Transnational Expansion (working title)
    • My research investigates how K-Pop constructs and circulates transnational identities through tis gendered performances, cultural strategies, and multimedia forms. It analyses representations of perceived androgyny, read queerness, and concept-driven branding functions within the industry’s global expansion. It situates K-pop at the intersection of transnational media circulation, identity politics, and the cultural logics of late capitalism.

Franz Liebster

  • Liebster, Franz. "Between Faiths or Doubts": Romantic Transformations in John Berryman's Poetry (working title).
    • British Romanticism echoes through John Berryman's poetry as ultimately a product of his imaginative intervention. His response to Romanticism shows Berryman not merely seeking more ways to sing the self but rather probing a broader set of "faiths and doubts" arising from this inheritance. Understanding Berryman's relation to Romanticism, as well as its reappearance in his poetry, may shed further light on his treatment of such themes as poetic personality, madness, and posterity.

David Waldbaur

  • Waldbaur, David. A Musical Iconography of the Western (working title)
    • In the early twentieth century imigrant composers from Europe brought to Hollywood a late romantic musical tradition as well as an outside view on the US. At the same time two directors were shaping the self-image of the American origins in their western films: John Ford and Howard Hawks. This analysis of the music used in their films aims to show how European musical traditions and American self-conception meet in early western films.

Luciana Crăciun Waldbaur

  • Waldbaur, Luciana Crăciun. When Visual Art Becomes Poetry: Explorations of Poetry-Based Visual Works (working title)
    • Several American contemporary artists explore poetry and make verses the main focus of their works (Jenny Holzer, Robert Montgomery, Cy Twomby, among others). However, the exploration of poetry does not always stop at published poetry. The artist's own texts or collages are used to convey a poetic message outside the book page. This project aims to explore how this is achieved and how literature and art interact in this context.

Chen Wang

  • Wang, Chen. Domestic Topographies of Democracy: Poetics Forms of Ephemerality and Invisibility in the Aesthetic Life (working title)
    • Reimagining domestic space through geological topography reveals the emotional climates and social hierarchies that shape the home’s shifting and hidden contours. Poetry serves as a vital "map" to reconnect structural critique with sensory experience, transforming "invisible" gestures of maintenance into perceptible ethical and emotional acts. Building on analyses of mid-century poets Sylvia Plath and Phyllis McGinley, the project investigates how aesthetic orders govern the visibility of domestic labor. Through Gwendolyn Brooks, the study then explores how domesticity expands into a communal urban organism, revealing the tight connection between private care and the public realm. Ultimately, by attending to the fleeting phenomena, the research demonstrates how the ephemeral is central to understanding domesticity as both an aesthetic practice and a democratic terrain.

Completed PhD Dissertations

  • Kopp, Luvena. Fight the Symbolic Power: Domination and Resistance in the Films of Spike Lee. 2025.
  • Schelenz, Laura. Diversity, Technology, Power: An American Black Feminist Approach to Studying and Designing Diversity in Relation to Contemporary Technologies. 2023.
  • Luther, Katharina. Knowing and Doing and Becoming: A Natureculture Poetics of Contemporary Matter Poetry. 2023. (co-supervised with Ingrid Hotz-Davies)
  • Nyberg, Ferdinand. Temperate Regions: Space, Threat, and Antebellum American Temperance. 2020.
  • Spieker, Lisa. Writing 'Madness:' Stigma, Self-fashioning, and 'Truth' in 'Mental Illness' Pathographies. 2019.
  • Hoffmann, Lukas. I Am True of Heart - You Are True of Heart" Eggers, Lethem, Wal/ace et al.: Postironic Nonfiction's Appeal to Its Reader. 2015.
  • Hirschfelder, Nicole. Oppression as a Process A Figurational Analysis of the Case of Bayard Rustin. 2013.