Englisches Seminar

Dr. Debarchana Baruah

Associate Professor of American Studies

Debarchana Baruah joined the American Studies Department at the Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen in 2020 after completing her doctoral studies at the Heidelberg Center for American Studies (HCA), Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Günter Leypoldt. Her Ph.D. dissertation, “21st Century Retro: Mad Men and 1960s America,” offers a unique interdisciplinary theoretical framework to understand the increasingly popular trend in contemporary films and television to revisit recent pasts in ironic and ambivalent ways, distinct in their style and treatment of the past from the traditional historical productions. Baruah had previously studied at the University of Delhi, where she received her B.A., M.A., and M.Phil. degrees in English Literature. Baruah has offered courses in the universities of Delhi, Heidelberg and now Tübingen. Her current postdoctoral research on food and mobility examines how access to food shapes im/migration routes, patterns and experiences within and across the US borders.

Education

2019
Ph.D. in American Studies (summa cum laude)

Heidelberg Center for American Studies, Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg

2012
M.Phil. in English Literature

Department of English, University of Delhi

2010
M.A. in English Literature

Department of English, University of Delhi

2008
B.A. (Honors) in English Literature

Miranda House, University of Delhi

Memberships

  • German Association for American Studies (GAAS/DGfA)
  • European Association for American Studies (EAAS)
  • American Studies Association (ASA)

Research

Current Project (habilitation)

Food on Migrant Trails: How Access to Food Shapes the Latinx Migrant Bodies
Further Research Interests 

  • Im/migration

  • Undocumented Migrants

  • Border Studies

  • Mobility

  • Medical Anthropology

  • Food and Foodways

  • Memory Studies

  • Homelessness and Homeownership

  • Retro Film and television

  • Popular Seriality

  • Actor-Network Studies

  • American Cities and Suburbia

  • American Literature

  • 20th Century African American Literature

Teaching

  • S: Being Poor in America (WS 2024/25)
  • S: Health, Illness and Society (WS 2024/25)
  • S: Immigrant Women in American Literature and Culture (WS 2024/25)
  • Being Poor in America (SS 2024)
  • Migrant Memoirs and Autobiographies (SS 2024)
  • Food, Memories, and Mobility in America (SS 2024)
  • Undocumented in America (WS 2023/24)
  • Introduction to Cultural Studies (1) (WS 2023/24)
  • Introduction to Cultural Studies (2) (WS 2023/24)
  • Illegals, Wets, Juan(/ita) Does: The Many Names of Immigrants at the US-Mexico Border (WS 2022/23)
  • Immigrant Women in American Literature and Culture (SS 2022)
  • El Otro Lado: Stories of Border-Crossing (SS 2021)
  • Food, Memories, and Mobility in America (WS 2020-2021)
  • Hyphenated American Food Cultures (SS 2020)
  • Voices of their Own: Representations of the Self in 20th Century African American Literature (WS 2015-2016)
  • The American Suburb in US Literature (WS 2014-2015)

Publications

Monographs

2021

Articles

2024

  • “Karla Cornejo Villavicencio’s The Undocumented Americans: Between a Memoir and a Manifesto.” AmLit 4.2, 2024. ISSN:2789-889X (Forthcoming)

2023

  • “Undocumented Migrants: Border-Crossing, Illness, and Labor.” Iperstoria 22, 2023. ISSN:2281-4582.  Article 

2016

  • “Mad Men and Memory: Nostalgia, Intertextuality and Seriality in 21st Century Retro Television.” The Past in Visual Culture: Essays on Memory, Nostalgia and the Media. Edited by Jilly Boyce Kay, Cat Mahoney and Caitlin Shaw. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2016. Article

2014

  • “Remembering through Retro TV and Cinema: Mad Men as Televisual Memorial to 60s America.” Current Objectives of Postgraduate American Studies 15.1, 2014. Article

 

Conferences and Talks

2024

  • “Undocumented Illnesses: Migrant Health and Labor in the US” and “Health in American History”. Annual Meeting of the Historians in the DGfA, Erfurt, May 2024. 
  • “Karla Cornejo Villavicencio’s The Undocumented Americans: Between a Memoir and a Manifesto”. European Association for American Studies (EAAS) Biennial Conference, Munich, April 2024.

2023

  • "Crossing Over to El Otro Lado with a Bottle of Pepsi". Frontiers and Wastelands: Redefining the Nation in US Popular Culture, International Conference at the Instituto Franklin Universidad de Alcalá, Alcalá de Henares, November 2023.
  • "Undocumented Migrants: Border-Crossing, Illness, and Labor". Lecture Series of the HSS Department, Indian Institute of Science Research (IISER) Pune, September 2023.
  • “Crossing Over to El Otro Lado and The Deferred American Dream”. Talk at the 11th World Congress of the International American Studies Association (IASA), University of Silesia in Katowice, September 2023. 
  • "Undocumented Migrants: Border-Crossing, Illness, and Labor". Lecture Series of the HSS Department, Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati (IITG) Guwahati, August 2023.
  • “The House on the Other Side: Homeownership, Housing Precarity, and Homelessness in US Immigration Narratives”. Talk given at the 69th Annual Meeting of the German Association for American Studies (GAAS/DGFA), Rostock, June 2023. 

2022

  • “Human Waste at the US-Mexico Border.” Talk given at the European Association for American Studies (EAAS) Biennial Conference, Madrid, April 2022.

2021

  • “Structural racism and distribution of privilege in German Academia.” Talk given together with Dr. Nicole Hirschfelder at the 2021 Matariki Lecture Series on Practical Impacts of Racism Everyday Living, Tübingen, October 2021. To be seen on You Tube.
  • “Food Immobility in a Globalized World”. Talk at the 2021 Annual Meeting of the American Studies Association (ASA), San Juan, Puerto Rico, October 2021.
  • “1960s America in Retro TV Series Mad Men.” Invited talk at the American Studies Seminar, University of Naples "Federico II,” July 2021
  • “Mapping Urban Immigrant Mobility to Food Preferences and Access”. Talk at the 67th Annual Meeting of the German Association for American Studies (GAAS/DGFA), Heidelberg, June 2021.
  • “Undocumented in America: Traumas of the Border in two Mexican Immigrants' Memoirs”. 2nd AISNA Graduates Conference, Rome, May 2021.
  • “Eating at the Borderlands”. Talk at the European Association for American Studies (EAAS) Biennial Conference, Warsaw, April-May 2021.
  • “Women in Retro Film and Television”. Invited talk at The German-American Institute (d.a.i) Tübingen, 10th March 2021. To be seen on YouTube. 

2020 

  • "Retro Representations of the Past in Film and Television". Invited lecture at the International Webinar hosted by the English Department, Chhaygaon College, Chhaygaon, August 2020

2019

  • “Remembering 1960s America in Retro.” Talk delivered at the 41st Annual Conference of the Historians in the German Association of American Studies (GAAS/DFGA). Franken-Akademie Schloß Schney, February 2019.

2016

  • “The 1960s in Mad Men.” Talk delivered at the Biennial Conference of the European Association for American Studies (EAAS), Constanța, April 2016.

2014

  • “Retro Cultures: The American Post-War in American Television.” Talk delivered at the 2014 Annual Meeting of the American Studies Association (ASA), Los Angeles, November 2014.
  • “The Retro Effect in Mad Men.” Talk delivered at the American Identity: A Postgraduate Work-In-Progress Conference, King’s College, London, June 2014.
  • “The Retro Effect in Mad Men.” Talk delivered at the postgraduate conference “Mediated Pasts: Visual Cultures and Collective Memory” of The Cinema and Television History (CATH) Research Centre, De Montfort University, Leicester, June 2014.
  • “Memories of the post-war period in contemporary American popular cultures.” Talk delivered at the Ruhr PhD Forum 2014, Ruhr Center of American Studies, Dortmund, January 2014.

2013

  • “Retro TV and Cinema: Televisual Memorials of Postwar America.” Talk delivered at the Postgraduate Forum (PGF) of the German Association for American Studies (GAAS/DGfA), Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, October 2013.