Faculty and Staff
- Prof. Dr. Astrid Fellner Professor of North American Literary and Cultural Studies
- Office Administration: Bärbel Schlimbach M.A. North American Literary and Cultural Studies
- Dr. Svetlana Seibel North American Literary and Cultural Studies
- Magdalena Pfalzgraf North American Literary and Cultural Studies
- Atalie Gerhard M.A. DFG-funded IRTG researcher
- Isis Luxenburger M.A. DFG-funded IRTG researcher
- Dipl.-Üb. Eva Nossem UniGR-Center for Border Studies
- Research Assistants and Tutors
- Also in the Field of American Studies
Atalie Gerhard, M.A.
DFG-funded IRTG researcher
Building A 5.3, room 2.08
E-mail: atalie.gerhard[at]uni-saarland.de
Phone: +49 681 302 2214
Dissertation Project
Diversifying Containment: Cultural Discourses of Prison Narratives in North America
(Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Astrid M. Fellner, Universität des Saarlandes)
In my doctoral thesis, I analyze how prison narratives by North Americans or set in North America negotiate cultural ideas of deviance associated with criminalization, conviction, and incarceration. Discourses legitimating such containment practices are informed by legacies of racism and sexism but also the Wars on Drugs and Wars on Terror. According to Angela Y. Davis’ current Critical Resistance movement, prisons legally sanctify and perpetuate inequality in North American societies. First-hand accounts of containment represent translations of stigma into transcultural interventions with local relevance and universal political impact. Thus, H. Bruce Franklin considers the artistic products of African American slaves as part of the first North American literary genre, while Ioan Davies identifies the key motive to resist dehumanizing social conditions in the global genre of prison writing. I closely read how various markers of difference in North America, including race, gender, religion, sexual orientation, and political affiliation influence cultural producers’ perceptions and representations of prisons against the backdrop of historical Canadian and/or U.S.-American discourses that construct criminal deviance as such. By featuring autobiographical writings and documentary photography, my corpus material reflects the diversity of critical prison discourses in North America which are addressed by cultural producers that express a broad spectrum of perspectives in narratives, while mediating foundational ideals of liberty against penal realities of exclusion. Given the criticism of containment that they voice in North America, my subjects of analysis yield themselves to a timely and urgent comparative discussion of the national self-images of Canada and the U.S.A.
Education
2017-2019 | Beginn der Promotion in Amerikanistik, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg |
2014-2016 | Master of Arts in North American Studies: Culture and Literature, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg |
2011-2014 | Bachelor of Arts in English and American Studies/Frankoromanistik, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg |
Work Experience
01/2016-03/2016 | Studentische Hilfskraft, Lehrstuhl für Amerikanistik, insbesondere nordamerikanische Kultur- und Literaturwissenschaft (Prof. Dr. Heike Paul), Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg |
10/2015-12/2015 | Sekretariatsleitung zur Überbrückung, Lehrstuhl für Amerikanistik, insbesondere nordamerikanische Kultur- und Literaturwissenschaft (Prof. Dr. Heike Paul), Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg |
10/2013-09/2015 | Studentische Hilfskraft, Lehrstuhl für Amerikanistik, insbesondere nordamerikanische Kultur- und Literaturwissenschaft (Prof. Dr. Heike Paul), Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg |
Awards and Fellowships
2016 | Ehrenamtsnachweis Bayern für ehrenamtliches, freiwilliges und bürgerschaftliches Engagement als Ehrenamtliche im Bereich Flüchtlingsarbeit des Bayerischen Staatsministeriums für Arbeit und Soziales, Familie und Integration, 29/011/2016. |
Publications
2018 | “The Monstrous Return of the Commodified Female: How Zombie Strippers (2008) and From Dusk Till Dawn (2014) Transgress Foundational U.S. Cultural Values”, in: Rachid M’Rabty (ed.), The Dark Arts Journal. New and Emerging Voices in Gothic Studies 4.1: Transgressive Femininity and Contemporary Gothic. |
2018 | “Creepypastas: How Counterterrorist Fantasies (Re-) Create Horror Traditions for Today’s Digital Communities”, in: Ina Batzke/Eric Erbacher/Linda Heß/Corinna Lenhardt (eds.), Exploring the Fantastic: Genre, Ideology, and Popular Culture (Bielefeld: Transcript), 239-268. |
2017 | “Bricolage of Protest: Unveiling the Multicultural Dimensions of the Chicano Movement through its Murals of Protest”, in: Sämi Ludwig (ed.), American Multiculturalism in Context: Views from at Home and Abroad (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing), 371-386. |
2016 | “African American Corporeality: Repossessing the Nobility of Africa”, in: Hayes Peter Mauro (ed.), The International Review of African American Art 26.3: Race and Labor in American Art, 12-18. |
Conference Presentations
09/2018 | “Self-Representation Behind Bars: On the Redemptive Potential of Narrative in Inner Lives: Voices of African American Women in Prison (Ed. Paula C. Johnson, 2003)” |
09/2017 | “Traumatic Interventionism in the Alternative U.S.-American Historical War Narratives Blue Ravens (Gerald Vizenor; 2014) and Redeployment (Phil Klay; 2015)” |
03/2017 | “Empowerment and Containment in Compassionate Representations of Female Wars on Terror Witnesses by Helen Benedict and Lynsey Addario” |
11/2016 | “Critiques of U.S.-American Counterterrorist Communities of Virtue Through its Pop-cultural Individualizations in the TV-Series Homeland and Generation Kill” |
09/2016 | “Fantasies of ‘Knowledge’ (De-)formation in Selected Creepypastas of the U.S.-American Counterterrorist Culture” |