PD Dr. Birgit Spengler

Research Interests

• American Literature and Culture
• 19th-Century American Women Writers
• Visual Culture
• Gender Studies
• Intertextuality

University Education and Degrees

• Cornelia Goethe Prize 2007 for the doctoral dissertation Vision, Gender, and Power in Nineteenth-Century American Women's Writing, 1860-1900. The Cornelia Goethe Prize is awarded annually for outstanding academic research in Women's and Gender Studies
• Graduate Student Prize for the Best Paper Presented at the Society for the Study of American Women Writers Conference 2003

Grants and Research Abroad

• German Association for American Studies (DGfA)
• Society for the Study of American Women Writers (SSAWW, board member since 2012)
• Cornelia Goethe Center for Women's and Gender Studies (CGC), Goethe-University (Associate Member)
• Center for North American Studies (Zenaf), Goethe-University
• Catharine Maria Sedgwick Society
• Calliopean Society, Institute for English and American Studies, Goethe-University
• German Association of University Professors and Lecturers (DHV)

Publications

Monograph:

• Vision, Gender, and Power in Nineteenth-Century American Women's Writing, 1860-1900. Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter, 2008.

Edited Volume:

• Guest Editor of Appropriating Vision(s): Visual Practices in American Women's Writing. Spec. Issue of Amerikastudien / American Studies 54.1 (2009).

Journal and Book Articles

• "Art as Engagement: Violence, Trauma, and the Role of the Reader in Edwidge Danticat's The Dew Breaker." Contemporary Women's Writing. Forthcoming.
• "American Jane Eyres: Transatlantic Dialogues in 19th-Century Women's Writing." Transatlantic Women: Essays on 19th-Century American Women Writers in Great Britain, Ireland, and Europe. Eds. Beth L. Lueck, Brigitte Bailey, and Lucinda Damon-Bach. Durham: University of New Hampshire Press, 2012. 417-453.
• "Geiselnahme, Schwarzfahren oder einfach nur Trampen? Literary Spinoffs, Originalität und geistiges Eigentum." Plagiate. Eds. Jochen Bung, Malte-Christian Gruber, and Sebastian Kühn. Berlin: trafo Wissenschaftsverlag, 2011. 139-156. Beiträge zur Rechts-, Gesellschafts- und Kulturkritik. Bd. 10.
• Introduction. Appropriating Vision(s): Visual Practices in American Women's Writing. Spec. Issue of Amerikastudien / American Studies 54.1 (2009): 5-11.
• "Visual Negotiations and Medical Discourses in Nineteenth-Century American Women's Writing." Appropriating Vision(s): Visual Practices in American Women's Writing. Spec. Issue of Amerikastudien / American Studies 54.1 (2009): 35-58.
• "Gendered Vision(s) in the Short Fiction of Harriet Prescott Spofford." Legacy 21.1 (2004): 68-73.
• "Michael Cunningham Rewriting Virginia Woolf: Pragmatist vs. Modernist Aesthetics." Woolf Studies Annual 10 (2004): 53-81.

Conference Papers and Invited Lectures

• "Rewriting Moby-Dick: Imagining the Community through Melville and Naslund," Conference of the Society for the Study of American Women Writers, Denver, October 10-13, 2012.
• "Literary Spinoffs," Ernst-August-Universität Göttingen, May 15, 2012.
• "Rewriting the Canon, Reconsidering Intertextual Theory: Literary Spinoffs and the Cultural Implications of Intertextual Engagements," Rewriting, Remixing, and Reloading: Adaptations Across the Globe, Berlin, October 1, 2010.
• "Literary Spinoffs: Rewriting the Canon, Revisiting the Nineteenth Century," Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nürnberg, June 29, 2010.
• "Rewriting the Genre: Detection in Nineteenth-Century Women's Writing," Conference of the Society for the Study of American Women Writers, Philadelphia, October 22-24, 2009.
• "Dis-membering and Re-membering: Violence and Storytelling in Edwidge Danticat's The Dew Breaker," Conference of the Rocky Mountain Modern Language Association, Snowbird, Utah, October 8-10, 2009.
• "Geiselnahme, Schwarzfahren oder einfach Trampen? Literary Spinoffs, Originalität und geistiges Eigentum," Plagiarism, Frankfurt am Main, July 17-18, 2009.
• "Medical Gazes, Gender, and the Nation in Nineteenth-Century Women's Writing," Visual Cultures – Transatlantic Perspectives, 11th Academy Conference of the Bavarian American Academy, Munich, July 2-4, 2009.
• "American Jane Eyres: Transatlantic Dialogues in Nineteenth-Century Women's Writing," Transatlantic Women: Nineteenth-Century American Women Writers in Great Britain, Ireland, and Europe, Oxford, July 16-19, 2008.
• "If Looks Could Kill: The Politics of Vision in Nineteenth-Century American Literature, " Invited Lecture in the Series Gender-Science-Literature organized by Prof. Dr. Susanne Scholz and Martina Sehring, Goethe-University, June 11, 2008.
• "Female Scopic Desire at the Interstices of Race and Class: Elizabeth Stoddard, Louisa May Alcott and L. E. Lee," Conference of the American Literature Association, San Francisco, May 25-28, 2006.
• "Art, Vision, and Gender in Harriet Prescott Spofford's Early Fiction," Conference of the American Literature Association, San Francisco, May 27-30, 2004.
• "The Silver Canvas and the Easel: Visual Cultures in the Short Fiction of Harriet Prescott Spofford," Postgraduate Forum, Bremen, Germany, November 7-8, 2003.
• "Gendered Vision(s) in the Short Fiction of Harriet Prescott Spofford," Conference of the Society for the Study of American Women Writers, Fort Worth, Texas, September 24-27, 2003.
• "Intertextual Interrogations: Michael Cunningham's Dialogue with Woolf," Conversation in Woolf's Works, Montpellier, France, June 13-14, 2003.

Organization of Conference Panels and Workshops

• "Rewriting the Classics, (Re-)Writing the Imagined Community: Intertextual Negotiations of Citizenship and Belonging," Panel at the Society for the Study of American Women Writers Conference, Denver, October 10-13, 2012. (Co-Organizer)
• "Hardboiled Women: Women Writing Crime Stories and Roman Noir," Panel at the Society for the Study of American Women Writers Conference, Philadelphia, October 22 -24, 2009. (Chair)
• "Religious Discourse and 'Gendered' Voices in Nineteenth-Century Literature," Workshop at the German Association for American Studies Conference, Dortmund, May 31-June 3, 2007. (Co-Organizer and Co-Chair)
• "Appropriating Vision(s): Visual Practices in American Women's Writing," Panel at the Society for the Study of American Women Writers Conference, Philadelphia, November 8-11, 2006.
• "Women Writing Across the Ocean: Nineteenth-Century Literary Negotiations," Workshop at the German Association for American Studies Conference, Frankfurt am Main, May 18-21, 2005. (Co-Organizer and Co-Chair)

Teaching Experience

Georg-August University, Göttingen, Germany, Summer Semester 2013 - Summer Semester 2014

• A Cultural History of American Literature: From the Early Republic to the Late Nineteenth Century (Lecture, SoSe14)
• Nineteenth-Century American Women Writers (Hauptseminar, SoSe14)
• Nineteenth-Century Visual Cultures (Proseminar, SoSe14)
• Directed Reading Course: From the Early Republic to the Late Nineteenth Century (SoSe14)
• A Cultural History of American Literature: From Exploration and Settlement to the Early Republic (Lecture, WS 13/14)
• Moby-Dick and the American Cultural Imagination (Hauptseminar, WS 13/14)
• Imagining the Other: The 'Orient' in American Literature and Culture (Proseminar, WS 13/14)
• Introduction to Literary Studies (WS 13/14)
• A Cultural History of American Literature: Postmodernism, New Ethnic Literatures, Recent Developments (Lecture, SoSe13)
• Photographic Discourses in/and Nineteenth Century America (Hauptseminar, SoSe13)
• Sleuthing America: American Detective Fiction from Poe to Auster (Proseminar, SoSe13)
• Recent Ethnic Fiction (Proseminar, SoSe13)

Goethe-University, Frankfurt am Main, Germany

Introductory Courses

• "Introduction to American Literature and Literary Theory," Spring 2009, Fall 2007, Spring 2007, Spring 2006, Fall 2003, Spring 2002
• "Introduction to American Culture and American Cultural Studies I & II," Fall 2012, Spring 2010, Fall 2009, Spring 2005

Undergraduate Level

• "Re-Reading Huckleberry Finn," Fall 2012
• "Women and the Civil War," Fall 2008
• "American Short Stories," Spring 2008
• "U.S. Orientalisms: The 'Orient' in American Literature and Culture," Spring 2007
• "Recent Ethnic Fiction," Fall 2006
• "Imag(in)ed Landscapes and People: Visual Representation and Nineteenth-Century Narrative," Fall 2005
• "Transcultural Interrogations: Intertextual Relations Across the Atlantic," Fall 2004, Team-Teaching with English Studies Faculty Colleague Christine Vogt-William
• "Secret Glances, Public View: Looking and Story-Telling in 19th-Century Fiction," Spring 2003

Graduate Level

• "The Return of the Repressed? The Nineteenth Century in Contemporary American Literature," Fall 2010
• "Trauma and Violence in Contemporary American Literature," Spring 2010
• "Arab Americans Before and After 9/11", Fall 2009
• "American Photography, 1839-1920," Spring 2009
• "Intertextuality in Contemporary Fiction," Spring 2008
• "American Detective Fiction," Fall 2007, Fall 2008
• "Edith Wharton," Fall 2006
• "Contemporary Fiction," Spring 2006, Team-Teaching with American Studies Faculty Colleague Prof. Dr. Susanne Opfermann

Birkbeck College, University of London

• Graduate Workshop "Gendered Perspectives in Nineteenth-Century American Fiction," Erasmus Teaching Exchange, March 2010.