Laura Hartrampf, M.A.
Laura Hartrampf holds a Master’s degree in Gender Studies and English and American Studies from Ruhr University Bochum and is currently a doctoral research associate in American Studies at the University of Münster. Her research moves between literary studies, feminist and queer theory, and cultural analysis, with an interest in how literature engages with questions of gender, sexuality, power, and marginalization across different historical and cultural contexts.
Her dissertation project, Thresholds of Resistance: Paratext and the Politics of Queer Young Adult Literature, examines how resistance takes shape as queer young adult literature moves beyond the narrative itself and into the paratextual spaces surrounding it. She explores how author’s notes, dedications, and acknowledgments, as well as digital reading communities such as BookTok and Bookstagram, shape the ways queer stories are circulated and understood. At a time when queer literature and queer rights face increasing attacks, her project asks how these spaces can challenge queer erasure and foster community and resistance alike. Questions of representation and the sociopolitical contexts of QYAL also informed her Master’s thesis, Intersecting Voices: Diversifying Queer Narratives in LGBTQIA+ YA Novels, in which she explored how recent QYAL negotiates intersectional queer identities and challenges homonormative models of representation.
From 2022 to 2025, Laura worked as a research assistant in the DFG-funded research group “Ambiguity and Difference: Historical-Cultural Dynamics” at the University of Duisburg-Essen. There, she supported the sub-project “The Ambiguous Century: Gender, ‘Movements,’ and Ambiguity Aesthetics in 19th-Century American Literature” in research and editorial work as well as the production of the C19 Podcast episode “Undomesticated: Nonhuman Animals and Queer Resistance in Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman.”