Prof. Dr. Silvia Schultermandl

ENGLISCHES SEMINAR
Chair of American Studies
Room ES 228
Johannisstr. 12-20
48143 Münster
Germany
T: +49 (0)251-83 24296
Silvia.Schultermandl@wwu.de
Consultation hours: Tuesdays, 14:00-15:30 (Please register in advance via e-mail).

  • CV

    Education

    since
    Venia legendi in American Studies, University of Graz, Austria Habilitation: “States of Ambivalence: Transnationalism as Aesthetic Experience in American Literature from Equiano to 9/11.”
    since
    Dr. phil in American Studies, University of Graz, Austria Dissertation: “Unlinear Matrilineage: Mother-Daughter Relationships and the Politics of Location in Asian American and Caribbean American Literature.” summa cum laude
    since
    Mag. phil. in English and American Studies, Media Studies, University of Graz

    Positions

    since
    Professor and Chair of American Studies, University of Münster
    -
    Associate Professor of American Studies, Department of American Studies, University of Graz
    -
    Assistant Professor of American Studies, tenure track; Department of American Studies, University of Graz
    -
    Fulbright Visiting Assistant Professor of American Studies, Williams College, Williamstown, Massachusetts
    -
    Assistant Professor, non-tenure-track; Department of American Studies, University of Graz
    -
    Lecturer, English Department, University of Tennessee, Knoxville
    -
    Post-doctoral research fellowship, Rutgers University
    -
    Lecturer, Women’s and Gender Studies, University of Graz
    -
    Lecturer, English Department, New York College, Skopje

    External functions

    since
    Delegate of the European Association of American Studies
    since
    Series Co-Editor, Palgrave Studies in Mediating Kinship, Representation, and Difference, Palgrave Macmillan
    since
    Editorial Advisory Board Member, WiN
    since
    Editorial Board Member, Brill/Rodopi’s book series, Critical Approaches to Ethnic American Literature
    since
    Board member, Austrian Association for American Studies (AAAS)
    since
    Editorial Board Member, ASIATIC
    since
    ASA: American Studies Association
    since
    DGfA: Deutsche Gesellschaft für Amerikastudien
    since
    MLA: Modern Language Association
    since
    Series Editor, Contributions to Transnational Feminism, LIT Verlag
    since
    EAAS: European Association of American Studies
    since
    AAAS: Austrian Association of American Studies
    since
    MELUS: The Society for the Study of the Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States
    since
    MESEA: The Society for Multi-Ethnic Studies of Europe and the Americas
    since
    Editorial Board Member, for Interactions: Aegean Journal of English and American Studies
    -
    Vice-President, Austrian Association for American Studies (AAAS)
    -
    Vice-President, Austrian Association for American Studies (AAAS)
    -
    Secretary, Austrian Association for American Studies (AAAS)
    -
    President and founding member of AYA, Austrian Committee of Post Graduate Students to the EAAS

  • Information for Students

    IMPORTANT INFORMATION FOR STUDENTS!

    In the interest of streamlining our correspondence and avoiding mis-communication, please take note of the following:

    * If you are interested in writing your BA or MA thesis with Prof. Dr. Schultermandl, please reach out beforehand to receive information on the process.

    * If you need a letter of recommendation, please include your CV, your letter of motivation, the full postal address of the agency to which you apply. Please reach out 4-6 weeks before your application deadline.

  • Call for Papers!

    SERIES TITLE: Palgrave Studies in Mediating Kinship, Representation, and Difference
    SERIES EDITORS: May Friedman, Associate Professor, Ryerson University (Canada); Silvia Schultermandl, Professor, University of Muenster (Germany)

    For more information, please look at our series page: https://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/15789

    This book series brings together analyses of familial and kin relationships with emerging and new technologies which allow for the creation, maintenance and expansion of family. We use the term “family” as a working truth with a wide range of meanings in an attempt to address the feelings of family belonging across all aspects of social location: ability, age, race, ethnicity, nationality, sexuality, gender identity, body size, social class and beyond. This book series aims to explore phenomena located at the intersection of technologies including those which allow for family creation, migration, communication, reunion and the family as a site of difference. The individual volumes in this series will offer insightful analyses of these phenomena in media, social media, literature, popular culture and corporeal settings.

    Possible book topics include:

    • the use of technology and migration and family composition and disjunction; the ways that technologies may both push and pull kin together/apart;
    • the range of technology use across literal and figurative space including intersections of geography, race, age, poverty, gender and beyond;
    • the impact of technological absence: the ways that technologies may be taken for granted in particular environments (privileged nations; privileged subject positions) and may be denied or inaccessible in other spaces or places;
    • technologies of family creation and maintenance: the use of alternate reproductive technologies; the use of communication technologies to share information;
    • discussions of race and racialization in the context of kinship relationships and intersected with connections to technologies; hypervisibility of racism including police brutality; activist circles as forms of kinship;
    • queer family creation and representation through technology; making queer family visible through traditional, popular and social media; alternate family connections including non-normative parenting arrangements (more than two parents, multiple different shades of parenting); “new” family through donor sibling relationships;
    • technologies of class mobility, including the impact of smartphone technology on mediating/curtailing aspects of the digital divide; shifting family relationships through generational moves in class status;
    • fat family: the ways that narratives of obesity have had impacts on the creation and representation of family (for example: obese women who are denied reproductive technologies or access to international adoption); the ways these rhetorics have shifted differently in different jurisdictions; representation of fat family; intersection of fat and working class identities in popular culture;
    • trans families: both in terms of gender identity but also in terms of other families that “confound”— families that do not “match” one another, or that otherwise transgress normative models;
    • technologies of disability: the use of technology to enhance or bolster independence, the ways that disabled people are seen as incapable of parenting; on the other hand, the technologies which come into play around parenting children with disability, both prenatally and once children are born; representation of disability and family (fetishization and the perceived martyrdom of parents).


    Please send inquiries to: may.friedman@ryerson.ca AND silvia.schultermandl@uni-muenster.de

  • Research Interests

    • American fiction and life writing, from the 18th century to the present
    • Literary theory
    • Transnational American Studies
    • Family and kinship studies
    • Transnational Feminism
    • Social media

  • Current Projects

    • Transoceanic Kinship (special issue for Atlantic Studies: Global Currents, together with Dr. Katharina Fackler, Uni Bonn)

    In the context of the recent “oceanic turn” (DeLoughrey 2016), the world’s oceans have not only been (re-)valued as objects of study, but they have inspired a range of formative new theories and methodologies in literary and cultural studies. On the metaphorical level, the oceans’ watery ways provide models for “nonlinear or nonplanar thought” (Blum 2013: 152), placing notions of circulation, fluidity, mobility, and mingling at the center of attention. Thereby, they also beckon a (re-)consideration of “transoceanic connections” (Burnham 2016: 154) between different bodies of water, their cultures, and histories (e.g. DeLoughrey 2007). Increasingly venturing below the ocean’s surface, scholars immerse themselves in the sea’s material and nonhuman dimensions, inquiring into the realm of the biological, the geophysical, and the ecological (e.g. Steinberg 2013).

    This special issue sets forth from Hester Blum’s argument that we may “find capacious possibilities for new forms of relationality through attention to the sea’s properties, conditions, and shaping or eroding forces” (2013: 152), investigating its particular applicability to questions of kinship. More specifically, it uses the notion of kinship as a critical idiom and conceptual lens to examine the oceanic turn’s potential for rethinking forms of (human and nonhuman) belonging. In other words, it considers kinship a particularly salient concept through which to explore the new concepts and ideas coming from oceanic studies.

    • Palgrave Studies in Mediating Kinship, Representation, and Difference

    This book series brings together analyses of familial and kin relationships with emerging and new technologies which allow for the creation, maintenance and expansion of family. We use the term “family” as a working truth with a wide range of meanings in an attempt to address the feelings of family belonging across all aspects of social location: ability, age, race, ethnicity, nationality, sexuality, gender identity, body size, social class and beyond. This book series aims to explore phenomena located at the intersection of technologies including those which allow for family creation, migration, communication, reunion and the family as a site of difference. The individual volumes in this series will offer insightful analyses of the representations of these phenomena in media, social media, literature, popular culture and corporeal settings.

    • Gender – Affect – Politics:  A Three-Part Radio Series

    In this series, the Intimate Readings Research Group discusses how narratives in different media establish a sense of identity and community through shared emotional experiences, how they mobilize publics and counterpublics, and how they create potential affective worlds that allow readers and audiences to question dominant ideas of gender and sexuality.

    The 3-part series “Gender, Affect, and Politics” is a feature for the monthly queerfeminist magazine “genderfrequenz” (Gender Frequency) at the Graz-based free radio station Radio Helsinki (92,6 MHz). You can stream the episodes on Sundays at 5 p.m. or listen to them later on the website of the Cultural Broadcasting Archive (CBA).

    Episode 1 | Feb. 21st, 2021 | Public Feelings and How to Study Them
    Episode 2 | March 21st, 2021 | Literature, Social Media, and Affective Worldmaking
    Episode 3 | April 18th, 2021 | “Feeling Bad? It Might Be Political!” – Interview with Ann Cvetkovich

    Streaming:
    https://helsinki.at/program/shows/gender-frequenz-sozialpolitisch-feministisch-unbeugsam
    https://fellowship-geschlechterforschung.uni-graz.at/en/symposia/gender-affect-and-politics-a-3-part-series-by-the-intimate-readings-research-group/

     

  • Teaching

  • Publications

    Books

    Books (Monographs)
    • Schultermandl Silvia. . Ambivalent Transnational Belonging in American Literature.: Routledge.
    • Schultermandl Silvia. . Transnational Matrilineage: Mother-Daughter Conflicts in Asian American Literature. Vienna: LIT Verlag.
    Books (Edited Collections)
    • Schultermandl, Silvia, Jana Aresin, Si Sophie Pages Whybrew, Dijana Simic (Eds.): . Affective Worldmaking - Narrative Counterpublics of Gender and Sexuality. : Transcript Verlag.
    • Schultermandl Silvia, Rieser Klaus 2021 (Eds.): . Ethnicity and Kinship in Contemporary European and North American Literature. : Routledge.
    • Friedman May, Schultermandl Silvia (Eds.): . Click and Kin: Transnational Identity and Quick Media. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
    • Eckhard Petra, Rieser Klaus, Schultermandl Silvia (Eds.): . Localizing Global Phenomena: The Contact Spaces of American Culture. Vienna: LIT Verlag.
    • Friedman May, Schultermandl Silvia (Eds.): . Growing Up Transnational: Identity and Kinship in a Global Era. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
    • Schultermandl Silvia, Toplu Sebnem (Eds.): . A Fluid Sense of Self: The Politics of Transnational Identity in Anglophone Literatures. Vienna: LIT Verlag.

    Articles

    Research articles (journals)
    • Schultermandl Silvia. . ‘Online Life Writing.’ JAAAS 1.1: 143–150.
    • Schultermandl Silvia, Gerund Katharina, Mrak Anja. . ‘The Affective Aesthetics of Transnational Feminism.’ WiN EAAS Women’s Network Journal 1: 1–23.
    • Friedman May, Schultermandl Silvia. . ‘Introduction: Autobiography 2.0 and Quick Media Life Writing.’ Autobiography 2.0 and Quick Media Life Writing, special issue: Interactions: Studies in Communications and Culture 9.2: 143–154.
    • Schultermandl Silvia. . ‘Reading for Connectivity: Aesthetics and Affect in Intermedial Autobiographies 2.0.’ Autobiography 2.0 and Quick Media Life Writing, special issue: Interactions: Studies in Communications and Culture 9.2: 251–263.
    • Schultermandl Silvia. . ‘Aestheticizing Absence: Representations of the Twin Towers’ Shadow in 9/11 Literature and Film.’ Interactions 23.1-2, No. spring-fall 2014: 231–242.
    • Schultermandl Silvia. . ‘'Imagination is a tricky power’: Transnationalism and Aesthetic Education in Shirley Geok-lin Lim’s Work.’ Asiatic 8.1, No. June 2014: 40–54.
    • Schultermandl Silvia. . ‘Writing the Self Beyond the Nation-State: The Transnationalism of Olaudah Equiano’s "Interesting Narrative".’ Transnational Dimensions of Literature and the Arts. Special Issue of University of Bucharest Review 4.1: 32–45.
    • Schultermandl Silvia. . ‘'What did any of it have to do with race?’: Afro-Asian Encounters as Global Narratives of Migration in Cristina García’s "Monkey Hunting”.’ Atlantic Studies 8.1: 93–107.
    • Schultermandl Silvia. . ‘From Drug Mule to Miss America: American Exceptionalism and the Commodification of the ‘Other’ Woman in "Maria Full of Grace".’ The Journal of American Culture 34.3: 275–288.
    • Schultermandl Silvia. . ‘The Politics of Transnational Memory in Amy Tan’s "The Joy Luck Club".’ Journal of Transnational American Studies 3.2.
    • Schultermandl Silvia. . ‘Art Imitating Life?: Visual Turns in 9/11 Novels.’ Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik, Special Issue on 9/11 58.1: 39–54.
    • Schultermandl Silvia. . ‘(Breaking out of) The ‘Literary Ghetto’: Where to Place Asian American Writers, Or De-Essentializing Canonicity.’ Hungarian Journal of English and American Studies 14.2: 287–302.
    • Schultermandl Silvia. . ‘Rewriting American Democracy: Language and Cultural (Dis)Locations in Esmeralda Santiago and Julia Álvarez.’ The Bilingual Review/La Revista Bilingüe 28.1, No. Jan-Apr: 3–15.
    • Schultermandl Silvia. . ‘Writing Rape, Trauma, and Transnationality onto the Female Body: Matrilineal Em-body-ment in Nora Okja Keller’s "Comfort Woman”.’ Meridians: Feminism, Race, Transnationalism 7.2: 71–100.
    • Schultermandl Silvia. . ‘Writing Against The Grain: The Cross-Over Genres of Maxine Hong Kingston’s "The Woman Warrior, China Men, and The Fifth Book of Peace”.’ Interactions 16.2: 111–122.
    • Schultermandl Silvia. . ‘Hooked on the American Dream?: Transnational Sexual Labor in Nora Okja "Keller’s Fox Girl”.’ Feminist Studies in English 15.2: 159–184.
    • Schultermandl Silvia. . ‘Motherhood and Mothering as Site of Differences in Barbara Kingsolver’s "Pigs in Heaven”.’ Journal of the Association for Research on Mothering 8.1+2: 223–232.
    • Schultermandl Silvia. . ‘Introduction. “Against the (Main)stream: New Perspectives on Asian American and Asian British Studies”.’ Interactions 15.2: 1–12.
    • Schultermandl Silvia. . ‘Fighting for the Mother/Land: An Ecofeminist Reading of Linda Hogan's "Solar Storms”.’ SAIL: Studies in American Indian Literature 17.3: 67–84.
    Research articles (Book Contributions)
    • Schultermandl Silvia, Rieser Klaus. . ‘Introduction: Ethnicity and Kinship in Contemporary European and North American Literature.’ In Ethnicity and Kinship in Contemporary European and Northamerican Literature, edited by Schultermandl Silvia, Rieser Klaus, 1–21. Routledge.
    • Schultermandl Silvia. . ‘Palimpsestuous Historiographies in Lisa Lowe’s "The Intimacies of Four Continents" and Karen Tei Yamashita’s "I-Hotel”.’ In Palimpsests in Ethnic and Postcolonial Literature and Culture: Surfacing Histories, edited by Kalogeras Yiorgos, et.al., 21–39. Palgrave Macmillan.
    • Schultermandl Silvia. . ‘Auto Assemblages in SNSs: Intermediality and Transnational Kinship in Online Academic Life Writing.’ In Intermediality, Life Writing, and American Studies: Interdisciplinary Approaches, edited by Balestrini Nassim Winnie, Bergman Ina, 191–210. Berlin: De Gruyter.
    • Schultermandl Silvia. . ‘Stuplimity and Quick Media Epistolarity in Lauren Myracle’s "Internet Girls Series”.’ In The Epistolary Renaissance: A Critical Approach to Contemporary Letter Narratives in Anglophone Fiction, edited by Loeschnigg Maria, Schuh Rebekka, 225–240. Berlin: De Gruyter.
    • Schultermandl Silvia. . ‘Out of Line: Shifting Border Paradigms in Cooper, Morrison and Yamashita.’ In Crossing Borders: Essays on Literature, Culture and Society in Honor of Amritjit Singh, edited by Basu Tapan K., Shahnaaz Tasneem, 3–16. Madison, New Jersey: Selbstverlag / Eigenverlag / Self-publishing.
    • Schultermandl Silvia. . ‘Nature and the Oppressed Female Body in Nora Okja Keller’s "Ecofeminist Aesthetics”.’ In Ecocriticism and Geocriticism: Overlapping Territories in Environmental and Spatial Literary Studies, edited by Battista Christine M., Tally Jr. Robert J., 171–188. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
    • Friedman May, Schultermandl Silvia. . ‘Introduction.’ In Click and Kin: Transnational Identity and Quick Media, edited by Friedman May, Schultermandl Silvia, 3–24. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
    • Schultermandl Silvia. . ‘Of Literary Letters and IMs: American Epistolary Fiction as Regulative Fictions.’ In Click and Kin: Transnational Identity and Quick Media, edited by Friedman May, Schultermandl Silvia, 118–136. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
    • Schultermandl Silvia. . „Transnationale Familien als Ort fluider Identitäten.“ In Spannungsfeld “Gesellschaftliche Vielfalt“: Begegnungen zwischen Wissenschaft und Praxis, herausgegeben von Scherke Katharina, 155–170. Bielefeld, Germany: Transcript Verlag.
    • Schultermandl Silvia. . ‘Fighting for the Mother/Land: An Ecofeminist Reading of Linda Hogan's "Solar Storms”.’ In Contemporary Literary Criticism, edited by Hunter Jeff, 193–200. 265th Ed. Detroit, Michigan: Gale.