Dorit Neumann

English Department
Universität Münster
Johannisstr. 12-20
48143 Münster
Germany
 

Room: ES129
Phone: +49-(0)251 83-25628
Email: dorit.neumann@uni-muenster.de

Dorit Neumann (she/her) is a PhD candidate and research assistant at the Chair of English, Postcolonial, and Media Studies at the English Department of Münster University. She holds a master’s degree in British, American, and Postcolonial Studies and her MA thesis “Black Presence as Absence: Postcolonial Hauntologies and the Oceanic in Homegoing and The Vanishing Half” explores hauntological concepts, Blackness, and theories of the oceanic in relation to the remembrance of transatlantic slavery in contemporary Black American women’s fiction. Transferring these considerations to the British context, her current dissertation project focuses on memory politics and hauntings of empire in the history of Black British literature. She has previously worked as a student assistant at the Chair of Variation Linguistics, at the Collaborative Research Center “Law and Literature,” and at the Chair of American Studies at Münster University.

  • Research Interests

    • Hauntology
    • Oceanic Studies
    • Cultural Memory Studies
    • Black Studies
    • Intermediality/Intertextuality

  • Teaching

    Summer Semester 2026
    Introduction to Literary and Cultural Studies II; Groups IV + V (BA Seminar)

    Winter Semester 2025/26
    Introduction to Literary and Cultural Studies I (BA Lecture, co-teaching with Prof. Dr. Mark U. Stein)

    Summer Semester 2025
    Introduction to Literary and Cultural Studies II; Groups VI + VII (BA Seminar)

    Winter Semester 2024/25
    Oceanic Imaginaries: Thinking and Reading with Water (BA Seminar)

    Summer Semester 2024
    Introduction to Literary and Cultural Studies II; Groups VI + VII (BA Seminar)

    Winter Semester 2023/24
    Caribbean British Writing (BA Übung)

    Summer Semester 2023
    Introduction to Literary and Cultural Studies II; Group VII (BA Seminar), Summer 2023
    Narrating Transatlantic Slavery and Its Legacy in Contemporary Black Literature (BA Seminar)

  • Publications

    Paula Barba Guerrero, Felipe Espinoza Garrido, and Dorit Neumann (Eds.) British Shopping Fictions. Special Issue, English Studies. [in preparation, 2028]

    Neumann, Dorit. “Black Absence as Presence: Postcolonial Hauntings and the Oceanic in Yaa Gyasi’s Homegoing.” Postcolonial Hauntings: New Directions, edited by Nadine Ellinger and Danica Stojanovic, HeiUP Anglophone Postcolonial Studies Series (accepted, forthcoming 2026).

    Rita Maricocchi, Dorit Neumann, Oluwadunni Talabi, and Corina Wieser-Cox (Eds.). Envisioning Queer Racialized Self-Representations in the Americas. Special Issue,  AmLit – American Literatures, vol. 6, no. 1, 2026. https://amlit.eu/index.php/amlit/issue/view/13/35.

    Rita Maricocchi, Dorit Neumann, Oluwadunni Talabi, and Corina Wieser-Cox (Eds.). Queering Postcolonial Worlds. Special Issue, Gender Forum, vol. 23, no. 1, 2025. URL: https://journals.ub.uni-koeln.de/index.php/genderforum/issue/view/286.

    Rita Maricocchi, Dorit Neumann, Oluwadunni Talabi, and Corina Wieser-Cox. "Queering Postcolonial Worlds: An Introduction." In Queering Postcolonial Worlds, edited by Rita Maricocchi, Dorit Neumann, Oluwadunni Talabi, and Corina Wieser-Cox. Special Issue, gender forum, vol. 23, no. 1, 2025. DOI: https://doi.org/10.18716/ojs/gefo/2024.3165.

    Maricocchi, Rita and Dorit Neumann. "Queer Diasporic Forms: A Conversation with Logan February." In Queering Postcolonial Worlds, edited by Rita Maricocchi, Dorit Neumann, Oluwadunni Talabi, and Corina Wieser-Cox. Special Issue, gender forum, vol. 23, no. 1, 2025. DOI: https://doi.org/10.18716/ojs/gefo/2024.3167.

    Neumann, Dorit. “‘You Cannot Escape Specters’: The Hauntology of Blackness and Queer Performativities in Brit Bennet’s The Vanishing Half.” Envisioning Queer Racialized Self-Representations in the Americas, Special Issue, AmLit – American Literatures. Forthcoming.

    Neumann, Dorit. “The Linguistic Construction of Power along the Concepts of Race, Class and Speciesism in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.” Satura, vol. 1, 2018, pp. 15-20.

  • Talks

    “Liquid Spectralities: Narrating Oceanic Hauntology in Kandace Siobhan Walker's 'Water Duppy.'” Postgraduate Conference of the Society for Caribbean Studies, University of Cardiff, 16-17 April 2026.

    “'They can’t hold me back': Voice, In/Visibility, and the Body in The Fat Lady Sings.” English Department Dissertation Workshop, University of Münster, 27 June 2025.

    “‘Frenzied, gnashing of teeth, devouring her body’: Cannibal Capitalism and Colonial Hauntings in Danaé Wellington’s Performance Poetry.” GAPS Annual Conference: Neoliberal Global Capitalism. Challenges for Postcolonial Studies, University of Bielefeld, 29-31 May 2025.

    “Doing Literary and Cultural Studies at the English Department: Ghosts of the Colonial Past in Performance Poetry.” Hochschultag, University of Münster, 14 November 2024.

    "Performing Memory: Everyday Hauntings and Colonial Continuities in Danaé Wellington’s Spoken Word Poetry." Postcolonial Narrations 2024: The Ruins of Empire. Postcolonial Hauntings, University of Augsburg, 6-7 September 2024.

    "Seascape Epistemology and Wake Work. Rewriting Heritage Sites in Untold Stories: Poetry at English Heritage." London Conference in Critical Thought, University of Greenwich, 28-29 June 2024.

    “Water Duppy and Fluid Memory: Intersections of Hauntological and Oceanic Thought in Black British Literature.” English Department Dissertation Workshop, University of Münster, 14 June 2024.

    "Oceanic Kinship and Tidal Memory Against Land-Based History in Esme Allman’s 'where things shouldn’t be.'” GAPS Annual Conference: Post/Colonial Environments, University of Zurich, 9-11 May 2024.

    “Black British Hauntology: (Post-)Colonial Hauntings from Equiano to the Present.” English Department Dissertation Workshop, University of Münster, 23 June 2023.

    Black Absence as Presence: Alternative Memory in Narratives of Postcolonial Hauntings and the Oceanic. Postcolonial Narrations 2022: Postcolonial Matters of Life and Death, University of Bonn, 20-22 October 2022.

    “The Linguistic Construction of Liminality and Third Spaces in The Lonely Londoners.” Guest lecture in the seminar Literary Linguistics, English Department, University of Münster, 13 December 2021.

    “Liminality and Third Spaces in The Lonely Londoners: A Literary Linguistic Analysis.” Guest lecture in the seminar Literary Linguistics, English Department, University of Münster, 2 December 2019.

  • Academic Activities

    Member of the Society for Caribbean Studies.

    Co-organizer of the English Department Dissertation Workshops 2024 and 2025, University of Münster.

    Advisory Board Member of GAPS, Gesellschaft für Anglophone Postkoloniale Studien, since May 2025.

    Co-organizer of artist guest talk and workshop with Sam Godfrey on "Wet glitches and digital kelp: trans ecologies as methodology." University of Münster and University of Exeter, 11 November 2024.

    Co-organizer of Postcolonial Narrations Conference 2023: Queering Postcolonial Worlds, University of Bremen and University of Münster, 17-18 November 2023.