Barbara Buchenau is the speaker of the City Scripts research group. She is the Chair of North American Cultural Studies as well as Vice-Rector for Social Responsibility, Diversity and International Affairs at the University Duisburg – Essen. Her primary fields of interest include cultural theory, comparative cultural and literary history, as well as hermeneutics. She interrogates popular concepts such as anti/urbanism, pluralism, multiculturalism, and postracialism.

Barbara Buchenau studied Geography and English at the University of Göttingen, Germany, where she received her PhD in 1999 and her Post-Doctoral Degree in 2010. Before joining the faculty of Duisburg-Essen, she was Assistant Professor of Postcolonial Literary and Cultural Studies at the University of Bern in Switzerland. Barbara is an editor of the monograph series Interamericana: Inter-American Literary History and Culture at Peter Lang. She also organizes an annual Spring Academy "Grounding Transnational American Studies"/RUDESA which is a cooperation between Radboud University, Nijmegen (NL) and the University of Duisburg-Essen.

Her publications address the relationship between literature and the land. Investigating diverse forms of Atlantic literary and cultural transfers and exchanges, Buchenau came to notice hemispheric as well as transatlantic schools of (anti-)urban affect. The deft imaginary crafting of reality is the topic of several essays on the cultural and political work of stereotypical and typological representations of minority groups in the texts, maps and the visual art of multilingual early Americana. The broader goal of present publication projects is a better understanding of the conjunction of textual strategies, spatial processes, and postindustrial as well as post-empire political trajectories.

For further information on her academic activities and publications click here.

Contact: barbara.buchenau@uni-due.de