Reflexivity and (Ex-)Change: New Perspectives from the Postgraduate Forum for German Americanists

Christina Oppel studied History, English and Paedagogics at Westphalian Wilhelms-University Münster, Germany, where she obtained her First State Exam in 2004. She was the 2005 DAAD German Language Assistant at the University of Bristol and was employed as a research assistant and lecturer at the English Department at WWU Münster from 2007 to 2008. She is currently working on the completion of her doctoral research project on “Harnessing Germany: African Americans, Nazi Germany and Human Rights,“ which she conducts under transnational interdisciplinary supervision at the Universities of Münster and Seton Hall, USA. Her main fields of research and teaching include (African) American cultural studies, the history of Human Rights, African American and German History, Black Atlantic and Diaspora studies.

Anna Rapp, M.A., graduated from Westphalian Wilhelms-University Müster, Germany, with a First State Exam and an M.A. in English, German and Paedagogics 2008. She also studied at the University of Iceland in Reykjavík, Iceland. Her main research interests include African American literature, the politicization of scholarship during the Cold War, African Americans and Germany, and the relationship between university scholarship and teaching in the foreign language classroom. Her dissertation project is concerned with with the reception of African American literature in German Democratic Academia.

Anna Thiemann, M.A., studied English, German, Philosophy, Communication Studies, and Education at Ball State University, US, and Westphalian Wilhelms-University Münster, Germany, where she completed her M.A. and First State Examination in 2006. Since 2007 she has been a research assistant and lecturer of American Studies at the English Department at WWU Muenster. She is currently working on her PhD thesis on neuroscience and the contemporary literary imagination, which explores the impact of the neurobiological turn on contemporary culture and on the relationship between the sciences and the humanities. Her main teaching and research interests include contemporary American literature, literature and science, literature and philosophy, visual culture, and gender studies.