UDO J. HEBEL is Professor and Chair (em.) of American Studies at the University of Regensburg. He taught at the universities of Mainz, Potsdam, and Freiburg, and was a Distinguished Max Kade Visiting Professor at Colorado College, Colorado Springs. He was a visiting scholar at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and at Harvard University as well as Kate B. and Hall J. Peterson Fellow at the American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, MA. He declined the offers of chairs of American Studies at the universities of Kassel, Mainz, and Freiburg.
He has published Romaninterpretation als Textarchäologie (1989), Intertextuality, Allusion, Quotation (1989), Transatlantic Encounters (co-ed., 1995), “Those Images of jealousie”: Identitäten und Alteritäten im puritanischen Neuengland (1997), The Construction and Contestation of American Cultures and Identities in the Early National Period (ed., 1999), Sites of Memory in American Literatures and Cultures (ed., 2003), Visual Culture in the American Studies Classroom (co-ed., 2005), Twentieth-Century American One-Act Plays (2006), Einführung in die Amerikanistik/American Studies (2008), Transnational American Memories (ed., 2009), Pictorial Cultures and Political Iconographies (co-ed., 2011), Transnational American Studies (ed., 2012), New England Forefathers’ Day Orations, 1770-1865: An Annotated Edition of Selected Plymouth Anniversary Addresses (2016), German-American Encounters in Bavaria and Beyond, 1945-2015 (co-ed., 2018). He has edited and co-edited special journal issues on "Amerikastudien / American Studies at 50" (2005), “Short Plays: Staging Women’s Lives” (2007), and “South Africa and the United States in Transnational American Studies: From Comparative Approaches towards Transangulation” (2014).
His more than 60 articles deal with topics from the fields of transnational American Studies, American cultures of memory, American painting and photography, Puritan New England, twentieth-century American literature, American drama and theater, theories of American Studies.
He is an elected member of the American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, MA. He served as President of the German Association for American Studies (GAAS), as General Editor of Amerikastudien/ American Studies, as Chair of the International Committee of the American Studies Association (ASA), as International Delegate of the German Association for American Studies to the European Association for American Studies (EAAS) and the American Studies Association (ASA), and as Deputy Director of the Bavarian American Academy. He is the Founding Director of the Regensburg European American Forum (REAF).
He was a member of the committee for research evaluations in the humanities of the
German Council of Science and Humanities and a member of the DAAD planning committee for the DWIH San Francisco. At the University of Regensburg, he served as Dean of the Faculty of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures, as Dean of Research of the Faculty of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures, as Director of the High School Students Program, and as Vice President. From 2016 until 2021 he was Vice Chairman of the Association of Bavarian Universities. Since 2021, he has been the Speaker of the Board of Directors of the Bavarian Academic Center for Central, Eastern, and Southeastern Europe (BAYHOST). From 2022 to 2024, he was a member of the university board of Andrássy Universität Budapest. He is a member of the governing boards and councils of various science, university, and community foundations, as e.g. University Foundation Hans Vielberth and Internationale Begegnungsstätte Kloster Speinshart (Bavarian Science Center for AI and SuperTech), and of extrauniversity research institutions, among them the Leibniz Institute for East and Southeast European Studies (IOS) and the Leibniz Institute for Immunotherapy (LIT). He acts as
chairperson of the governing board of the Bayerische Wissenschaftsallianz für Friedens-, Konflikt- und Sicherheitsforschung founded in 2024.
Since 2013, he has been President of the University of Regensburg and is now in his third term.
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