Dr. Carmen Dexl

room: PT 3.2.70
phone:+49(0) 941 / 943 - 3475
fax:+49 (0) 941 / 943 - 3590

American Studies
University of Regensburg
93040 Regensburg, Germany

email: carmen.dexl@ur.de                                                                                                    

Office hours during the winter semester 2024/2025

Thursday, 9-10am

For organizational reasons, please make sure to register via email to carmen.dexl@ur.de beforehand. 

Contact person for:

- Erasmus (BA): general advice on studying abroad, consultation to complete learning agreements, transfer of credits ("Anerkennungsanträge")

- BA: organization of studies, change of degree program, transfer of credits, general student couselling

- MEAS: application for the program, organization of studies, general student couselling

- Scholarship for Williams College, Williamstown, MAS: application for the teaching assitant and study program with the partner university

Academic Appointments

Assistant Professor / Akademische Rätin a.Z., American Studies, U Regensburg, current.

Departmental Administrator, Institute of English and American Studies, FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg, 2015-2017.
Lecturer, American Studies, FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg, 2011-2015.

Habilitation, U Regensburg: Epistemologies of (Re)Performing: Significations of the Aging Body in US Modern Dance (working title)

Previous Projects

• Co-Coordinator of the international and interdisciplinary research network "Knowledge Infrastructures: Circulation, Transfer and Translation of Knowlege across Borders" (short Know-In), funded by CITAS at U Regensburg. 2020-2023. Research project on  "African Americans in Montmatre: Black-Owned Cabarets and Performance Culture in Interwar Paris".
• PhD in American Studies, FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg: The Anti-Lynching Narrative. The Ethical and Political Agency of African American Fiction, 1900-1973. Erlangen: FAU, 2017. Revised edition, Frankfurt/Main: Lang. In preparation.

Research Stays Abroad

• Archival Research (January 2018): Beinecke Library for Rare Books and Manuscripts in New Haven, CT, and Jerome Robbins Dance Division an der New York Public Library n New York city, NY. 
• Summer School (June 2020): The State(s) of American Studies, Futures of American Studies Institute am Dartmouth College in Dartmouth, CT. 
• Research (June-Nov. 2010): Yale University and Gilder Lehrman Center in New Haven (BAA Yale Fellowship) and School of Criticism and Theory at Cornell University in Ithaca, NY

Research Interests

• Performance Studies, Critical Dance Studies
• Age Studies, Masculinity Studies, Body Studies
• Caribbean speculative fiction; African American literature and performance
• Transnational American Studies

Academic Service

AG Weiterentwicklung des Masterstudiengangs Allgmeine und Vergleichende Literaturwissenschaft, U Regensburg (2023-)

AG Evaluation und Pberarbeitung BA American Studies, British Studies, English Linguistics (2019-) 

Admission Committee, Master in European American Studies (MEAS) (2018-)

Mittelbauvertretung, Institut für Anglistik & Amerikanistik, U Regensburg (2018-2021)

Peer reviewer European Journal of American Studies (2016-)

Peer reviewer for the MDPI journal Arts (2019-) 

Mittelbauvertretung, Interdisciplinary Center Gender - Difference - Diversity (IZGDD), FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg (2018-2019)

Memberships

• German Association for American Studies (GAAS)
• American Studies Association, USA (ASA)
• Dance Studies Association (DSA)
• Interdisciplinary Center Gender - Difference - Diversity (IZGDD), FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg
• tamed e.V., Association for Dance Medicine in Germany

External Funds

• International and interdisciplinary research network "Knowledge Infrastructures," funded by CITAS at U Regensburg, 2020-2023.
• "Eigene Stelle" funding through the "Emerging Talents Initiative (ETI) at FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg for winter term 2018/19 (mittel nicht abgerufen). 

Fellowships

• Postdoc-Fellowship of the "Office for Gender and Diversity, "FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg, 2017-2018.
• Yale Fellowship of the Bavarian American Academy for research at Yale University and the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition in New Haven, CT, USA, 2010.
• PhD-Fellowship of the program for advancing gifted woman scholars, FAU  Erlangen-Nürnberg, 2008-2010.

Travel and Teaching Grants

• Grant, Erasmus Exchange Program for Academic Staff, teaching assignement at IUSS Ferrara, Italy, Oct. 14-18, 2019.
• Travel stpend by the Volkswagen foundation for the confernce Pihilologie und Gesellschaft in Hannover, 2015.
• Travel grant by Fritz- und Maria-Hofmann Stiftung, FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg, 2015.
• DAAD travel and research grants, multiple tims.
• Travel grants by Dr. Alfred Vinzl-Stiftung at FAU Erlangen Nürnberg, multiple times, 

Conference Grants and awards

• Award for early carreer scholars of the US empassy in London for he conference. The African American Experience sind 1972 at the University of Hull, UK, 2018
• Heidelberg Center for American Studies, HCA Spring Academy in Heidelberg, 2008.

Monograph

The Anti-Lynching Narrative: The Ethical and Political Agency of African American Fiction. Erlangen: FAU, 2017. Print. Revised edition in preperation, Frankfurt/Main: Lang.

Edited collection

(with Silvia Gerlsbeck). The Male Body in Representation: Returning to Matter. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2022.

Articles in edited collections and journals, encyclopedia entries, and open access:

(with Silvia Gerlsbeck). “Returning to Matter: New Perspectives on the Male Body in Representation.” The Male Body in Representation: Returning to Matter. Eds. Carmen Dexl and Silvia Gerlsbeck. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2022. 1–23. Print.

(with Silvia Gerlsbeck). “Of Cyborgs, Aliens, and Tricksters: Posthumanist Perspectives on the Male Body in Caribbean Speculative Literature.” The Male Body in Representation: Returning to Matter. Eds. Carmen Dexl and Silvia Gerlsbeck. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2022. 239–261. Print.

(with Silvia Gerlsbeck). “Rereading the Male Body: The Cultural Power of Representation.” The Male Body in Representation: Returning to Matter. Eds. Carmen Dexl and Silvia Gerlsbeck. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2022. 307–311. Print.

“I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.” Race in American Television. Voices and Visions that Shaped a Nation. 2 vols. Ed. David J. Leonard and Stephanie Troutman Robbins. Santa Barbara, CA: Greenwood/ABC-CLIO, 2021. 309–311. Print.

“Live Human Exhibits: The World Columbian Exposition as a Space of Empire.” Spaces and Spatialities of Empire. Ed. Mashid Mayar. Spec. issue of U.S. Studies Online (2020). no pag.
https://usso.uk/live-human-exhibits-the-world-columbian-exposition-as-a-space-of-empire/

"Navigating the Line between Consent and Dissent: Josephine Baker as a Cultural Icon, International Star, and Social Activist.” American Counter/Publics. Ed. Ulla Haselstein, Frank Kelleter, Alexander Starre, and Birte Wege. Heidelberg: Winter. 2019. 87-102. Print.

With Katrin Horn. “‘Beef Jerky in a Ball Gown’ – The Camp Excesses of Titus Andromedon in Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt.” Spec. issue “On Uses of Black Camp. Open Cultural Studies 1 (2018): 442–453. doi.org/10.1515/culture-2017-0041

“Segregation, Residential.” The SAGE Encyclopedia of Surveillance, Security, and Privacy. Ed. Bruce A. Arrigo and Joseph Geoffrey Golson. Thousand Oaks: SAGE, 2018. 899-903. Print.

“Popularizing African American History and Culture through Dance: The Ethics and Politics of the Artistic Visions of Alvin Ailey and Judith Jamison.” African American Culture and Society After Rodney King: Provocations and Protests, Progression and ‘Post-Racialism.’ Ed. Josephine Metcalf and Carina Spaulding. Farnham: Ashgate. 2015. 159-175. Print.

“Revisiting Spectacle Lynching and Reconfiguring the U.S. South: Economy and Racial Violence in James W. Johnson’s The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man (1912).” Rural America. Ed. Antje Kley and Heike Paul. Winter: Heidelberg, 2015. 113-128. Print.

“Moralphilosophie und Literaturwissenschaften im Dialog: Der Ethical Criticism der Gegenwart als Turn, Paradigmenwechsel oder Novum?” Critical Perspectives: Turns, Trends, and Theories. Ed. Michael Gubo, Martin Kypta, and Florian Öchsner. Münster: LIT, 2011. 240-263. Print.

“‘A Lynching in Blackface’-The Representation of History and Fantasies of Black Male Violence in John E. Wideman’s The Lynchers.” COPAS 11 (2010), no pag. copas.uni-regensburg.de/article/view/111.

“Ambiguity and the Ethics of Reading Race and Lynching in James Weldon Johnson’s The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man (1912).” COPAS 10 (2009). Online; no pagination.

Organiszation of Workshops and Conferences

1. "Knowledge Infrastructures" (Know-In) research network

• Kick-off workshop, 24 August 2020
• Workshop II Exploring Trans/Regionality: The Workings of Infrastructures and the Production of Knowledge, 1-2 July 2021
• Workshop III Exploring Practices of Infrastructuring, 14-15 June 2022
• The Social Life of Knowledge Infrastructures: Expert Groups, Social Networks, and Imagined Communities, International and interdisciplinary conference, 1-3 March 2023 (with Christian Reiß)

2. De/Constructing Masculinities? Critical Explorations into Affect, Intersectionality          and the Body, International and interdisciplinary conference at FAU Erlangen-               Nürnberg, June 22-23, 2018 (with Silvia Gerlsbeck). 

3. Workshop "Black Role Models for a New Community," Black States of Desire:                Dispossession, Circulation, Transformation, 9th International conference of the           Collegium for African American Research (CAAR) at Université Diderot-Paris, April       6-9, 2011 (with Birgit Hebel-Bauridl and Katrin Horn).

4. Critical Perspectives: Turns, Trends und Theorien, International and                       interdisciplinary    conference at FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg, 20-22 Nov. 2009 (with      Katharina Gerund, Michael Gubo, Martin Kypta, Florian Öchsner).

Papers and Lectures

• “Epistemologies of Skin: Negotiating Racial Capitalism and Neocolonial Ecologies in Caribbean Literature.” Cultures of Skin: Skin in Literature and Culture, Past, Present, Future, hybrid conference at University of Surrey, UK, and Zoom, July 7–8, 2023.
• "Black Cabaret Culture in Interwar Paris: The Nightclub as a ‘Contact Zone’ and Site of Knowledge Production.” Final Conference of the CITAS-funded research network “KNOW-IN”: The Social Life of Knowledge Infrastructures: Expert Groups, Social Networks, and Imagined Communities, Regensburg, March 1–3, 2023.
• "Infrastructuring Urban Space: Ada ‘Bricktop’ Smith and the Cabaret Culture of Jazz Age Paris." Know-In Workshop Exploring Practices of Infrastructuring, Regensburg, July 14–15, 2022.
• “Black Women Performers and the Making of Space in Interwar Paris: Critical Reflections on Cultural Transfer and the Workings of the Archive.” Workshop on Transregional Dynamics in Eastern Europe and the Americas: New Empirical Approaches, Leipzig, March 3–4, 2022.
• “Black Artists in Motion and the Making of Space: The Mobilization of Modernist Entertainment Infrastructures and the Politics of Black Performance Culture in Interwar Paris.” Black Mobilities in the Atlantic World, hybrid conference at University of Central Lancashire, UK, and Zoom, Jan. 13–14, 2022.
• "Black Performance Culture in Interwar Paris and the Infrastructures of Modernist Entertainment." Know-In Workshop on Exploring Trans/Regionality: The Workings of Infrastructures and the Production of Knowledge, UR (Zoom), July 1–2, 2021.
• "Jenseits des Körpers? Posthumane Perspektiven auf zeitgenössische postkoloniale Literatur." DFG-Workshop of the Interdisciplinary Center Gender – Difference – Diversity (IZGDD) on Body Politics. Intersektionale Forschungsperspektiven auf den Körper, FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg (Zoom), Feb. 17–19, 2021.
• "Reading Richard Wright in 2020: Representations of Lynching, Reflections on Race and Racism, and (Re)Visions of the Black Body." Invited guest lecture, Universität Göttingen, Dec. 18, 2020.
• "Offering New/Old Models for Connection? The Cultural Power of Hula Dancing between Tradition and Change." Annual Conference of the American Studies Association (ASA) on Build as We Fight, Honolulu, Hawaii, USA, Nov. 8, 2019.
• "Stage Dancer, Fashion Icon, Social Activist. Josephine Baker and the Politics of Performance in Interwar Paris." Lecture given as part of the Erasmus Exchange Program for Academic Staff, IUSS Ferrara, Oct. 16, 2019.
• "Staging the ‘Belly Dancing’ Woman in American Popular Culture: Critical Reflections on a Popular Cultural Icon at the Intersection of Orientalism and Transnationalism." 66th Annual Convention of the German Association for American Studies (GAAS) on U.S.-American Culture as Popular Culture, Hamburg, June 14, 2019.
• "Alternde Körper in Bewegung: Inszenierungen von Alter im Zeitgenössischen Tanz." DFG workshop Body Talk by the IZGDD, FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg, June 13, 2019.
• "The Politics of Primitivism in the Work of Martha Graham, Katherine Dunham, and Josephine Baker." Annual Conference of the Dance Studies Association, Malta, Valetta, July 5–8, 2018.
• "Negotiating the Boundaries between Consent and Dissent: Josephine Baker as a Cultural Icon, International Star, and Social Activist." 65th Annual Conference of the German Association for American Studies (GAAS) on American Counter/Publics, Berlin, May 24–27, 2018.
• "The Intersection of Performance and Activism: The Fashioned Body of Josephine Baker." Panel on "Dangerous Bodies – Look out! Fashioned Bodies on the Boundaries." Annual Conference of the Association for Art History and Visual Culture, London, April 5-7, 2018.
• "Choreographing Identities: Modern Dance in Germany and the US." Presentation as part of the lecture series Revisionen und Visionen einer neuen Geschlechterforschung. IZGDD FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg, July 11, 2017.
• "Expressing Emotions through Dance: The Body in Motion in the Work of Martha Graham and Alvin Ailey." Panel on "Dance and Dance Culture." 47th Annual Conference of the Popular Culture Association (PCA) and American Culture Association (ACA), San Diego, CA, USA, Apr. 12-15, 2017.
• "Ethik & Ästhetik im Dialog: Amerikanische Literaturtheorie im Zeichen des ‚Ethical Turn‘." Invited Guest Lecture. 118. Generalversammlung der Görres-Gesellschaft zur Pflege der Wissenschaft, Bonn, Sept. 28–29, 2015.
• "Lynching and the Law in Richard Wright's Native Son." The Criminalization of Race in History and Global Societies, West Long Branch, NJ, USA, April 16–18, 2015.
• "The Politics of African American Fiction after Jim Crow." Approaching Blackness: Moving Beyond Representation, Berlin, Nov. 13–15, 2014.
• "The Politics and Ethics of the Artistic Vision of Judith Jamison." The African American Experience since 1992, Hull, UK, Sept. 20, 2013.
• "Race, Class and Capitalism in The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man (1912)." 60th Annual Conference of the German Association for American Studies (GAAS) on Rural America, Erlangen, May 30–June 2, 2013.
• "The Lynching Mythology in African American Narrative Literature." Summer Academy of the Bavarian American Academy (BAA) on American Studies in a Transatlantic Perspective: Critical Regionalism in Politics and Culture, Munich/Nuremberg, May 21–June 2, 2013.
• "Revisiting the Lynching Mythology: The Black Rebel in Richard Wright’s Native Son (1940) and John E. Wideman’s The Lynchers (1973)." The State(s) of American Studies, Futures of American Studies Institute at Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, June 18-24, 2012.
• "Desire and Consumption in Candace Bushnell's Sex and the City." 10th International and interdisciplinary graduate conference on (Re-)Presentations of Working Life, FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg, Nov. 12.-13, 2011.
• "'The Strange New World of the Internet'—Explorations into Race, Representation and Cyberspace in the Digital Art of Keith Piper." 22nd Annual Conference of the Mid-Atlantic Popular/American Culture Association (MAPACA), Philadelphia, Nov. 3-5, 2011.
• "Imagining a New Community? Explorations into Cyberspace and Spectatorship in the Digital Art of Keith Piper." 9th International conference of the Collegium for African American Research (CAAR) on Black States of Desire: Dispossession, Circulation, Transformation, Paris, Apr. 6-9, 2011.
• "'Strange Fruit' – Lynching in the (African) American Cultural Imagination (1890-1940)." Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition, New Haven, CT, Oct. 20, 2010.
• "'A Lynching in Blackface': The Representation of History and Fantasies of Black Male Violence in John E. Wideman's The Lynchers." Postgraduate Forum (PGF) of the German Association for American Studies, Munich, Oct. 30-Nov. 1, 2009.
• Response paper to the keynote lecture "Educating for a Diverse Society in Post-Race America" by Prof. Paula Moya. 56th Annual Conference of the German Association for American Studies (GAAS) on Education and the USA, Jena, June 4-7, 2009.
• "Ethics and Aesthetics of Violence in African American Narrative Literature." Summer Institute of the Bavarian American Academy (BAA) on Race and Ethnicity, Munich, July 22-25, 2008.
• "'What I killed for must've been good!' Ethics and Aesthetics of Violence in Richard Wright's Native Son." HCA (Heidelberg Center for American Studies) Spring Academy, Heidelberg, Apr. 21-25, 2008.

U Regensburg

Indroductions

Introduction to English and American Literary Studies (Summer 2019)

Undergraduate Seminars (Proseminare)

• American Literature I: From the Beginnings through the 19th Century (multiple times)
• American Literature II: The Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries (multiple times)
• Contemporary African American Film and Fiction (Summer 2019)
• From Jim Crow to the 'New Jim Crow': Representations of Race and Racial Violence in African American Literary and Visual Culture (summer 2020)

Graduate Seminars

• Critical Dance Studies: Bodies in Motion (WS 2018/19)
• Black Transnational Modernisms (WS 2019/20)
• Move! American Cultural Resistance from the Jim Crow Era to the Present (Summer 2020)
• Body Matters in the contact Zone (WS 2020/2021)
• Cultural Negotiations of 'the Machine in the Garden': The Intersection of Nature and Technology in American Landscapes (Summer 2023, mit Christian Reiß)
• From the State to the Streets: Performing Ageing in Contemporary American Cultural and Social Protest (WS 2023/24)
• Staging the Posthuman: Bodies and Technology in Contemporary American Culture (Summer 2024)

State Exam Preparation

Review: American Literature (multiple times)

                                                                                                                                FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg

Basic Courses

• Grundseminar Literary Studies (multiple times)
• Aufbauseminar Literary Theory (multiple times)

Undergraduate Seminars (Proseminare)

• Choreographing Identities: Modern Dance in the US (Summer 2017)
• Anti-Lynching Art & Activism in American Culture (Summer 2014)
• The US South in the American Cultural Imagination (WS 2013/14)
• Fictions of the Black Atlantic (Summer 2012)
• Memory and Trauma in the Contemporary US-American Novel (WS 2009/10)
• 'Strange Fruit' - Representations of Lynching in African American Literature and Culture (WS 2008/09)

State Exam Preparation

• Textanalyse: Amerikanische Literatur (multiple times)
• Lektürekurs: Englische und Amerikanische Literatur (multiple times)
• Examensseminar: Amerikanische Moderne (WS 2016/17)

Non-Obligatory Courses

• Brückenkurs für MA Studierende: American Studies Recap (WS 2014/15)
• Voluntary reading club for Students Reading American Classics (2012-2014)