Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin

CV & Research Fields

Major research interests:

The major research interest that I pursue currently is related to recent developments in the New Media. It focuses particularly on the formation of theories of digital culture, the implications of electronic media such as the Internet for processes of (transcultural) identity formation at the end of the 20th and the beginning of the 21st century and explores the impact of electronic communication on the production, distribution and reception of knowledge in American culture in general and literature in particular, including adolescent literature.

One of the issues that I am presently working at deals with the similarities and dissimilarities of narrative strategies and their functions in print and hypertexts.

Besides research in the field of New Media I continue my work on the genre of young adult literature in the United States with special emphasis on the construction of gender and age in the recent adolescent novel.

 

Major studies completed:

The Other Reader. Erzählkonstruktionen im Jugendroman in den USA seit den 1960er Jahren. Frankfurt a. M.: Lang 2003.

Die Romane von Frank Norris. Eine wirkungsästhetische Untersuchung als Beitrag zur Bestimmung des Naturalismus in den USA. PhD-Thesis, Berlin 1983.

For essays and articles on these as well as other topics see publications.