Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin

Welcome to new members of the department in the winter term 2016/17

 

American Studies

 


 

selma bidlingmaier.jpgSelma Siew Li Bidlingmaier graduated from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln with a major in Psychology and a minor in English. She completed her M.A. at the University of Bayreuth in Anglophone Studies and worked as a senior lecturer at the English Department of the Ruhr-University Bochum. Having received a MERCATOR scholarship, she completed her PhD in American Studies as part of Urban Transformations research project of the Ruhr Center for American Studies. Her dissertation addresses the cultural history and representational politics of Chinatowns in Chinese American Literature. In affiliation with the Asian⎮Pacific⎮American Institute at New York University, Selma is currently working on her postdoctoral project that examines New York City’s history of housing and housing policy from the turn of the 20th century leading up to the present affordable housing crisis. Her research interests include the history of New York City’s real estate in relation to race, gender and class politics, the development of demographics and statistics used in describing and measuring the growth of cities, the establishment of land and housing appraisal, the epistemology of American urban studies and planning, cities in literature, and the lived spaces of ethnic enclaves.

 


 

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Simon Rienäcker is a research assistant at the Department of English and American Studies in the DFG research project "Mobilizing the Self" of Prof. Dr. phil. Martin Klepper. He received his B.A. and M.A. in North American Studies with a focus on culture, literature, and sociology from the Freie Universität Berlin.