Editorial

Florian Bast studied American Studies, German Studies, and Journalism at Leipzig University and Washington University in St. Louis, earning his M.A. from Leipzig University in 2009. He is currently an assistant lecturer at American Studies Leipzig, teaching MA and BA classes on American literature and culture. He is working on his PhD project, which investigates different constructions of agency in the novels of Octavia Butler. His academic interests can be broadly summarized as spanning the fields of African American studies, the fantastic, and theories of agency and subjectivity. 

Anne Grob studied American Studies and Cultural Anthropology at Montana State University and Leipzig University, Germany, where she graduated with an M.A. in fall 2008. In 2010, she received a dissertation fellowship by the State of Saxony. Since fall 2010, she has been working as a research assistant at the American Studies Institute at Leipzig University and is currently conducting fieldwork in New Zealand. Her dissertation project examines the impact of tribally-run colleges in the United States and New Zealand on indigenous students and their significance for the social, cultural, economic and political development of their respective tribal communities. Her main research interests include contemporary issues in indigenous communities, with a particular emphasis on education efforts and empowerment strategies.

Sebastian M. Herrmann is a doctoral student and assistant lecturer at American Studies Leipzig. Between 1999 and 2006, he studied American studies and computer science in Leipzig and did graduate work at Cornell University’s English Department (2003/04). He is the founding head editor of aspeers“, a graduate-level peer-reviewed journal for European American studies. He is currently working on his doctoral project, investigating how post-60s fictional and semi-fictional popular accounts of the U.S. presidency dramatize and narrate tensions between ‘reality’ and ‘fiction’ and how they tap into what might best be described as a post-modern epistemic panic.

Franziska Kloth studied American Studies, British Studies, and German Studies at Roehampton University, UK, and Leipzig University, Germany, where she earned her M.A. in 2008. She is currently working on her PhD project, which focuses on the deconstruction of good and evil in contemporary American television crime series. Her research interests include crime fiction in any form and medium and the history of defining and prosecuting sex crimes. Alongside her academic work she is involved in projects on primary and secondary school level exposing students not only but primarily to American and British literature and culture.

Frank Usbeck studied American Studies, Modern History, and Journalism at the University of Leipzig, and American Indian Studies at the University of Arizona. He currently holds an administrative position at American Studies Leipzig. He earned his PhD in 2010 with a study on the interrelation of the German euphoria for Native Americans and German nation-formation and the utilization of Native imagery in the German print media during the Nazi era. His dissertation has won the Rolf-Kentner-Dissertation Award of the Heidelberg Center for American Studies in 2011. In addition to indigenous studies, Usbeck’s research interests are (de-)colonization and the history of organized violence.