• Cultures of War and Critical Military Studies 
• Cultural Theory and US Popular Culture (esp. film and TV series) 
• Affect Studies, Public Feeling, and Sentimentality 
• Cultural Mobility (esp. in the transatlantic world) 
• African American and Asian American Literature  
• Gender Studies and Feminist Theory 

As a professor of American literature and culture, I cover the literary traditions and cultural formations of the US from their beginnings until today in my lectures and seminars. My research revolves around cultures of war and US military culture, the politics of popular culture (esp. regarding the role of affect and sentimentality), and the dynamics of race and gender in the transatlantic world.

Before joining UZH’s English Department, I earned my doctorate from the University of Bremen with a dissertation that has been published as Transatlantic Cultural Exchange: African American Women’s Art and Activism in West Germany (transcript 2013). I spent time at several US universities and institutions (UW at Madison, Yale, Harvard, the Library of Congress) to study and conduct research, and I received my Habilitation/venia legendi from FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg in 2024. I previously taught at University of Bremen, HHU Düsseldorf, and FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg. My publications include numerous journal articles and book chapters as well as several co-edited volumes, most recently The Lexicon of Global Melodrama (transcript 2022), Re-Thinking Solidarity (spec. issue of Amerikastudien/American Studies 2023), and Civilization, Democratization, Containment: Strategies of Re-Education in Imperial Settings and Beyond (spec. issue of The International History Review 2024).

I am a member of The Occupation Studies Research Network and The Global Sentimentality Project and currently serve on the Editorial Advisory Board of WiN (since 2017) as well as the Board of Readers of Amerikastudien/American Studies (2025-2032). 

Currently, I am preparing my second monograph Happy Home Front Heroines? Military Spouses in the Cultural Imaginary of the US for publication, and I am co-organizing two conferences to be held at UZH in 2026: “New Adult Fiction: Interdisziplinäre Perspektiven auf ein populäres Phänomen” (Mar. 19-20, 2026, together with Professor Christine Lötscher) and “American Un/Freedoms,” the biennial conference of SANAS (Nov. 5-6, 2026, together with Professor Barbara Straumann).

I am available to supervise BA, MA and PhD theses, particularly as they pertain to my main research interests. 

ORCiD Profile: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9817-5751