Executive Editors
Martina Kohl
Dr. Martina Kohl is a Cultural Affairs Specialist at the U.S. Embassy in Berlin, Germany, where she coordinates a Germany-wide speaker and curriculum development program in American Studies. She holds an M.A. and a Dr. Phil. in American Studies, English Studies and History from Johannes-Gutenberg University Mainz. Dr. Kohl studied at Florida Southern College (1980-81) and taught and conducted research at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor (1985-90). In 2013, she received the Hans Eberhard Piepho Prize for the U.S. Embassy School Election Project and the Ausgezeichnete Orte – Land der Ideen Award for the Going Green – Education for Sustainability Project in 2015. Dr. Kohl frequently teaches in the American Studies program at Humboldt University Berlin and at the Obama Institute at Mainz University. She serves on the advisory board of the Salzburg Global American Studies Program.
Dr. Kohl is an American Studies generalist interested in the following areas: Literature, History, Politics, Education, Popular Culture
Andrew S. Gross
Prof. Dr. Andrew S. Gross is Professor of North American Studies at the University of Göttingen. He holds a Ph.D. in American literature and critical theory from the University of California, Davis. In 2012, he completed his Habilitation thesis at the Free University of Berlin. The resulting book, The Pound Reaction: Liberalism as Lyricism at Midcentury American Literature, Heidelberg: Winter, 2015, won the 2013 Rob Kroes Publication Award of the EAAS.
Areas of specialization: Literature, Literary History, Cultural Studies
Founding Editor
Hans-Jürgen Grabbe
Prof. Dr. Hans-Jürgen Grabbe, the editor of the American Studies Journal from 1996 to 2020, is Professor Emeritus of British and American Studies at Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg. His research focus is on German-American relations and transatlantic migration in the 18th and 19th centuries. A former president of the German Association for American Studies and the European Association for American Studies, he co-edited the quarterly Amerikastudien/American Studies from 2003–2019 and is currently a member of its Advisory Board. He also serves as editor of the book series European Views of the United States.
Areas of specialization: History, Politics
Editors
Maria Moss
Prof. Dr. Maria Moss received her doctoral degree in one of her life-long passions—Native American Studies—from the University of Hamburg in 1993 and her post-doctoral degree (Habilitation) in neo-realist American literature from the Free University Berlin in 2006. She has been teaching North American Studies at Leuphana University Lüneburg since 2007. Maria is a two-time recipient of the Leuphana Teaching Award. In addition to numerous publications on Native issues, Maria has recently branched out into the fields of eco-criticism and Critical Animal Studies. Her other fields of teaching and research include creative writing, Canadian Studies, and environmental literature. Together with colleagues from Leuphana University Lüneburg, she has embarked upon a new challenge: editing the American Studies Blog and writing the occasional piece of creative non-fiction.
Areas of specialization: Literature (20th century, contemporary), Native American Studies, Environmental Studies
Babette B. Tischleder
Prof. Dr. Babette B. Tischleder is Professor of North American Studies and Media Studies at the University of Göttingen (since 2010). Previously she held positions at the Free University of Berlin and the Goethe University of Frankfurt. She is the author of The Literary Life of Things: Case Studies in American Fiction (2014), and coeditor of the volumes Cultures of Obsolescence: History, Materiality, and the Digital Age (2015) and An Eclectic Bestiary: Encounters in a More-than-Human World (2019). Her current book project, Chronotopes of the Nonhuman, asks how—through narrative, poetry, and visual art—we can imagine forms of being-in-the-world that challenge anthropocentric epistemologies and take into view our entanglements with nonhuman lives.
Areas of specialization: North American Literature, Art, and Media, New Materialisms, Multispecies Studies, Environmental Humanities, the Nonhuman Turn.
Assistant Editors
Wiebke Kartheus
Wiebke Kartheus received her B.A. in World English studies, art history, and visual studies from Saarland University and her M.A. in American studies from Leipzig University. She has been a member of the editorial board of aspeers: emerging voices in American studies for four consecutive issues (6–9). Currently, she is conceptualizing her Ph.D. project “Presenting Art, Preserving Value: The American Art Museum and Capitalism in the 21st Century” (working title).
Susann Köhler
Susann Köhler is lecturer in American studies at the University of Göttingen. She received her M.A. in American studies, theater and media studies from Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg. Her dissertation “Picturing the Rustbelt: Deindustrialization, American Ruin, and Urban Change in Postindustrial Photography” analyzes representations of US-American postindustrial cities in photography books and the sociocultural legacy of deindustrialization in the Midwest. Her research interests include the history and theory of photography, the narration/representation of urban spaces in American literature and art, and cultures of memory in (post-)industrial regions.
Website Manager
Carsten Hummel
Carsten Hummel studied British and American Studies and Economics at Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg and Montana State University, Bozeman. In 2007, while being a research associate at the Center for American Studies, he assisted with turning the American Studies Journal into an electronic publication, and has been in charge of the ASJ’s website design and maintenance ever since. Currently, he is the executive director of the joint Center for Further and Continuing Education at Martin Luther University.