Prof. Dr. Kerstin Schmidt

Kerstin Schmidt is Professor of English and Chair of American Studies at the Catholic University of Eichstaett-Ingolstadt/Germany. She studied at the Universities of Freiburg and of Massachusetts/Amherst (USA) and taught at the Universities of Freiburg, Bayreuth, Munich, Siegen as well as at Weber State University in Ogden, UT (USA). Scholarships and research stipends have brought her to Yale University; to Indiana University/Bloomington; to the University of Wyoming; to the CUNY Graduate Center, the „Schomburg Center for Research in Black Life“ and the „Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts“ in New York City as well as to the Universities of Toronto and British Columbia/Vancouver. In over 10 monographs/edited volumes and over 30 essays, she has written on 19th and 20th-century American literature and culture, focusing on American drama and theater, race and diaspora studies, theories of space/place in American culture as well as on media theory (especially American radio) and documentary photography. Together with colleagues from France and the US, she is the editor of the interdisciplinary review journal Kritikon Litterarum (Berlin/Boston: DeGruyter). She is on the board of directors of the Bavarian American Academy (BAA) and serves on the advisory board of US-American and Canadian journals.