February 8, 2016
Curriculum Vitae
Dr. phil. Christian Schmidt
Contact data
Dr. Christian Schmidt
Assistant Professor
American Studies and Intercultural Anglophone Studies
University of Bayreuth
Building: GW1, Room 1.27
Universitätsstr. 30
95447 Bayreuth
E-Mail: cschmidt@post.harvard.edu
Academic CV
10/2014 -
Assistant Professor (“wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter”), American Studies and
Intercultural Anglophone Studies, University of Bayreuth
2008 - 2014
Lecturer, American Studies and Intercultural Anglophone Studies, University
of Bayreuth
2004 – 2007
Fellow, Interdisciplinary Graduate College / Research Training Group of the German
Research Foundation (DFG) “Cultural Hermeneutics: Perspectives on Difference and
Transdifference” (University of Erlangen-Nuremberg)
Education
Ph.D. (2014)
Friedrich-Alexander-University, Erlangen-Nuremberg (Grade: summa cum laude)
Awarded the Lilli Bechmann-Rahn Prize for the best dissertation submitted to the
Faculty of Humanities, Social Sciences, and Theology of the FAU Erlangen-Nuremberg
Awarded the annual dissertation prize of the Bavarian American Academy
M.A. (2004)
Friedrich-Alexander-University, Erlangen-Nuremberg
(American Studies/Literature, Political Science, American Studies/Cultural
Studies)
2002
Harvard University Special Student Program, Harvard University, Cambridge,
Massachusetts, USA
(Department of Afro-American Studies, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences)
Publications
Postblack Aesthetics: The Freedom to Be Black in Contemporary African American Fiction. Heidelberg:
Winter, 2015. Forthcoming.
“The Parody of Postblackness in Percival Everett’s I Am Not Sidney Poitier and the End(s) of African
American Literature.” Black Studies Papers 2.1 (2015). Web. Forthcoming.
February 8, 2016
“‘Famous in a Small Town’: The Authenticity of Unpopularity in Contemporary Country Music.”
Unpopular Culture. Ed. Martin Lüthe and Sascha Pöhlmann. Amsterdam: U of Amsterdam P,
2016. Forthcoming.
“Postblack Unnatural Narrative—Or, Is the Implied Author of Percival Everett’s I Am Not Sidney
Poitier Black?” Narrative, Race, and Ethnicity in the Americas. Ed. James J. Donahue, Jennifer
Ho, and Shaun Morgan. In Preparation.
(with Jeanne Cortiel). “Editorial: (En)Sounding the Future.” Sounds of the Future: Musical and Sonic
Anticipation in American Popular Culture. Spec. issue of Act—Zeitschrift für Musik &
Performance 6 (2015). 1-13. Web. 13 Jan. 2016.
“All Kinds of Queer Rednecks: The Sexual Politics of Contemporary Country Music.” America and the
Musical Unconscious. Ed. Julius Greve and Sascha Pöhlmann. New York/Dresden: Atropos P,
2015. 65-92. Print.
“Nashville—The Authentic Heart and Soul of Country Music?” Rural America. Ed. Antje Kley and
Heike Paul. Heidelberg: Winter, 2015. 327-345. Print.
“Dissimulating Blackness: The Degenerative Satires of Paul Beatty and Percival Everett.” Post-Soul
Satire: Black Identity after Civil Rights. Ed. Derek C. Maus and James J. Donahue. Jackson, MS:
UP of Mississippi, 2014. 150-161. Print.
“Singing 9/11: Mourning Humanity in U.S.-American Popular Music.” 9/11 as Catalyst: American and
British Cultural Responses. Spec. issue of Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik 58 (2010):
23-37. Print.
As Editor
(with Jeanne Cortiel). Sounds of the Future: Musical and Sonic Anticipation in American Popular
Culture. Spec. issue of Act—Zeitschrift für Musik & Performance 6 (2015). Web. 13 Jan. 2016.
Ph. D.
“Postblack Aesthetics: The Freedom to Be Black in Contemporary African American Fiction”
(Dissertation; Advisor: Prof. Dr. Helmbrecht Breinig; University of Erlangen-Nuremberg);
submitted and defended (May 14, 2014); grade: “summa cum laude”
Translations
Translation/transcription of various interviews conducted by David P. Boder with Holocaust survivors
for the digital project Voices of the Holocaust under supervision by the Illinois Institute of Technology
(http://voices.iit.ed) [German – English]
Co-Translator of David P. Boder’s I Did Not Interview the Dead. Ed. Julia Faisst, Alan Rosen, and
Werner Sollors. Winter, 2011. [English – German]
Presentations
“Garth Brooks’s Concept Album Chris Gaines Greatest Hits; or, Why Country Music Wasn’t Ready for
Chris Gaines” (11/2015)
(“Kleine Formen, große Konzepte. Ein genreübergreifender Blick auf Anspruch und Widerspruch
konzeptionellen Denkens in der populären Musik“; Panel at „Große Formen in der populären
February 8, 2016
Musik/Large-Scale Forms in Popular Music“; Zentrum für Populäre Kultur und Musik,
Freiburg)
“Famous in a Small Town”: Contemporary Country Music and/as Popular Culture (6/2015)
(Guest Lecture; University of Leipzig)
“Song of the South”: Country Music and/as Southern Music (2015)
(Guest lecture in the Graduate Seminar “Language, Literature, and Culture in the American South”;
Prof. Jeanne Cortiel and Prof. Susanne Mühleisen, University of Bayreuth)
“Rednecks and Racists? The Racial and Sexual Politics of Contemporary Country Music” (2014)
(America and the Musical Unconscious, LMU & Junior Year in Munich)
“Reading the Postblack Aesthetics.” (2014)
(The Futures of Black Studies, University of Bremen)
“Postblack Aesthetics: ‘Redefining Complex Notions of Blackness’ in Contemporary African American
Literature” (2014)
(Lecture series Current Issues in North American Studies and Cultural Studies; University of Bonn)
“Famous in a Small Town”: The Authenticity of Unpopularity in Country Music (2013)
(Unpopular Culture, Ludwig-Maximilian University Munich)
“Nashville—The Heart and Soul of Country Music?” (2013)
(DGfA annual conference, Rural America, University of Erlangen-Nuremberg)
“Faking the ‘Real’ Black Text—or, Six Degrees of Sidney Poitier” (2012)
(Fake Identities? Impostors, ConMen, Wannabes in North American Culture, A Symposium, University
of Jena)
“Invisible Walls and Cosmopolitan Conviviality: Paul Beatty’s Slumberland (2008)” (2011)
(DGfA annual conference, Transnational American Studies, University of Regensburg)
“Singing 9/11: Mourning Humanity in Popular Music” (2009)
(9/11 as Catalyst: American and British Cultural Responses, University of Bayreuth)
“Treading the (Academic) Fault Lines of (Black) Writing in Everett’s Erasure (2001)” (2009)
(DGfA annual conference, Education and the USA, University of Jena)
“Postethnicity as Groundless Solidarity” (2006)
(Annual conference of the American Literature Association, ALA, in San Francisco, MELUS-sponsored
panel: Beyond Multiculturalism)
Research Focus/Interests
African American Literature and Culture (special emphasis on 20th century)
Country Music and its politics of (un)popularity
Issues of Authenticity (in literature and music)
“The curvature of intersubjective space”—The Philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas
Manuscripts
“Postsoul and Postethnic Literatures—Theorizing Postblack Aesthetics”
“Charles Chesnutt’s Quest for Loyalty: ‘The March of Progress’ and ‘The Wife of His Youth’”
“Talking to the Enemy: The Protest of Martin Luther King, Jr., and James Baldwin”
February 8, 2016
Grants / Awards
2015
Dissertation Award of the Bavarian American Academy
Lilli Bechmann-Rahn Prize for the Best Dissertation submitted to the Faculty
of Humanities, Social Sciences, and Theology of the FAU Erlangen-Nuremberg
2004 – 2007
German Research Foundation (DFG) Fellowship
2006
Bavarian American Academy (BAA) Postgraduate Scholarship (travel
grant; attendance of ALA conference San Francisco; research trip to UC
Berkeley & Widener Library, Harvard University)
2001 – 2002
German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) Scholarship (Harvard
University, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, Department of AfroAmerican Studies)
Other
2013
Work-session moderator at student-organized conference “Die Intermediale”
(University of Bayreuth)
2012
Panel chaired at the conference The Shaping Power of Risk: Literature,
Culture, Environment (University of Bayreuth)
2/2012
Certificate “University Teaching” (FBZHL, University of Bayreuth) ProfiLehre
Bayern
2010
Co-Organizer of “ReVisions of American Studies” at U of Bayreuth
(network of younger scholars of American Studies)
2009
panels chaired at the conferences 9/11 as Catalyst (Bayreuth) and Critical
Perspectives: Turns, Trends, Theories (annual Gradnet conference, Erlangen)
2007
Bavarian American Academy Summer Institute “Ethnicity and Society
in America” (contributing participant)
2005-2006
Elected Representative of the fellows, DFG-graduate college
2003-2004
Student assistant in a research project on “Inter-American Studies” by Prof.
Dr. Helmbrecht Breinig (U of Erlangen-Nuremberg)
Courses Taught (since 2006; Universities of Erlangen-Nuremberg and Bayreuth, selection)
Edgar Allan Poe: Renaissance Man
“What’s Race Got To Do With It?” Contemporary African American Fiction
Postmodern American Drama: From Albee and Mamet to Hwang and Kushner
Race and Identity in African American Fiction
The Beat Generation: Poetry and Prose
(Re-)Writing Slavery: The Slave Narrative and the African American Narrative Tradition
From Poe to Chesnutt: 19th Century American Short Stories
Black Feminist Literature
Passing for White: Negotiating Identities in African American Fiction
“The End of Something”: Fragmented Stories of Modernity
The Satire of Race: Reading Contemporary Black Satire
The Plays of Eugene O’Neill
“Isn’t It Pretty to Think So?”: The Fiction of Ernest Hemingway
Administrative Positions
February 8, 2016
Since 2015
Member of the Governing Board of the Bayreuth Institute for American Studies
(BIFAS)
2009
Member of the Search Committee (Berufungskommission) for the W2-Professorship
“English Studies and Anglophone Literatures”
BA-Theses Supervised
“The Representation of Space and Place in in Stephen Crane’s Maggie and Theodore Dreiser’s Sister
Carrie”
Project Seminars Supervised
“Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained as Modern Rendition of the Classic Slave Narrative—A
Comparison to Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave”
“Voice in Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God”
“American Race Relations in the Mid-Nineteenth Century: How Racial Theories Influenced Harriet
Beecher Stowe’s Perception of Race”
“David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas: Transcending Postmodernism?”
“Chappelle’s Show and Aaron McGruder’s The Boondocks—Satire or Racism?”
Language Competence
German:
English:
Spanish:
French:
native language
near-native (TOEFL-score: 300 out of 300)
reading (Unicert I)
reading
Professional Memberships
DGfA
MELUS
BIFAS
BAA
CSJ
Deutsche Gesellschaft für Amerikastudien (German Association for American
Studies)
The Society for the Study of the Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United
States
Bayreuth Institute for American Studies
Bavarian American Academy
Charles Johnson Society
Associated Member
BAAAS
Bayreuth Academy for Advanced African Studies
References
Prof. Dr. Sylvia Mayer
Chair American Studies/Anglophone
Literatures and Cultures
University of Bayreuth
Universitätstrasse 30
95447 Bayreuth
GERMANY
Email: Sylvia.Mayer@uni-bayreuth.de
Prof. (emeritus) Dr. Helmbrecht Breinig
(Former Chair of American Studies,
Friedrich-Alexander-University of
Erlangen/Nuremberg)
Alte Leipziger Str. 32
63571 Gelnhausen
GERMANY
Email: HBreinig@aol.com