Lexicon of Global Melodrama

Heike Paul (Prof. Dr.) is the chair holder of American studies at Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg and directs the Global Sentimentality Project. Research stays and visiting professorships have taken her to Cambridge (MA), Toronto, Hanover (NH), and Los Angeles, among other places. In 2018, she was recipient of the Leibniz Prize.Sarah Marak (M.A.) is a doctoral researcher in American studies at Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg. Her research interests include popular culture, discourses on terrorism, U.S.-American myths and ecocriticism. Her dissertation project focuses on representations of radical environmental activism in US literature and culture.Katharina Gerund (Dr. phil.) teaches American studies at Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg. Her research interests include transatlantic cultural mobility, popular culture as well as gender and critical race studies. Current projects focus on the U.S. re-education policies of the postwar years and the figure of the military spouse in the cultural imaginary of the U.S..Marius Henderson (M.A.) is a postdoctoral researcher in American studies at Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg. His research interests include critical theory (especially affect and Afro-diasporic theory), North American poetry, and gender studies. His current research project investigates the relation between dynamics of abstraction and abjection in the context of North American modernisms.