Professor Lemke | Publications

Books

• Inequality, Poverty, and Precarity in Contemporary American Culture. New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2016.

• The Vernacular Matters of American Literature. New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2009.

• Primitivist Modernism: Black Culture and the Origins of Transatlantic Modernism. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998.

• Cultural Studies Bibliography. John F. Kennedy Institute Working Papers. Berlin: Zentrale Universitätsdruckerei, 1996.
  
  

Editorships

• Class Divisions in Serial Television. Co-edited with Wibke Schniedermann. New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2016.

• Literary and Cultural Studies, Theory and the (New) Media. Co-edited with Monika Fludernik, Frankfurt: Schriftenreihe Peter Lang, 2015.

• Aesthetic Transgressions: Modernity, Liberalism, and the Function of Literature: Festschrift für Winfried Fluck zum 60. Geburtstag. Co-edited with Thomas Claviez and Ulla Haselstein. Heidelberg: Winter, 2006.

• Zora Neale Hurston. The Complete Stories. Co-edited with Henry Louis Gates, Jr. New York: Harper Collins, 1995.
  
  

Articles

• "Ecoliteracy: Skills for Sustainable Education." Climate Education. ISRF Bulletin 29. Ed. Lars Cornelissen. London: Independent Social Research Foundation, 2024. 51-64.
• "When Humans Connect with Post-Humans." Learning Machines: Artificial Intelligence and Humanities Knowledge. ISRF Bulletin 28. Ed. Lars Cornelissen. London: Independent Social Research Foundation, 2023. 43-55.
• "Precarious Photojournalism: The Ethics and Aesthetics of the Unrepresentable." The Routledge Companion to Media and Poverty. Ed. Sandra Borden. London: Routledge, 2021. 43-53.
• "A Transdisciplinary Cultural Studies' Approach to Inequality: What Can We Learn from Precarity Studies and Why Does Art Matter?" Equality: Multidisciplinary Perspectives. Eds. François Levrau & Noel Clycq. New York: Palgrave, 2021. 321-46.
• "Precarious Art and the Aesthetics of the Precarious Gaze." FRAME 30.2, 2017. 61-80.

• "American Exceptionalism in the Age of Inequality." Towards a Post-Exceptionalist American Studies. Eds. Winfried Fluck and Donald Pease. Tübingen: Günter Narr, 2014. 359-73.

• "Working Poverty in the U.S.: Barbara Ehrenreich's Bestseller Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America and its Countercultural Legacy." LISAA. Special issue on poverty: Representations of Poverty. Ed. William Dow. Paris: Minard, 2013. 22-34.

• "Poverty and Class Studies." American Studies Today: New Research Agendas. Eds. Winfried Fluck, Erik Redling, Sabine Sielke and Hubert Zapf. Heidelberg: Winter, 2013. 71- 99.

• "Liberty: A Transnational Icon." Re-Framing the Transnational Turn in American Studies. Eds. Winfried Fluck, Donald Pease and John Carlos Rowe. Hanover/New Hampshire: Dartmouth College Press, 2011. 193-218.

• "Der Amerikanische Traum und die Lebensrealität der Amerikaner." Freiburger Universitätsblätter 139 (2011): 139-51.

• "Facing Poverty: Towards a Theory of Articulation." Regarding the Poverty of Others, or: Beyond the Culturalization of Class. Eds. Michael Butter and Carsten Schinko. Spec. issue of Amerikastudien/American Studies 55.2 (2010): 95-122.

• (with Felicitas Hentschke) "Tabuisierte Sexualität im Que(e)rschnitt der Filmgeschichte Hollywoods." Tabu. Eds. Claudia Benthien, Ortrud Gutjahr. München: Wilhelm Fink, 2008. 219-45.

• "Du Bois: Of the Coming of John." The Oxford Companion to The Souls of Black Folk. Ed. Shamoon Zamir. Oxford University Press, 2008.

• "Diaspora Aesthetics: Exploring the African Dispora in the Works of Aaron Douglas, Jacob Lawrence and Jean Michel Basquiat." Exiles, Diasporas, and Strangers. Ed. Kobena Mercer. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2007. 122-45.

• "Aesthetics of Transgression: Awe, Alterity, and Apprehension in The Scarlet Letter." Aesthetic Transgressions: Modernity, Liberalism, and the Function of Literature: Festschrift für Winfried Fluck zum 60. Geburtstag. Eds. Thomas Claviez, Ulla Haselstein and Sieglinde Lemke. Heidelberg: Winter, 2006. 163-94.

• "Vernacular Aesthetics." Cultural Interactions: 50 Years of American Studies in Germany. Eds. Berndt Ostendorf and Ulla Haselstein. Heidelberg: Winter, 2005. 139-59.

• "Theories of American Culture in the Name of the Vernacular." Theories of American Culture: Theories of American Studies. Eds. Winfried Fluck and Thomas Claviez. Yearbook of Research in English and American Literature 19. Tübingen: Narr, 2003. 155-74.

• "Primitivist Modernism." Primitivism and 20^th Century Art: A Documentary History. Eds. Jack Flam and Miriam Deutsch. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003. 240-55.

• “Response to Todd Gitlin and Susan Armitage.” Transnational America: The Fading of Borders in the Western Hemisphere. Ed. Berndt Ostendorf. Heidelberg: Winter, 2002. 231-37.

• “Transatlantic Relations: The German Du Bois.” German? American? Literature? New Directions in German – American Studies. Eds. Winfried Fluck and Werner Sollors. New York: Peter Lang, 2002. 207-16.

• “Trans-Culturalism.” Double-Crossings: Entrecruzamientos. Ed. Carlos Von Son. San  Diego: Ediciones Nuevo Espacio, 2001. 22-37.

•  “Hybridity the Subtext of Modernism.” Crossover: Cultural Hybridity and Ethnicity, Gender, Ethics. Ed. Therese Steffen. Tübingen: Stauffenburg, 2000. 49-60.

• “Berlin and Boundaries: Sollen vs. Geschehen.” Boundary 2 27.3 (2000): 45-78.

•  “Hamlin Garland.” Metzler Lexikon amerikanischer Autoren. Eds. Bernd Engler and Kurt Müller. Stuttgart: Metzler, 2000.

• “Joel Chandler Harris.” Metzler Lexikon amerikanischer Autoren. Eds. Bernd Engler and Kurt Müller. Stuttgart: Metzler, 2000.

• “James Weldon Johnson.” Metzler Lexikon amerikanischer Autoren. Eds. Bernd Engler and Kurt Müller. Stuttgart: Metzler, 2000.

• “Nella Larsen.” Metzler Lexikon amerikanischer Autoren. Eds. Bernd Engler and Kurt Müller. Stuttgart: Metzler, 2000.

•  “Mapping the Harlem Renaissance.” Mapping African America: History, Narrative Formation and the Production of Knowledge. Eds. Maria Diedrich, Carl Pedersen and Justine Tally. FORECAAST 1. Hamburg: LIT, 1999. 119-28.

•  “A Forgotten Legacy.” Lifting as They Climb: The History of the National Association of Colored Women. Eds. Elizabeth Lindsay Davis. Schomburg Library Series. New York: MacMillan, 1996. XV-XXXIII.

• “Blurring Generic Boundaries: Zora Neale Hurston: A Writer of Fiction and Anthropologist.” The Anthropological Turn in Literary Studies. Ed. Jürgen Schläger. Yearbook of Research in English and American Literature 12. Tübingen: Narr, 1996. 163-78.

•  “Josephine Baker.” Dictionary of American Negro Biography. Eds. Rayford W. Logan and Michael R. Winston. New York: W.W. Norton, 1995. 233-4.

•  “White on White Act 2.” Transition 64 (1994): 110-12.

•  “White on White: When the West Represents the Rest, Who Comes off Worse?” Transition 59 (1993): 145-54.

•  “Im Zeichen des FORDschritts”. Amerikastudien 38.38 (1993): 251-63.

•  “Schwarze (Über-)Lebenskunst”. Perspectives on Multiculturalism in North America. Ed. Carol W. Pfaff. Materialien 33. Berlin: John F. Kennedy Press, 1992. 121-38.
  
  

Reviews

• Rev. of The Indignant Generation: A Narrative History of African American Writers and Critics, 1934-1960 by Lawrence Jackson. “African American Literary Studies: New Texts, New Approaches, New Challenges”, Amerikastudien/American Studies 55.4 (2010).

• Rev. of Einführung in die Amerikanistik / American Studies by Udo Hebel. “How to Introduce American Studies?”, Anglia 128.2 (2010).

• Rev. of Gender–Voice–Vernacular: The Formation of Female Subjectivity in Zora Neale Hurston, Toni Morrison, and Alice Walker. ZAA XLIX 2.2 (2001): 197-8.
  
  

Newspaper Articles

• “Prekärer Blick. Wie Literatur, Medien und Kunst Armut und soziale Ungleichheit in den USA der Gegenwart zeigen.” uni’wissen – Das Forschungsmagazin der Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg 2/2015. 8-11.

• “Viel Streit um wenig Stoff. Talare: Ja oder Nein?” uni'leben – Die Zeitung der Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg 5/2010. 10.

• “Auf dem Weg in die Unterwelt: Einblicke in eine von Obdachlosen bewohnte Zeltstadt bei Los Angeles.” uni'leben – Die Zeitung der Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg 2/2010. 9.

• “Camp der Hoffnungslosen: Wohin das reiche Amerika seine Armen abschiebt: Zu Besuch in einer Tent City bei Los Angeles.” Badische Zeitung Feb. 27, 2010.
• See also: Interviews & Pressemeldungen

Lectures

2023

• “Feminist Awakenings at the Turn of the Century, Perkins Gilman’s Yellow Wallpaper.”
  Eucor Lecture Series | January
• "Kulturwissenschaft und Klimagerechtigkeit."
  Alles im Blick? Interdisziplinäre Vortragsreihe Nachhaltigkeit. | January
• “Do AIs Make Better Lovers? On Post-Human Consciousness and Affect.”

2020

• "Economic Inequality and the Rising Death Toll as Decisive Factors"
  Freiburg University / Carl-Schurz-Haus | October

• "The Digital Condition and Humanities Knowledge"
  Athens University | Sep

2019

• "Sex and Gender in the Age of Posthumanism"
  Gießen University | November
• "Die Inszenierung von Kampfsportler*innen im Film"
  Freiburg University | October
• "Armut betrachten: Eine kulturwissenschaftliche Perspektive"
  University of Erlangen–Nürnberg | May
• “When Hollywood Sensationalizes Underdogs: Precarity and Precariousness in Slumdog Millionaire and The Hunger Games"
  University of Delhi, India | February

• “Workshop: Global Poverty“
  Indian Institute of Technology, Ropar, India | February

• “Precarity Studies: An Interdisciplinary Research Field“
  Indian Institute of Technology, Ropar, India | February

2018

• “Cultural Precarity Studies: The Making of a Transdisciplinary Field”
  University of Kerala, India | December

• “Representing Refugees: A Response to Lewis Turner on the Image of the Entrepreneur and the Neoliberal Logic“
  Anton-Bergsträsser Institute, Freiburg | November

• “Critical Media Literacy: Analyzing American Beauty“
  Gießen University | October

• “Precarious Escapes: Hillbilly Elegy and Unorthodox"
  Conference Hamburg University | June

• “On the Economy of Expenditure and Anecdotal Pleasure”
  Conference FU Berlin | February

• “Precarious Representations vs. Representations of Precarity: On Hunger Games, Moonlight, and Hillbilly Elegy"
  Freiburg University | January

2017

• “American Art from 1930-1960"
  Paul Klee Exhibition, Bern | December
• “Precarity Studies and Aesthetics: From Transdisciplinary Diversity Towards a Pentagonal Critical Framework“
  Conference GAPS, Univ. Bonn | May
• "Class Matters in the Age of Trump"
  New York | March
• "The Expansion of Boundary Conditions in Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God"
  Philadelphia MLA, January

2016

• “Postfeminism and Hollywood”
  Freiburg, Gender Studies Lecture Series | December

• “A Threesome: Anthropology, Poetry, and Prose”
  Conference Basel University | November

• “Nachhaltigkeit: Brennpunkt USA”
  Freiburg | June

2015

• “The Great Inequality Debate. Wie Ungleichheit in der zeitgenössischen amerikanischen Literatur verhandelt wird”
  Freiburg | October

• “Inequality in America: A Discourse Analysis”
  Freiburg | June

2014

• “Poverty and Inequality in America”
  US Studies Center, Sydney | February

2013

• “The Financial Crisis of 08 and Narratives of Working Poverty”
  Gießen | July
• “Desire – Bliss – Loss: Lust und Verlust im amerikanischen Imaginären”
  Lausanne-Vallorbe, Switzerland | June

• “Not so Invisible: Footprints of Globalization in the Rural South”
  Erlangen | May

• “Zora Neale Hurston's Anthropological Writings: Fiction and Creative Non-Fiction”
  Bern, Switzerland | May

• “Economies of Misfortune: Visual Impressions from the Deep South”
  Carl-Schurz-Haus Freiburg | April

• “How America Discovered Working Poverty and Learned to Live with it”
  Georgetown, Washington D.C., USA | March

• “U.S. Poverty Studies: A European Perspective"
  Rice University Houston, USA | March

2012

• “Literatur, Visuelle Kultur und Sozialgeschichte”
  University of Freiburg | December

• “Introduction to Obama, Suffrage, and Disenfranchisement”
  Electoral Cultures Conference, Amerika-Haus München | November

• “Narratives of Inequality from Grapes of Wrath to The Pursuit of Happyness”
  International Conference Too Big to Ignore: Narratives of Inequality
  University of Freiburg | July

• “The Romantic Tradition Meets Realism in 19^th Century American Fiction”
  University of Salamanca, Spain | April

• “Dream On: American Exceptionalism Reconsidered”
  University of Salamanca, Spain | April

• “Facebook: Superpower, Stasibook, Cash Cow: On Performative Individualism and the Surplus Value of Friends”
  University of Freiburg | February

2011

• “Going to War. Trials and Tribulations in the Bush Era”
  University of Freiburg | December

• “Icon Trouble: The Continuous Refashioning of Miss Liberty”
  Carl-Schurz-Haus Freiburg | November

• “The Future of Class and Poverty Studies”
  FU Berlin | November

• “Empathie, Imagination, Ästhetik”
  Semiotikkongress, University of Potsdam | October
• “Down and Out in Ontario”
  University of Freiburg | July

• “Tom Stone, Photography, and the Art of the New Documentary”
  University of Freiburg (FRIAS) | July

• “Racism Made in America”
  Wort, Macht, Stamm: Rassismus und Determinismus in der Philologie des 19. Jahrhunderts
  University of Potsdam | May

2010

• “Bestsellers on America’s Working Poor: Documenting the Microcosm of Want”
  University of Freiburg (FRIAS) | December

• “Vom Mythos des ‘American Dream’ und der Lebensrealität der Amerikaner”
  University of Freiburg | November

• “Amerika und Trauma im 21. Jahrhundert”
  University of Hamburg | July

• “Black ART-lantic”
  University of Erfurt | July

• “The Culture of the Dispossessed: America in the Age of Obama”
  Doshisha University, Kyoto, Japan | April

• “Gang Tours, Obamaville, Skid Row: On the Paradox of Poverty Portraiture”
  Harvard University | March

2009

• “Representing the Nation: Poetry and the Struggle over Signification”
  Vienna University | October

• “I Spy: It's Internationally Renowned, Female & All-American”
  University of Hamburg | May

2008

• “Lady Liberty: A Transnational Icon par excellence”
  FU Berlin | October

• “Poverty and Transnational Perspectives in American Studies”
  University of Freiburg | December

• “’Give me Your Tired, Your Poor, Your Huddled Masses, Yearning to Breathe Free’: Towards a Transnational Visual Poetics”
  FU Berlin | October

• “When Butler meets Barbie: Queering the All-American Icon of the Cheerleader”
  University of Freiburg: Geschlechterstudien (Vorlesungsreihe) | May

• “Von amerikanischen Träumen und amerikanischen Räumen”
  Inaugural Lecture, University of Freiburg | February

• “New Historicism Reconsidered”
  University of Freiburg: Literaturtheorie (Vorlesungsreihe) | January

2007

• “How Lohengrin Made it into The Souls of Black Folk”
  International Conference African Americans in Berlin: The Story of an Intellectual Encounter
  J.F.K. Institute FU Berlin, November

• “Diaspora Aesthetics”
  International Conference Narratives About American Art
  J.F.K. Institute FU Berlin | May

• “African-American Migration”
  Carl-Schurz Haus Feiburg | January

• “Some Don’t Like it Hot: Ein Que(e)rschnitt durch Hollywoods Filmgeschichte”
  University of Hamburg | January

2006

• “The Cryptic Art of Jean-Michel Basquiat”
  UCSB, Santa Barbara | October

• “Pictures in a Floating World: Globalism in American Art”
  USC, Los Angeles | October

• “Diasporic (Post-) Modernism: Aaron Douglas’s and Jean-Michel Basquiat’s Grand Spectacles of the African Diaspora”
  INIVA Institute London | July

• “The German DuBois”
  Cross-Overs Conference, CAAR, Münster | March

2005

• “Life, Diagnostics and Ways of Seeing in The Portrait of a Lady”
  University of Hamburg | December

• “A Poetics of Space”
  Workshop der ASA, Washington | November

• “Area Studies in the USA”
  Konferenz des Wissenschaftskollegs zu Berlin: Die Zukunft der Regionalforschung
  Berlin | July

• “Europeans at the Gate: On Transnational American Studies”
  University of Potsdam | July

• “Alterity, Altruism, and Androgyny in The Scarlet Letter”
  University of Freiburg | June

• “Ethnic Neorealism: New Trends in American Literature"
  University of Bielefeld | May

• “The Sound of Post-Apartheid South African Fiction”
  DGfA, Frankfurt | May
• “CrossRoutes of Transatlantic Scholarship”
  NYU, New York | April

• “American Ethnicity: A Transnational vs. an Intra-national Paradigm”
  International Conference about European Perspectives on American Studies, FU Berlin | February

2004

• “Globalizing  American  Studies”
  Rhodes University, Grahamstown, South Africa | December

• “From the ‘Talking Book’ to Representing the Unspeakable”
  Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin | November

• “The Black Atlantic – Theorie und Praxis schwarzer Identität”
  Host. Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin | September

• “A New American Literature: Writing from the Margins”
  University of Basel | August
• “Aesthetics and Politics: A Response to Leo Marx”
  J.F.K. Institute FU Berlin | April
• “New Trends in American Studies”
  Munich University | February

2003

• “What Does Germany Have to Do with The Souls of Black Folk?”
  Bates College, Maine | October

• “A Post-Nationalist Approach to American Literature”
  Dartmouth College, New Hampshire | October

• “Towards a Postcolonial Aesthetics”
  University of Gießen | September

• “Vernacular Aesthetics”
  Tagung der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Amerikastudien, University of München | June

• “‘Race’ und ‘Gender’ im Konflikt”
  HU Berlin | May

• “Comparative American Studies?”
  University of California at Irvine | April

2002

• “A Multicultural Aesthetics Before the Age of Multiculturalism”
  University of California at Riverside | March

• “Deviant Divas”
  University of California at Irvine | February

2000

• “Response to Todd Gitlin and Susan Armitage”
  Transatlantic America Conference, University of Munich | July

• “Du Bois in Berlin
  HU Berlin | June

• “Reconsidering Modernism”
  University of California at Irvine | April

1999

• “Du Bois and his Student Years Abroad”
  W.E.B. Du Bois Institute, Harvard University, Cambridge | September

• “Multiculturalism and the Visual Arts”
  J.F.K. Institute FU Berlin | July
• “Du Bois in Berlin”
  J.F.K. Institute FU Berlin | July

• “Recycling Radicalism”
  Jahrestagung der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Amerikastudien, Uni Köln | June

1998

• “Josephine Baker: Mehr als Bewegung”
  Moveo, Berlin | December

• “The German Du Bois”
  Trans-Coop Conference, Harvard University | September

• “Hybridity: The Subtext of Modernism"
  Symposium on Hybridity, Ethnicity, Gender, and Ethics, University of Basel | July

• “Odd Sisters: Anti- and Postfeminism”
  University of Warschau, Poland | May

• “Celebrating the African Past, Performing the Black Vernacular”
  Workshop, EAAS Conference, University of Lisbon | April

• “Primitivist Modernism”
  Columbia University, New York, March
• “Jean Toomer”
  Harvard Conference, Sorbonne, Paris | January

1997

• "Negro’ or Mapping the Harlem Renaissance”
  CAAR Conference, Liverpool | April

1996

• “Mixed Media? Visual Media/Media Visions”
  University of Cologne | July
• “Josephine Baker: The Ambassador of Jazz”
  Sorbonne, Paris | April

• “From Waiting to Exhale to Waiting for Godot”
  Symposion zur Literatur der afrikanischen Diaspora, Salamanca | March

1995

• “Blurring Generic Boundaries”
  J.F.K. Institute FU Berlin | November

• “Zora Neale Hurston: A Writer of Fiction and Anthropologist”
  Konferenz zu Literatur und Anthropologie, Universität Konstanz | October

1994

• “The Harlem Renaissance”
  NEH Seminar. Wheelock College, Boston | May

• “Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon”
  W.E.B. Du Bois Institute, Harvard University, Cambridge | October

• “Performing Difference“
  J.F.K. Institute FU Berlin | June

• “Die Ikonen der Moderne”
  Ringvorlesung, J.F.K. Institute FU Berlin | June

• “Im Zeichen des FORDschritts”
  Jahrestagung der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Amerikastudien, University of Münster | October