Prof. Dr. Florian Sedlmeier

Since summer term 2025
Professor for North-American Literature and Culture

Winter term 2022/23 until winter term 2024/25
Akademischer Oberrat auf Zeit (interim of Prof. Freitag)

Summer term 2022
Interim Professor für Amerikanische Kultur und Literatur at the Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main

Winter term 2021/22
Interim professor with focus on Anglophone Literatures at the Peter Szondi-Institut für Allgemeine und Vergleichende Literaturwissenschaft, Freie Universität Berlin

Summer term 2021
Interim professor for literature, John-F.-Kennedy-Institut für Nordamerikastudien, Freie Universität Berlin

June 2020
Habilitation: Nordamerikanische Literatur und Kultur, Freie Universität Berlin

October 2018 until March 2020
Interim professor for American Literature and Culture, Universität Hamburg

April 2017 until September 2018
Visiting Fellow, Department of English, University of California, Los Angeles
Visiting Scholar at the University of Texas at Austin (DFG-research scholarship)

April 2015 until March 2021
Professorship as Juniorprofessor (W1, without Tenure-Track), Literatur Nordamerikas, John-F.-Kennedy-Institut für Nordamerikastudien, Freie Universität Berlin

Winter term 2015/2016
Visiting Assistant Professor, Department of English, Brandeis University (research semester)

March 2015
Successful intermediate evaluation

April 2012 until March 2015
Professorship as Juniorprofessor (W1, without Tenure-Track), Literatur Nordamerikas, John-F.-Kennedy-Institut für Nordamerikastudien, Freie Universität Berlin

October 2010 until March 2012
Universitätsassistent/Postdoc, Fachbereich Anglistik und Amerikanistik, Paris-Lodron-Universität Salzburg

June 2010
Doktor der Philosophie in Anglistik und Amerikanistik, Universität Salzburg.

September 2008 until September 2010
Research Associate, Fachbereich Anglistik und Amerikanistik, Universität Salzburg

Winter term 2007/2008
Research Associate, Department of Comparative Literature, University of California, Irvine

April 2006 until August 2008
Scholarship at the Graduate College »Die Figur des Dritten«, Universität Konstanz .

July 2005
Magister Artium in Amerikanischer Literaturgeschichte, Neuerer Deutscher Literatur und Soziologie, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München

Monograph:

The Postethnic Literary: Reading Paratexts and Transpositions around 2000. Berlin: de Gruyter, 2014.

Editorships and Co-Editorships:

Forms of Literary Continuation. Berlin: de Gruyter, 2025. (with Ulla Haselstein; in process)

Special issue »American Literary Institutions around 1900«, College Literature 51.4 (2024). (with Sheila Liming and Alexander Starre)

U.S. Culture as Popular Culture. Heidelberg: Winter, 2022. (with Astrid Böger)

Anecdotal Modernity: Making and Unmaking History. Berlin: de Gruyter, 2020. (with James Dorson, MaryAnn Snyder-Körber, and Birte Wege)

Kriminalliteratur und Wissensgeschichte: Genres, Medien, Techniken. Bielefeld: transcript, 2015. (with Clemens Peck)

Rereading the Machine in the Garden: Nature and Technology in American Culture. Frankfurt a. M.: Campus, 2014. (with Eric Erbacher and Nicole Maruo-Schröder)

Hard Bodies. Wien: LIT-Verlag, 2011. (with Ralph J. Poole and Susanne Wegener)

Essays and book chapters:

»Vom ›struggle‹ zum ›dream‹? Die Memoires des Publizisten Ta-Nehisi Coates.« In: Standortbestimmungen: Aktuelle Strategien literarischer Selbstpositionierungen. Eds. Barbara Bausch and Julia Weber. Berlin: Berlin UP, 2025. (in print)

»Porträt und Stillleben: Mark Romaneks Bilder des Johnny Cash«. In: Praktiken des Neobarock in der Moderne. Eds. Werner Michler and Clemens Peck. Wien: Sonderzahl, 2025. 229-242.

»Introduction: American Literary Institutions around 1900«. With Sheila Liming and Alexander Starre. College Literature 51.4 (2024): 429-444.

»Literary Sites of Institutional Confirmation and Critique: Howells in the Study, Cather in the Office«. With Alexander Starre. College Literature 51.4 (2024): 669-698.

»Ida B. Wells’s Print Activism«. In: Activist Writing: History, Politics, Rhetoric. Eds. Pierre-Héli Monot, David Bebnowski, and Sakina Shakil Gröppmaier. Zürich: intercom Verlag, 2024. 159-171.

»Circulation and the Convertibility of Literary Capital in U.S. Literary Realism«. In: The Value of Literary Circulation / Der Wert der literarischen Zirkulation. Eds. Michael Gamper, Jutta Müller-Tamm, David Wachter, and Jasmin Wrobel. Stuttgart: Metzler, 2023. 387-402.

»Introduction: U.S. Culture as Popular Culture«. With Astrid Böger. In: U.S. Culture as Popular Culture. Eds. Astrid Böger and Florian Sedlmeier. Heidelberg: Winter, 2022. 9-23.

»Writers’ Collectives«. In: The Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Fiction, 1980-2020. Eds. Patrick O’Donnell, Lesley Larkin, and Stephen J. Burn. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2022. 1-10, chapter 269.

»Greatness and the Convertibility of Literary Capital: W.D. Howells and Black Writers«. Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik (ZAA) 69.1 (2021): 77-89.

»Introduction: Anecdotal Modernity«. With MaryAnn Snyder-Körber. In: Anecdotal Modernity: Making and Unmaking History. Eds. James Dorson, Florian Sedlmeier, MaryAnn Snyder-Körber, and Birte Wege. Berlin: de Gruyter, 2020. 1-30.

»The Paratext and Literary Narration: Authorship, Institutions, Historiographies«. Narrative 26.1 (2018): 63-80.

»Howells and the Properties of Modern Literature«. In: Modernities and Modernization in North America. Eds. Ilka Brasch and Ruth Mayer. Heidelberg: Winter, 2018. 101-117.

»On the Conditions of the Field Imagination: Realism and William Dean Howells«. In: Projecting American Studies: Essays on Theory, Method, and Practice. Eds. Frank Kelleter and Alexander Starre. Heidelberg: Winter, 2018. 81-94.

»Kunst als allegorische Geheimsprache und die Poetik der seriellen Sequenz in Don DeLillos Falling Man«. In: Literarische Geheim- und Privatsprachen: Formen und Funktionen. Eds. Uta Degner and Martina Wörgötter. Würzburg: Königshausen und Neumann, 2017. 197-221.

»Die Allegorie in der postkolonialen Literatur und Literaturtheorie.« In: Allegorie. Symposium der Deutschen Forschungsgemeinschaft 2014. Ed. Ulla Haselstein. Berlin: de Gruyter, 2016. 528-556.

»Eindeutigkeit und Ähnlichkeit, Bruch und Kontinuität: Mark Twain’s Pudd’nhead Wilson«. In: Kriminalliteratur und Wissensgeschichte: Genres, Medien, Techniken. Eds. Clemens Peck and Florian Sedlmeier. Bielefeld: transcript, 2015. 79-112.

»Einleitung: Kriminalliteratur und Wissensgeschichte«. With Clemens Peck. In: Kriminalliteratur und Wissensgeschichte: Genres, Medien, Techniken. Eds. Clemens Peck and Florian Sedlmeier. Bielefeld: transcript, 2015. 7-27.

»Introduction: Rereading The Machine in the Garden«. With Eric Erbacher and Nicole Maruo-Schröder. In: Rereading the Machine in the Garden: Nature and Technology in American Culture. Eds. Eric Erbacher, Nicole Maruo-Schröder, and Florian Sedlmeier. Frankfurt a. M.: Campus, 2014. 7-41.

»Zu den Bedingungen einer Poetik des Vorläufigen: Theatralität und Absorption, Bedeutung und Präsenz in Gertrude Steins »›Plays‹«. In: Zur Ästhetik des Vorläufigen. Ed. Thomas Hochradner. Heidelberg: Winter, 2014. 131-150.

»Against Totality: Reading for Intermedial Constellations«. Journal of Literary Theory 7.1-2 (2013): 64-85.

»Problems of Historicizing and Practices of Reading: Ralph Ellison’s Three Days Before the Shooting...«. In: Revisiting the Sixties. Interdisciplinary Perspectives on America’s Longest Decade. Eds. Laura Bieger and Christian Lammert. Frankfurt a. M.: Campus, 2013. 217-236.

»The Cool Touch of Things: Libertarian Economics, Complex Simplicity, and the Emergence of the Tactile Erotic«. In: Is It Cause It’s Cool? Affective Encounters with American Culture. Eds. Astrid M. Fellner, Susanne Hamscha, Klaus Heissenberger, and Jennifer Moos. Wien: LIT-Verlag, 2013. 273-293.

»Cover und Transparenz: Die US-Fernsehserie Glee«. In: Coverstrategien in der Popularmusik nach 1960. Eds. Joachim Brügge. Freiburg i. Br.: Rombach, 2013. 229-243.

»(Re-)Staging Venice: William Dean Howells’s Intermedial Flânerie«. PhiN: Philologie im Netz Supplement 5 (2012): 101-127.

»Rereading Literary Form: Paratexts, Transpositions, and Postethnic Literature around 2000«. Journal of Literary Theory 6.1 (2012): 213-233.

»Hollywood Hard Bodies: The Cinema of Kathryn Bigelow and the Alliance of Neoconservatism and Neoliberalism«. With Susanne Wegener. In: Hard Bodies. Eds. Ralph Poole, Florian Sedlmeier, and Susanne Wegener. Wien: LIT-Verlag, 2011. 139-173.

»Hybridität und Dritter Raum im Kontext von Inter-Disziplinarität und postkolonialer Theoriebildung«. PhiN: Philologie im Netz 55 (2011): 40-51.

Reviews:

»Placing Papers: The American Literary Archives Market by Amy Hildreth Chen«, American Literary History 34.2 (2022): 849-851.

»Postblack Aesthetics: The Freedom to Be Black in Contemporary African American Fiction by Christian Schmidt«, Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik (ZAA) 67.4 (2019): 447-449.

Grant for the international symposium »Competing American Literary Institutions around 1900« by EXC 2020 Temporal Communities: Doing Literature in a Global Perspective, June 10./ 11, 2021 (with Alexander Starre)

Research grant of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) for two years for the project »The Conditions of the Field Imagination: Realism and William Dean Howells« (granted from April 2017 to March 2019; utilized until September 2018)

DFG-grant for support of the conference »Faultlines of the Anecdotal«, John-F.-Kennedy-Institut, Freie Universität Berlin,  February 1 - 3, 2018 (with James Dorson, MaryAnn Snyder-Körber and Birte Wege)

DFG-grant for support of the conference »Forms and Practices of Narrating«, John-F.-Kennedy-Institut, Freie Universität Berlin, June 5 - 7, 2014 (with Laura Bieger)

Annual Fulbright Prize awarded for best dissertation in American Studies in Austria (2010).

Federal Assistance Award, Botschaft der Vereinigten Staaten in Wien, Participation at the SSASAA-Conference »To Honor Emory Elliott: American Literary History in a New Key«, Salzburg Global Seminar, September 2010

Research grant of the Department for Cultural and Social Science at the University of Salzburg, Participation at the 33. School of Criticism and Theory, Cornell University, June and July 2009

Doctoral scholarship of the DFG within the framework of the graduate college »Die Figur des Dritten«, University of Konstanz (granted from April 2006 - March 2009; utilized until September 2008)

Library scholarship, John-F.-Kennedy-Institut für Nordamerikastudien, Freie Universität Berlin, March and April 2006