Sebastian M. Herrmann, MA 

Sebastian M. Herrmann, MA
Assistant Lecturer for American Studies
Room 3503 | Phone: (0341) 97-37337
Office Hours: Mon 4-5pm

http://americanstudies.uni-leipzig.de/faculty/herrmann/
smherrmann@uni-leipzig.de

 

Bio

Born and raised in Freiburg im Breisgau, I moved to Leipzig in 1999 to study American Studies and Computer Science. Like many other American Studies students, I also studied abroad: In 2003/04 I did course work at the English Department of Cornell, Ithaca, USA. I graduated from Leipzig University in 2006 and am now working on a dissertation project.

Teaching

I teach American Studies Literature and Culture courses, mostly in the BA program, such as the introductory course LC-I and the advanced, topical LC-II and LC-III, and have taught topical seminars in the Magister Program. In my teaching, I am especially interested in helping people discover the productivity and fascination of theory.

I am also strongly interested in new and experimental teaching formats that help students develop their own scholarly interests, positions, and voice. From 2007 to 2010, I have co-developed and taught an MA project seminar that founded the graduate journal aspeers: emerging voices in american studies, the first and currently only graduate-level peer-reviewed journal for American studies in Europe. The project has quickly become an integral part of the MA program and annually gives a group of MA-level student editors the opportunity to practice one complete editing cycle of the journal and publish the work of fellow MA-students from all over Europe.

Research

Currently, my research naturally focuses on my dissertation project. In this project, I am interested in post-50s popular texts—novels, films, semi-fictional writing, and tv-series—on the US presidency. I am particularly interested in how these texts become increasingly aware of tensions between what they tend to call 'fact' and 'fiction'—a tension between empirical and social reality, and how they thus tap into what might best be described as a post-modern 'epistemic panic.' The project looks at both fictional and semi-fictional texts to scrutinize how they address and dramatize the tension between the increasingly powerful and simultaneously increasingly elusive power of the executive.

In addition, I am very much interested in the teaching of American studies, or teaching at the post-secondary level in general: The opportunities (and challenges) of the still new BA/MA system, and the social and political implications of the classroom setting, of the texts we read, the methods we employ, and the discussions we have.

Community Service

I work to intensify the interaction between the institute, the American Studies community, and the wider public through the American Studies Leipzig homepage. I have been a contributor to the asl election blog.

As founding editor of aspeers and general editor of the journal's second and third issues, I also work to intensify the exchange among the community of MA-level American studies students across Europe.

Selected Publications and Papers

• With Ines Krug, Andreas Mooser, Julia Neugebauer, Eleonora Ravizza, Stefan Schubert, Bailing Qin, Franziska Wenk, and Maria Zywietz, eds. aspeers: emerging voices in american studies  3 (2010).
• "“Ruled By Fiction?” ‘Real’ Deception and Narrative Truth in Frank Rich’s The Greatest Story Ever Sold." copas 10 (2009). <http://www-copas.uni-regensburg.de/articles/issue_10/10_09_text_herrmann.php>.
• With Tanja N. Aho, Ingrid Betz, Franziska Böhme, Susan Büttner, Benedikt M. Schäfer, Isabel M. J. Simão, eds. aspeers: emerging voices in american studies  2 (2009).
• "Narrating Deceit." Presentation at the DGfA Post-Graduierten Forum on 2. October 2008.
• With Heather Carmody, Alexandra Pitzing, Lisa Sylvia Schönmeier, Lars Weise, eds. aspeers: emerging voices in american studies  1 (2008).
• With Anne Koenen, Katja Kanzler, Zoe A. Kusmierz, Leonard Schmieding, eds. Ambivalent Americanizations: Popular and Consumer Culture in Central and Eastern Europe. Heidelberg: Winter, 2008.
• "A Plastic Modernity?" Ambivalent Americanizations: Popular and Consumer Culture in Central and Eastern Europe. (cf. above).
• With Leonard Schmieding. "Studierende lehren im Grundstudium." Studium ist Praxis: Argumente, Anstöße, Erfahrungen. Ed. Doris Flagmeyer. Leipzig: Leipziger Universitätsverlag, 2004. 95-115.

Honors, Awards, Distinctions

• Grantee of the Fulbright Summer Institute in San Francisco in the Summer of 2007
• Grantee of a scholarship by the Evangelisches Studienwerk Villigst