Dr. Eleonora Ravizza

Dr. Eleonora Ravizza

Lehrkraft für besondere Aufgaben (Lecturer for American Studies)

GWZ
Beethovenstraße 15, Room 3.5.04
04107 Leipzig

Telephone: +49 341 973 7332

After completing my MA at American Studies Leipzig, I defended my dissertation on the representations of the fifties in contemporary popular culture, investigating how self-reflexivity, genre, and nostalgia affected these portrayals.

I have been teaching at ASL since 2011 and working as a Lehrkraft für besondere Aufgaben (LfbA) since 2016.

Since 2016 I have been primarily teaching students of the English Teaching Program. In my teaching, I am particularly interested in helping students to first develop a curiosity and fascination with American cultural history and popular culture.

I have been teaching various literary and cultural studies courses that aim at pushing students to develop their analytical and critical skills, through the practice of close reading, argument development, and theoretical readings.

Through the choice of a variety of texts and theoretical approaches, I want to encourage students to explore older film and TV series in particular and to think critically about popular culture in general. In my teaching, I like to include some of my research interests, such as gender and queer theory, body theory, genre theory (in particular horror and science fiction), as well as conceptualizations of monstrosity.

  • Aliens, Androids, and Others: Cultural Anxieties in Science Fiction Film & TV
  • American Monsters: Constructions of the Other
  • American Progress? Negotiating Myths of Identity and Democracy in US History
  • US Cultural History and Politics: Values and Institutions
  • The (Death of the) American Dream: Questioning Narratives of Power, Wealth, and Individualism
  • Bodies in American Culture
  • Space and Place in America

My overall research interests mainly lie in popular culture, particularly in questions of gender, queerness, and genre. I am particularly interested in the cultural work of film and television, specifically in regard to their gender politics.

  • With Stefan Schubert: “‘They Don’t Make Anything Like They Used To’: Visual, Narrative, and Ideological Nostalgia for the West(ern) in Westworld (2016).” Comparative American Studies: An International Journal, vol. 19, no. 4, 2022, pp. 419-37.
  • “‘Look, It’s Superman!’: Melodrama and Masculinity in Mad Men.” Contemporary Quality TV: The Auteur, the Fans, and Constructions of Gender, edited by Saskia M. Fürst and Ralph J. Poole, LIT, 2021, pp. 109–30.
  • Revisiting and Revising the Fifties in Contemporary US Popular Culture Self-Reflexivity, Melodrama, and Nostalgia in Film and Television. J.B. Metzler, 2020.
  • Masters of Sex.” Erfolg in Serie - Staffel III. Saarbrücken. 1 Dec. 2015. Presentation.
  • “The Politics of Melodrama: Nostalgia, Performance, and Gender Roles in Revolutionary Road“ Poetics of Politics: Textuality and Social Relevance in Contemporary American Literature and Culture. Ed. Sebastian M. Herrmann et al. Heidelberg: Winter, 2015. 63-80. Print.
  • “The Fifties, Intertextuality, and Self-Reflexive Nostalgia in Mad Men.” Guest Lecture in the Seminar “Ways of Seeing — Visual Cultures” by Prof. Anne Koenen. Leipzig. 6 June 2014. Presentation.
  • “ ‘The Pain from an Old Wound’: Reconsidering Nostalgia and Melodrama in Mad Men.” Auteur TV. Salzburg. 13 Dec. 2013. Presentation.
  • “The Politics of Nostalgia: Gender Representation in Mad Men.” Poetics of Politics: Textuality and Social Relevance in Contemporary American Literature and Culture. Leipzig. 21 June 2013. Presentation.
  • “ ‘We Don’t Want Life to Look Difficult, Do We?’: Representations of the Fifties and Self-Reflexive Nostalgia in Mad Men.” COPAS 14.1 (2013): 1-14. Web.
  • “ ‘Who Could Not Be Happy With All This?’: The Fifties, Nostalgia, and Artificiality in Mad Men.” PostGraduate Forum of the DGfA/GAAS 2012. Philipps U, Marburg. 3 Nov. 2012. Presentation.
  • With Herrmann, Sebastian M., Ines Krug, Andreas Mooser, Julia Neugebauer, Bailing Qin, Stefan Schubert, Franziska Wenk, and Maria Zywietz, eds. aspeers: emerging voices in american studies 3 (2010). Print.
  • With Herrmann, Sebastian M., Ines Krug, Andreas Mooser, Julia Neugebauer, Bailing Qin, Stefan Schubert, Franziska Wenk, and Maria Zywietz. “Crime and America.” Introduction. aspeers: emerging voices in american studies 3 (2010): vii-xxviii. Print.