About

I am currently a Post-Habilitation Fellow of the Bavarian Program for Women Academics in Comparative Literature/World Literature and member of the Cluster of Excellence Africa Multiple in the Research Section Arts and Aesthetics at the University of Bayreuth.

I have degrees from the University of Hamburg (M.A. in Middle East Studies, German Studies & Film and Political Theory), a PhD in Middle East Studies/Postcolonial Feminist Theory with a comparative work on the meanings and the nexus of theory and praxis of ‘law’ as a cultural phenomenon – (summa cum laude) and a habilitation degree (second thesis) in General & Comparative Literature from the University of Bayreuth with a work on theories of touching and the work of humor as poetological instances of intervention in Anglophone and Francophone literatures. I have had Juniorprofessorships at the Albert Ludwigs University Freiburg (Critical approaches to Orientalism, Queer and Gender Studies, Law and Afghan & Iranian Literatures) and have furthermore taught and had research visits & projects among others at the University of Hamburg, the I.F.I.A.D and Goethe-Institute/Damascus, the McGill University, the Alberta University, the University of Toronto, the Schomberg Center for Research in Black Culture, as well as at the Center for Gender Studies University of Basel. I am also the initiator, and up until the end of July 2023 was the chair of the Association for antiracist, postcolonial, and decolonial thought and praxis – FG DeKolonial.

Currently, I am the initiator and chair of the forum Othernesses – Towards Humanisms beyond Border Thinking: A Workspace for Critical anti-violent, anti-racist, Postcolonial and Decolonial Thought as Praxis which is a cross-disciplinary platform for critical academic and non-academic interventions within and beyond (colonial) processes of domination and marginality.

Othernesses.com also hosts the AVL (Allgemeine und Vergleichende Literaturwissenschaft)/Comparative Literature related theory blog, THEORY.TEXT.

I am also a liaison lecturer (Vertrauensdozentin) of the Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung.

Research Interests

In my recent research I work on the connections and correlations of Critical Theory and Postcolonial/Decolonial Studies; indigeneity and orientalism(s); the meanings and theories of World Literature, on the contiguity of theory and practice, on (ongoing) questions of subjectivity, on studies in ‘humanism’ beyond the digital and on the politics of reading. My work includes:

• World Literature & new, critical directions in Literary Theory
• Critical Theory, Postcolonial and Decolonial Studies, Indigeneity and Decolonizing Readings & Methodologies
• Philosophy Literature and Psychoanalysis
• Queer & Gender Theory
• Anglophone & Francophone Literatures
• German & North American literatures and (Anti-)Orientalism

Recently Co-Organized Conferences and Symposia

Orte und Epistemologien des Wissens/Spaces and Epistemologies of Knowledge first symposium of the Association for Anti-Racist, Postcolonial and Decolonial Thought and Praxis, FG DeKolonial e.V.––Werkstatt 3 – Werkstatt für Internationale Kultur und Politik e.V. Hamburg, 8^th July 2022.

Why, how and what to decolonize? Critical Perspectives and Positionsof an Antiracist, Postcolonial and Decolonial Associationf ollowed by a WordCafé – Introduction of the Working Groups of FG DeKolonial e.V. - 24th November 2022, online- event.

Refuge/Displacement - Choreographies of ‘Dance’ Across Borders? SUCHBEWEGUNGEN. Lunch Workshop with dance performance and discussion– an Event of the Bayreuth Academy of Advanced African Studies (in Kooperation with choreographers and artists Elisa Marschall & Darwin José Díaz Carrero), February 8th 2018, University of Bayreuth.

International Workshop - Stuart Hall’s Legacy for Thinking Tomorrows Planetarily - Representation, Language and Postcoloniality in (‘Post’-) Humanism and Beyond - in Honor of Stuart Hall, 3th – 4th July 2015, Department of English & American Studies/Bayreuth Academy of Advanced African Studies, University of Bayreuth

In my recent work I attempt to address the relevance of theory, deconstruction and aesthetics for ‘decolonizing’ approaches in the framework of Othernesses in the following forms:

• theoryArt&artTheory
• mImOsA –‘touch me not – a Dossier
• UnDoing Structures in Theory & Praxis
• BLOG – THEORY.TEXT

Selected Publications

Touching Spaces in Text (-ures) – Affective Humor and Dialogism in White Teeth and Je suis un ècrivain japonais, (habilitation thesis - forthcoming).

Verblendungen von deKolonialen BeDeutungen – Double Consciousness – Marranität – Geheimnis in Die jüdische Mutter und Beloved, in: KomparatistikOnline, [accepted; autumn 2023].

Verblendung - Unverborgenheit, Geheimnis, Marranität - Verblendung als (intersektionaler) BeDeutungsprozess in Gertrud Kolmars Die jüdische Mutter und Toni Morrisons Beloved, in: Sebastian Donat, Beate Eder-Jordan, Alena Heinritz, Magdalena Leichter, Martin Sexl (Eds.), Alles Verblendung? Was wir (nicht )wahrnehmen können, sollen, wollen. (XVIII. Tagung der DGAVL), AISTHESIS VERLAG 2022, 461-471 pp.

Intermezzo I – Knowledge Orders, in: Daniel Bendix, Franziska Müller, Aram Ziai (Eds.), Beyond the Master’s Tools, Rowman and Littlefield 2020, pp. 63-67; (with Gurminder Bhambra, Julia Suárez Krabbe, Robbie Shilliam, Manuela Boatcă, Olivia Rutazibwa, Peo Hansen).

Intermezzo II – Methodology, in: Daniel Bendix, Franziska Müller, Aram Ziai (Eds.), Beyond the Master’s Tools, Rowman and Littlefield 2020, pp. 133-138; (with Gurminder Bhambra, Manuela Boatcă, Julia Suárez Krabbe, Olivia Rutazibwa,Robbie Shilliam and Maria Eriksson Baaz).

Intermezzo III – Academia, in: Daniel Bendix, Franziska Müller, Aram Ziai (Eds.), Beyond the Master’s Tools, Rowman and Littlefield 2020, pp. 255-260; (with Robbie Shilliam, Gurminder Bhambra, Peo Hansen, Julia Suárez Krabbe, Olivia Rutazibwa).

GeisterSpuren – Ein Dialog, in:  I. Attia/M. Popal (Hgs.), BeDeutungen dekolonisieren – Spuren von (antimuslimischem) Rassismus, Münster, Unrast, Oktober 2018, S. 11-47 (mit Iman Attia).

Das Argument - Zeitschrift für Philosophie und Sozialwissenschaften – 319 -Zur Kritik westlicher Islamdiskurse – Kehrt der Faschismus wieder? 58. Jahrgang - 2016, Heft 5., (Gasteditorship with Iman Attia).

Photo-graphs– Moving Mo(ve)ments of Things to Come, in: Katharina Fink, Susanne Gerhard, Nadine Siegert, (Eds.), Bayreuth Academy of Advanced African Studies - FAVT – Future Africa Visons in Time, 2017, pp. 175-180. 

Mattering Matters - (in) Photography, in: Katharina Fink, Susanne Gerhard, Nadine Siegert (Eds.), Bayreuth Academy of Advanced African Studies - FAVT – Future Africa Visons in Time, 2017, pp.183-189.

Postcolonial (Theory in/and) Europe? – Flows and Flinders, in: Susan Arndt/Nadja Ofutey-Alazard (Eds.), Afrofictional In[ter]ventions – Revisiting the BIGSAS Festival of African and African-Diasporic Literatures, Bayreuth 2011-13, Münster: edition assemblage 2014, pp. 67-74.

Panel Discussion – African Diasporas and/in Europe (Cristina Ali Farah, Biyi Bandele, Sabrina Brancato, Phillipa Ebéné, Jean-Luc Raharimanana and Rinaldo Walcott – Chair: Mariam Popal), in: Susan Arndt/Nadja Ofutey-Alazard (Eds.), Afrofictional In[ter]ventions – Revisiting the BIGSAS Festival of African and African-Diasporic Literatures, Bayreuth 2011-13, Münster: edition assemblage 2014, S. 105-118.

‚Gender‘. Mythen – Masken – Subjektpositionen – und beyond, in: Freiburger Geschlechterstudien, Ausgabe 25/2011, S. 47-64.

Zivilisiert/wild, in: Susan Arndt / Nadja Ofuatey-Alazard (Hgs.), Wie Rassismus aus Wörtern spricht (K)Erben des Kolonialismus im Wissensarchiv deutsche Sprache. Ein kritisches Nachschlagewerk, Unrast Verlag 2011, S. 278-78.

Objektivität – Desiring Subjects, in: Susan Arndt / Nadja Ofuatey-Alazard (Hgs.), Wie Rassismus aus Wörtern spricht (K)Erben des Kolonialismus im Wissensarchiv deutsche Sprache. Ein kritisches Nachschlagewerk, Unrast Verlag 2011, S.463-483.

Kopftuch, in: Susan Arndt / Nadja Ofuatey-Alazard (Hgs.), Wie Rassismus aus Wörtern spricht (K)Erben des Kolonialismus im Wissensarchiv deutsche Sprache. Ein kritisches Nachschlagewerk, Unrast Verlag 2011, S. 389-402.

Heine und der Orient? – Zwischen Subjektivität und Veranderung oder Wie das Andere nach Deutschland kam – sah – und?, in: Lawrence I. Conrad/Benjamin Jokisch/Ulrich Rebstock (Hgs.), Fremde, Feinde und Kurioses. Innen- und Außenansichten unseres muslimischen Nachbarn. Festschrift für Prof. Dr. Gernot Rotter, de Gruyter 2009, S. 67-114.

Gaze – Jenseits vom Orient und von Zivilisierungsmissionen, in: Abbas Poya/Maurus Reinkowski (Hgs.), Das Unbehagen in der Islamwissenschaft. Ein klassisches Fach im Scheinwerferlicht der Politik und der Medien, transcript 2008, S. 283-300.

Kopftücher HipHop - Körper sprechen schweigend (andere) Geschichten, in: Kien Nghi Ha, Nicola Lauré al-Samarai, Sheila Myrosekar (Hgs.), Re/visionen – Postkoloniale Perspektiven von People auf Color auf Rassismus, Kulturpolitik und auf Widerstand in Deutschland, Unrast Verlag 2007, S. 87-109.