About

Rüdiger Kunow is Professor Emeritus at the American Studies program at Potsdam University. He has taught at the Universities of Wuerzburg, Nuremberg, Freiburg, Hanover, and Magdeburg and worked as a Research Fellow at the University of California, Santa Cruz. For various periods of time he was a Visiting Professor at the University of Texas at Austin, the State University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, and the State University of New York at Albany.

He is a founding member of ENAS, the European Network in Aging Studies and also served as speaker of the a number of international research projects such as “Transnational American Studies” (a co-operation of the University of Southern California, Dartmouth College, the Free University and Humboldt University in Berlin, and Potsdam University) as well as the European Union research and teaching project "Putting a Human Face on Diversity: The U.S. In/Of Europe" or the interdisciplinary research and graduate teaching program “Cultures in/of Mobility” at the School of Humanities Potsdam University. Until 2008 he held the position of the President of the German Association for American Studies.

He is the author of Material Bodies: Biology and Culture in the United States (2018).

His major research interests and publications focus on cultural constructions of illness and aging, Cultural critique, Transnational American Studies and the South Asian diaspora in the U.S.  

Research Interests

• Transnationalisms (Diaspora, Migration, Identity Politics)
• The Cultural Imagination of Aging and Illness
• Transformations of Literary Representation
• Biocultures
• The Indian Diaspora in the U.S. and Canada

Most Recent Publications/ Selected Publications

"Intimacy and Distance: Reflections on Eldercare in the United States." Critical Humanities and Aging: Forging Interdisciplinary Dialogues. Ed. Marlene Goldman, Kate de Medeiros, and Thomas Cole. London and New York: Routledge, 2022. 241-255. DOI:10.4324/9781003112112-17

"In the Shadow of Tomorrow: Biological Entanglements, Genetic Editing, and a New Techno-Utopia in the Americas." Cherishing the Past, Envisioning the Future: Entangled Practices of Heritage and Utopia in the Americas. Ed. Olaf Kaltmeier, Mirko Petersen, Wilfried Raussert, Claudia Roth. Inter-American Studies/Estudios Interamerikanos. Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag, 2021. 141-158.

"Grauzonen: Alter/n als Form kulturellen Unbehagens." Körperkreativitäten: Gesellschaftliche Aushandlungen mit dem menschlichen Körper. Ed. Angela Treiber und Rainer Wenrich. Bielefeld: Transcript, 2021. 123-141.

"The White Man's Medical Burden: U.S. Colonialism and Disease Ecologies in Jack London's Hawai'ian Stories." Journal of the Short Story in English/Les cahiers de la nouvelle 73 (Autumn 2019): 83-96.

"Lives without Memory: Alzheimer's Narratives." Developing Transnational American Studies. Ed. Nadja Gernalzick and Heike C. Spickermann. Intercultural Studies, 8. Heidelberg: Winter, 2019. 103-112.

"'Blame it on the Russians' – Zur Imagination Russlands in der US-amerikanischen Populärkultur." Investigation – Rekonstruktion – Narration: Geschichte und Geschichten im Krimi der Slavia. Ed. Nina Frieß und Angela Huber. Potsdam: Universitätsverlag Potsdam, 2019. 115-124.

"From Womb to Tomb: The Journey of Life in the Age of Biotechnology." The Journey of Life in American Life and Literature. Ed. Peter Freese. Heidelberg: Winter, 2015. 81-90.

"Wertkörper. Zur Ökonomisierung des menschlichen Körpers im Zeichen von Globalisierung und Neoliberalismus." PROKLA 45,1 (2015). 51-66.

"Literary Criticism." Historisch-Kritisches Wörterbuch des Marxismus. Bd. 8/II. Hamburg: Argument Verlag, 2015. Sp. 1219-1228.

"Amerika feiert sich selbst: Die Rhetorik des 4. Juli." Das literarische Lob: Formen und Funktionen, Typen und Traditionen panegyrischer Texte. Ed. Norbert P. Franz. Schriften zur Literaturwissenschaft, 36. Berlin: Duncker und Humblot, 2014. 303-318.

"Preemptive Biographies: Life and the Life Course in the Age of Security Administration." Alive and Kicking at All Ages. Ed. Ulla Kriebernegg, Roberta Maierhofer, and Barbara Ratzenböck. Aging Studies, 5. Bielefeld: Transcript, 2014. 101-116.

"Going Native with God on the Side: Mission as Travelling Culture." fiar - forum for interamerican research. 6, 1 (2013). http://www.interamerica.de/category/volume-6-1/; net publication.