Born a long time ago in Hamburg and raised in Lower Saxony and Hessia, Gesa Mackenthun received her academic education at Johannes Gutenberg Universität Mainz (1978-1981) and Johann Wolfgang Goethe Universität Frankfurt am Main (MA 1986). She completed her PhD in 1994. From 1995 to 2003 she was Assistant Professor at Greifswald University, and since 2003 she holds the professorship for American Literature and Culture Studies at Rostock University. She carried out part of her post-doctoral research at Mount Holyoke College, MA, and at the University of California at Berkeley. From October 2006 to March 2010, Gesa Mackenthun was the spokesperson of the Graduate School "Kulturkontakt und Wissenschaftsdiskurs / Cultural Encounters and the Discourses of Scholarship" at Rostock University (funded by Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft). For further information on the Graduiertenkolleg see http://www.gk-kulturkontakt.uni-rostock.de/.

Bewilligung eines DFG-Projekts für Rostocker Nordamerika-Professur:

WissenschaftlerInnen erforschen amerikanischen Urzeit-Diskurs

Die Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft hat der Professur für Nordamerikanische Literatur- und Kulturwissenschaft der Universität Rostock im Juli 2015 den Zuschlag für ein Forschungsprojekt erteilt, das der Frage nachgehen wird, wie sich Wissenschaftler und SchriftstellerInnen in den USA, aber auch diesseits des Atlantiks, seit Mitte des 19. Jahrhunderts die amerikanische Frühzeit vorstellten.   

Das Team um Frau Prof. Gesa Mackenthun wird dabei auch das Zustandekommen dieses Wissens untersuchen: die Methoden und mögliche Motivationen von ArchäologInnen, AnthropologInnen, FreizeitforscherInnen, Expeditionsreisenden und GeologInnen innerhalb ihrer jeweiligen diskursiven Kontexte sowie die verschiedenen Formen der Verschriftlichung ihrer Erkenntnisse.

Die in letzter Zeit wieder aufflammende Debatte um die ethnische Identität eines 9500 Jahre alten Skeletts im Nordwesten der USA (des sog. Kennewick Man) erinnert daran, dass die ‘Erfindung’ der amerikanischen Frühzeit anhand von archäologischen Funden und historischen Recherchen immer auch politische Signifikanz besitzt, was ihre große Dynamik und ihr Konfliktpotential erklärt. Denn das Wissen über die Besiedlungsgeschichte Amerikas hat direkte und indirekte Auswirkungen auf die Position indianischer Stämme in der juristischen Debatte über Landrechte und die Beteiligung der Ureinwohner an ökologischen Maßnahmen zum Schutz der Umwelt.

Constructions of North American Antiquity in Colonial and Postcolonial Contexts (Konstruktionen der nordamerikanischen Urzeit in kolonialen und postkolonialen Kontexten) lautet der offizielle Titel des Projekts. Das dreijährige Forschungsprojekt mit einer Bewilligungssumme von € 300.000 beinhaltet u.a. transregionale und transnationale Kooperationen sowie eine wissenschaftliche Webseite.

Rostock, 16.7.2015  

New Essay on Edward Snowden and Barack Obama

Editorial board member of the Journal of American Studies (1996-2000), Studies in Travel Writing, Comparative American Studies, and Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik (ZAA).

• Graduate School „Kulturkontakt und Wissenschaftsdiskurs“ (Rostock) (spokesperson 10/2006-03/2010; vice-speaker 04/2010-02/2012)
• Deutsche Gesellschaft für Amerikastudien (DGFA) (vice-president 2005-2008; board member since 2004)
• European Association of American Studies (EAAS)
• American Studies Association (ASA)
• Gesellschaft für Neuere Englischsprachige Literaturen (GNEL/ASNEL)
• Collegium for African American Research (CAAR)

• Scientific Discourses and Cultural Difference. Rostock, September 23-26, 2010 
• Embodiments of Cultural Contact. Rostock, September 24-26, 2009
• Bonded Labor in the Cultural Contact Zone. Slavery and Its Discourses from Antiquity to the Present. Rostock, September 18-20, 2008
• Cultural Encounters and the Discourses of Scholarship. Rostock, November 15-17, 2007
• Sea Changes: Historicizing the Ocean, c. 1500 to c. 1900. Greifswald, July 20-23, 2000. (Co-organized with Bernhard Klein, Dortmund)

• Critical Empire Studies, colonial discourse analysis
• American Travel Writing (up to c. 1860)
• Postcolonial Literatures in the New World
• American Archaeology and Anthroplogy
• 19th Century American Literature
• Black Atlantic Studies
• History of American Studies

The Conquest of Antiquity. American Expansion and Romantic Archaeology.

https://www.iaa.uni-rostock.de/forschung/laufende-forschungsprojekte/american-antiquities-prof-mackenthun/

"There is no document of civilization which is not at the same time a document of barbarism." (Walter Benjamin)

Books

Embattled Excavations. Colonial and Transcultural Constructions of the American Deep Past. Münster: Waxmann, 2021.

Fictions of the Black Atlantic in American Foundational Literature. London/New York: Routledge, 2004.

Metaphors of Dispossession. American Beginnings and the Translation of Empire, 1492-1637. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1997.

co-edited:

Decolonizing “Prehistory.” Deep Time and Indigenous Knowledges in North America. Ed. Gesa Mackenthun and Christen Mucher. Tucson: Arizona University Press, 2021.

DEcolonial Heritage: Natures, Cultures and the Asymmetries of Memory.

Ed. Aníbal Arregui, Gesa Mackenthun, and Stephanie Wodianka. Münster: Waxmann, 2018.

Travel, Agency, and the Circulation of Knowledge. Ed. Gesa Mackenthun, Andrea Nicolas, Stephanie Wodianka. Münster: Waxmann, 2017.

Fugitive Knowledge. The Preservation and Loss of Knowledge in Cultural Contact Zones. Ed. Andreas Beer and Gesa Mackenthun. Münster: Waxmann, 2015.

Agents of Transculturation. Border-Crossers, Mediators, Go Betweens. Ed. Sebastian Jobs and Gesa Mackenthun. Münster: Waxmann, 2014.

Entangled Knowledge. Scientific Discourse and Cultural Difference. Ed. Klaus Hock and Gesa Mackenthun. Münster: Waxman, 2012.

Embodiments of Cultural Encounter. Ed. Sebastian Jobs and Gesa Mackenthun. Münster: Waxmann, 2011. In print.

Human Bondage in the Cultural Contact Zone. Transdisciplinary Perspectives on Slavery and Its Discourses. Ed. Raphael Hörmann and Gesa Mackenthun. Münster: Waxmann, 2010.

The Fuzzy Logic of Encounter. New Perspectives on Cultural Contact. Ed. with Sünne Juterczenka. Münster: Waxmann, 2009.

'Between Worlds': The Legacy of Edward Said. Special Issue of Zeitschrift für Anglistik/Amerikanistik (ZAA). 54,4. Ed. with Günter Lenz and Holger Rossow. 2005.

Sea Changes. Historicizing the Ocean. Ed. Bernhard Klein and Gesa Mackenthun. London/New York: Routledge, 2004.

Articles (selection)

"By Right of Narrative: American Beginnings and the Discourse of Colonialism". Storia Nordamericana 7 (1990/91): 3-23.

"Adding Empire to the Study of American Culture". Journal of American Studies 30,2 (1996), 263-69.

"'Terrified by Novel Forms of Justice': Travelling Theories of Colonialism and the Burning of Qualpopoca". Studies in Travel Writing 1 (Papers from the Essex Symposium on "Writing Travels") (1997), 43-71.

"Haunted Real Estate: The Occlusion of Colonial Dispossession and Signatures of Cultural Survival in U.S. Horror Fiction." Paradoxa 3-4 (1997), 438-55; and Amerikastudien/American Studies 43,1 (1998), 93-108.

"Postcolonial Masquerade. Antebellum Sea Fiction and the Transatlantic Slave Trade." Anything But Well Explored. New Essays on Early American Culture. Ed. Fritz Fleischmann and Klaus Schmidt (New York/Frankfurt: Lang, 2000), 537-67.

"America's Troubled Postcoloniality: Some Reflections from Abroad." Discourse 22,3. Special edition on "Imperial Disclosures." Ed. Rolando Romero. 2001. 34-45.

"Chartless Voyages and Protean Geographies in Nineteenth-Century American Fictions of the Black Atlantic." Sea Changes. Historicizing the Ocean. Ed. Bernhard Klein and Gesa Mackenthun. New York/London: Routledge, 2004. 131-48.

"Hybrid Genres and Identities in Early American 'Postcolonial' Writing." A Companion to the Literatures of Colonial America. Ed. Susan Castillo and Ivy Schweitzer. Oxford: Blackwell, 2005. 336-350.

"The Literary Presence of Atlantic Colonialism as Notation and Counterpoint." 'Between Worlds': The Legacy of Edward Said. Special Issue of Zeitschrift für Anglistik/Amerikanistik (ZAA). 54,4. Ed. Günter Lenz, Gesa Mackenthun and Holger Rossow. 2005. 331-49.

“'Between Worlds': Edward Said and the Rediscovery of Empire in American Studies." America and the Orient. Ed. Heike Schäfer. Heidelberg: Winter, 2005. 1-20.

"Terror and Territoriality: Imperial Sovereignty and Jurisdictional Ambivalence in Early American Discourse." Terror and Its Representations: Studies in Social History and Cultural Expression in the United States and Beyond. Ed. Larry Portis und Joe Zitomersky. Montpellier: Presses Universitaires de la Méditerranée, 2008. 95-110.

"Expansionism." A Companion to American Cultural History. From the Colonial Period to the End of the 19th Century. Eds. Bernd Engler and Oliver Scheiding. Trier: WVT, 2009. 247-73.

"The Conquest of Antiquity: Territorial Expansion and Romantic Scientific Discourse in the US". American Travel Writing and Empire. Eds. Susan Castillo and David Seed. Liverpool University Press, 2009. 99-128.

 “Overlapping Territories –‘Exilic’ Readings. Edward Said and the Emergence of Critical Empire Analysis in American Literary Scholarship.” Edward Said's Translocations: Essays in Secular Criticism. Ed. Tobias Döring and Mark Stein. London: Routledge, 2012. 144-68.

"Imperial Archaeology: The American Isthmus as Contested Scientific Contact Zone." Surveying  the American Tropics. Literary Geographies from New York to Rio. Ed. Maria Cristina Fumagalli, Peter Hulme, Owen Robinson, Lesley Wylie. Liverpool University Press, 2013. 101-130.

“Fossils and Immortality. Geological Time and Spiritual Crisis in Nineteenth-Century America.” Deutungsmacht.Religion und Belief Systems in Deutungsmachtkonflikten. Ed. Philipp Stoellger. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2014. 259-83.

“Cannibal Conversions. The American Indian Boarding School Experience and Its Literary Response.” Jugend. Perspektiven eines sozialwissenschaftlichen Forschungsfeldes. Ed. Jens Brachmann, Claudia Lübcke et al. Klinkhardt, 2014. 219-32

“Night of First Ages: Deep Time and the Colonial Denial of Temporal Coevalness.” Frederike Offizier, Marc Priewe, Ariane Schröder, ed. Crossroads in American Studies: Transnational and Biocultural Encounters. Heidelberg: Winter, 2016. 177-213.

“Bisoncide and Neo-Savagism: The Myth of the Unecological Indian.” America After Nature. Ed. Catrin Gersdorf. Heidelberg: Winter, 2016. 163-98.

“‘Unhallowed Mysteries’ in the Colonial Archive. Competing Epistemologies in North America.” Concurrences in Colonial and Postcolonial Studies. Ed. Diana Bryden, Peter Forsgren, and Gunlög Fur. Amsterdam: Rodopi/Brill, 2015. 88-110.

“Pre-Columbian Transatlantic Voyages.” Oxford Bibliographies in Atlantic History. Ed. Trevor Burnard. New York: Oxford University Press. Online.

“Storied Landscapes: Colonial and Transcultural Inscriptions of the Land.” Processes of Spatialization in the Americas: Configurations and Narratives. Ed. Gabriele Pisarz-Ramirez and Hannes Wernecke-Berger. Frankfurt/M.: Lang, 2018. 53-74.

“Unsettling Colonial Temporalities. Indigenous Oral Traditions, Their Legacies and Challenges.” Cambridge History of Native American Literature. Ed. Melanie B. Taylor. Cambridge University Press, 2020. 33-50.
https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/cambridge-history-of-native-american-literature/unsettling-colonial-temporalities-oral-traditions-and-indigenous-literature/F339C4B03B58FACE8D78654F26ACBAB2/core-reader

https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/cambridge-history-of-native-american-literature/0EEBD43019175B314059CCF8C9F9B366

“‘A Fearful Hope.’ Extinction, Termination, Ruination, and the Colonial Politics of American Antiquity.” Decolonizing “Prehistory.” Deep Time and Indigenous Knowledges in North America. Ed. Gesa Mackenthun and Christen Mucher. Tucson: Arizona University Press, 2021. 112-30.

“Sustainable Stories. Managing Climate Change with Literature.” Sustainability 13,7 (2021). Open Access. https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/7/4049/htm

“Erloscher Mond, Dunkle Hoffnung. Das ‘Jahr ohne Sommer‘ als Warnung und Wegweiser." Mondnacht. Fünf vor Zwölf. Antworten auf die Klimakrise. Ed. Chris Verfuß and Felix Erdmann. Berlin: Trabantenverlag, 2021. 379-94.

In Print

“Protean Oceans. Racial Uncertainty in Arthur Gordon Pym and Emmanuel Appadocca.” Race in American Literature and Culture. Ed. John Ernest. Cambridge University Press. In print 2020.

“Storied Waves: Oceanic Contact Zones Viewed from the Maritime Humanities.” Maritime Mobilities: Literary and Cultural Perspectives from the Anglophone World. Ed. Alexandra Ganser, Charne Lavery, Meg Samuelson. Palgrave-Macmillan. In print 2020.

“In Search of Paradise: Providential Plots and Political Myth in Upton Sinclair’s Oil! and John Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath.” „Nun sag‘, wie hast du’s mit dem Politischen? Glaubensformen im Widerstreit spätmoderner Gesellschaften“. Ed. Dennis Bastian Rudolf und Ludmila Lutz-Auras. In print 2022.

“Precarious Planting, Insidious Intimacy. Affective Ecologies in Native American Novels.” The Affective Economies of Extraction and Sentimentality. Ed. Heike Paul et al. In print 2022. In print 2022.

“Imperial Time, Planting Time. Colonial and Indigenous Temporalities and Futurities in North America.” Designs of Tomorrow: Indigenous Futurities in Literature and Culture. Ed. Birgit Däwes et al. In print 2022.

Planters of Doom and Playful Gardeners. Determinist and Possibilist Narratives of Mankind.” Subversive Semantics in Poltical and Cultural Discourse. Ed. Jörn Dosch and Gesa Mackenthun.

May 2022