Dr. phil. Paula von Gleich (Lecturer)
North American Studies | Literary and Cultural Studies
Dr. phil. Paula von Gleich
Büro: GW 2, A 3.450
Telefon: +49 (0)421 218-68132
Sprechzeiten: n.V.
E-Mail: paulavgleichprotect me ?!uni-bremenprotect me ?!.de

Curriculum Vitae
researcher and lecturer at the Department of Linguistics and Literary Studies, University of Bremen
executive director of the Bremen Institute of Canada and Québec Studies (BICQS), University of Bremen
2021 doctorate in American Studies, Department of Linguistics and Literary Studies, University of Bremen (“The Black Border and Fugitive Narration in Black American Literature,” summa cum laude)
2017–2019 office manager, Association for Canadian Studies in German-Speaking Countries and the Bremen Institute for Canada and Québec Studies, University of Bremen
2010–2013 M.A. Transnationale Literaturwissenschaft, University of Bremen
2006–2009 B.A. English-Speaking Cultures and Kulturwissenschaften, University of Bremen
Teaching
B.A. English-Speaking Cultures, University of Bremen:
- “Introduction to English Literatures Part I” &“Introduction to English Literatures Part II”
- “Key Topics in Cultural History: North American Borderlands”
- “Key Topics in Literature: American Prison Narratives”
- “Key Topics in Literature: Narratives of New York City”
- “Key Topics in Literature: Narratives of Slavery”
- "Key Topics in Literature: US Latinx Writing"
- "Key Topics in Literature: The Roots and Routes of Irish America"
M.A. Transnational Literary Studies, University of Bremen:
- “Transnationale Literaturwissenschaft: Der Weg von theoretischen Fragestellungen zur konkreten methodischen Ausarbeitung” (mit Ina Schenker)
Research Areas
- African American and Black diasporic literature and theory
- critical race studies
- postcolonial and transnational literary studies
- Feminist literary theory and gender studies
Grants & Fellowships
- Conference travel grants by Evangelisches Studienwerk e.V. and the Central Research Development Fund, University of Bremen
- Travel grant by Evangelisches Studienwerk e.V. for a research stay at the Barnard Center for Research on Women and the Institute for Research on Women, Gender and Sexuality, Columbia University in the City of New York, USA (Oct-Dec 2016)
- PhD fellowship by Evangelisches Studienwerk e.V. (2015-2017)
- Bridge fellowship, University of Bremen (2014)
- Study semester funded by the European Erasmus Program at the National University of Ireland, Maynooth (2008)
Academic Service
- member of the decentralized women's representative collective, Department of Linguistics and Literary Studies, University of Bremen (since 2022)
- co-editor of Current Objectives in Postgraduate American Studies (since 2017)
- Spokesperson, doctoral network Perspectives in Cultural Analysis: Black Diaspora, Decoloniality, Transnationalism (2015-2016, 2019-2020)
Publications
Monographs
The Black Border and Fugitive Narration in Black American Literature. De Gruyter, 2022.
Edited Journal Issues
with Isabel Soto, editors. “Critical Perspectives on Teju Cole,” Atlantic Studies: Global Currents vol. 18, no. 3 (2021).
with Cedric Essi, Gesine Wegner, Stephen Koetzing, and Samira Spatzek, editors. “White Supremacy in the United States,” Current Objectives of Postgraduate American Studies (COPAS) vol. 20, no. 2 (2019). https://copas.uni-regensburg.de/issue/view/39
with Marius Henderson, Jasmin Humburg, Julia Lange, Mariya Nikolova, and Samira Spatzek. COPAS vol. 18, no. 1 (2017). https://copas.uni-regensburg.de/issue/view/34
Journal Articles
“The ‘Fugitive Notes’ of Teju Cole’s Open City,” Atlantic Studies, 2021. DOI: 10.1080/14788810.2020.1870399
with Isabel Soto. “Critical Perspectives on Teju Cole,” Atlantic Studies vol. 18, no. 3 (2021).
with Cedric Essi, Gesine Wegner, Stephen Koetzing, and Samira Spatzek. “COPAS at Twenty: Interrogating White Supremacy in the United States and Beyond,” COPAS vol. 20, no. 2 (2019): pp. 1-17. https://copas.uni-regensburg.de/article/view/336
with Marius Henderson, Jasmin Humburg, Julia Lange, Mariya Nikolova, and Samira Spatzek. “Editorial,” COPAS vol. 18, no. 1 (2017): n.pag. https://copas.uni-regensburg.de/article/view/285/366
with Samira Spatzek. “Meine Stadt und Versklavung? Spurensuche in Bremen” (My City and Enslavement? A Search for Traces in Bremen), Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte 50-51, 2015. https://www.bpb.de/apuz/216487/meine-stadt-und-versklavung-jugendliche-auf-spurensuche-in-bremen?p=all (edited version re-published in Hier und Jetzt! Kolonialismus und Kolonialrassismus im Unterricht, 2017, pp. 21-24.)
“African American Narratives of Captivity and Fugitivity: Developing Post-Slavery Questions for Angela Davis: An Autobiography,” COPAS vol. 16, no. 1 (2015): n.pag. https://copas.uni-regensburg.de/article/view/221
Book Chapters
“Fugitivity against the Border: Afro-pessimism, Fugitivity, and the Border to Social Death,” Borders, Borderthinking, Borderlands: Developing a Critical Epistemology of Global Politics edited by Marc Woons and Sebastian Weier. E-International Relations, 2017, pp. 203-215. https://www.e-ir.info/2017/06/27/afro-pessimism-fugitivity-and-the-border-to-social-death/
“Where Flesh Meets Flesh: Laurent Cantets Vers le Sud,” Mémoires transmédiales: Geschichte und Gedächtnis in der Karibik und ihrer Diaspora (Transmedial Memories: History and Remembrance in the Caribbean and its Diaspora) edited by Gisela Febel and Natascha Ueckmann. Franke und Timme, 2017, pp. 143-58.
“How Black is the Border? Border Concepts Traveling North American Knowledge Landscapes,” Knowledge Landscapes North America edited byChristian Klöckner, Simone Knewitz, and Sabine Sielke. Winter, 2016, pp. 191-210.
Interviews and Reviews
“Nele Sawallisch, Fugitive Borders: Black Canadian Cross-Border Literature at Mid-Nineteenth Century (Bielefeld: transcript, 2018), 218 pp.” Amerikastudien/American Studies
vol. 65, no. 1 (2020): pp. 103-106. DOI: https://doi.org/10.33675/AMST/2020/1/9“Markus Nehl, Transnational Black Dialogues: Re-Imagining Slavery in the Twenty-First Century (Bielefeld: transcript, 2016), 212 pp.” Amerikastudien/American Studies vol. 62, no. 4 (2018): npag. https://dgfa.de/markus-nehl-transnational-black-dialogues-re-imagining-slavery-in-the-twenty-first-century-bielefeld-transcript-2016-212-pp/#_ftnref8
with Frank B. Wilderson, III and Samira Spatzek. “‘The Inside-Outside of Civil Society’: An Interview with Frank B. Wilderson, III,” Black Studies Papers vol. 2, no. 1 (2016): pp. 4-22. https://media.suub.uni-bremen.de/bitstream/elib/3230/1/00105247-1.pdf
Presentations
“The Genealogy of Blackness in Yaa Gyasi’s Homegoing,” Annual Meeting of the American Studies Association, online, 13 October 2021.
“Yaa Gyasi’s Homegoing and the Genealogy of ‘black is black is black,’” Science, Culture, and Postcolonial Narrative, annual conference of the German Association for Postcolonial Studies (GAPS), University of Oldenburg/online, 13-15 May 2021.
“Black Genealogies in Yaa Gyasi’s Homegoing,” Fourth Biennial Women’s Network Symposium, European Association for American Studies (EAAS) in collaboration with the Polish Association for American Studies (PAAS), “Feminisms in American Studies in/and Crisis: Where Do We Go From Here?,” online, 29 Apr. 2021.
“‘A Slave in a Captive Society’: Captivity and Flight from Frederick Douglass’s Autobiographies to George Jackson’s Prison Letters,” BAAS digital conference #BAAS2021, British Association for American Studies, online, 5-11 Apr. 2021.
“‘Do you think it’ll be any different in Canada?’: Fugitive Narration from Josiah Henson’s Slave Narrative to Ishmael Reed’s Flight to Canada,” 41st annual GKS conference, Grainau, Germany, 14-16 Feb. 2020.
“Un/En/Gendering Black Power: Confinement and Flight in Life Writing of the Black Power Movement“, lecture series Gender – Culture – Feminism, University of Bremen, 8 Jan. 2020 (invited).
“Fugitive Narration Held Captive and the Genres of the (Non-)Human,” 66th annual conference of the German Association for American Studies (GAAS), University of Hamburg, Germany, 13-15 June 2019.
“‘You’ll be in jail wherever you go’: Imprisonment and Flight in Assata Shakur’s Autobiography,” 2nd international conference of the Black Americas Network, Center for InterAmerican Studies, University of Bielefeld, Germany, 18-19 Oct. 2018.
“‘Surely I would find a way to flee’: The (Im)Possibility of Flight in Lawrence Hill's Someone Knows My Name,” annual conference of the Emerging Scholars’ Forum of the Association for GKS, University of Bern, Switzerland, 29 June-1 July 2018.
“The Fugitive Notes of Open City,” international conference Die un-sichtbare Stadt Perspektiven – Räume – Randfiguren in Literatur und Film, University of Bremen, 7-9 Feb. 2018.
“No Home on the Run? Fugitivity in Black American Neo-Slave Narratives,” annual ASA meeting, Denver, Colorado, USA, 17-20 Nov. 2016.
“Memorizing Border Crossings: Teju Cole’s Open City and the Double Fugitive,” 11th biennial CAAR conference, Liverpool Hope University, UK, 24-28 June 2015.
“How Black is the Border? Border Concepts Traveling Inter-American Knowledge Landscapes,” 62nd annual GAAS conference, Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn, Germany, 28-31 May 2015.
“The Black Border: Border Concepts in African American Narratives of Captivity and Fugitivity,” Summer Institute ‘Borders, Borderthinking, Borderlands,’ University of Bremen, 15-25 May 2015.
“African American Narratives of Captivity and Fugitivity: Angela Davis: An Autobiography,” Forum INPUTS, Institute for Postcolonial and Transcultural Studies, University of Bremen, 15 Jan. 2015 (invited).
“Border Concepts in African American Narratives: Developing a Post-Slavery Perspective,” Postgraduate Forum (PGF) of the GAAS, Johannes Gutenberg Universität Mainz, Germany, 10-12 Oct. 2014.
“Afrikanische Literatur an der Grenze zu Europa” (African Literature at the Border to Europe), lecture series at the city library Bremen, 2014 (invited).
“Der Zaun und das Meer: Literarische Manifestationen der Grenze zwischen Afrika und Europa” (Literary Manifestations of the Border between Africa and Europe), 4th Young Scholars Workshop for Mediterranean Studies of the Centre for Mediterranean Studies, Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Germany, 15-16 Nov. 2013.
“Begegnungen im Dazwischen: Lauren Cantets In den Süden” (Encounters In-Between: Lauren Cantet’s Heading South), 8th Congress of the Association des francoromanistes allemands, Leipzig, Germany, 20-21 Sept. 2012 (invited).
Conference and Event Organization
with Maya Hislop. Panel “Modern Migrations, Black Interrogations: Revisioning Migrants and Mobilities through the Critique of Anti-blackness” at the Annual Meeting of the American Studies Association, online 13 October 2021.
with Samira Spatzek and Karin Esders. International symposium “Unthinking the HUMANITIES,” University of Bremen, planned for 12-13 June 2020 (funded by the International Office and BYRD i.a.), cancelled due to the Corona pandemic.
with Jutta Ernst and Kerstin Knopf. “Intersectionality: Theories, Policies, Practices,” 40th annual GKS conference, Grainau, Germany, 14-17 Feb. 2019 (funded by the DFG).
with Samira Spatzek,Sabine Broeck, and Karin Esders. “Commemorating Toni Morrison (1931–2019),” reading, University of Bremen, Dec. 2019.
with globale e.V. and Kerstin Knopf. Guest lecture “Indigenous Theatre – The Changing Face of Storytelling” by Drew Hayden Taylor, University of Bremen, Oct. 2018.
with Andrea Strutz and Kerstin Knopf. “GeschichteN – HiStories – HistoireS,” 39th annual GKS conference, Grainau, 16-18 Feb. 2018.
with Kerstin Knopf, Jana Nittel, and Katrin Mutz. 2nd Canada and Québec Study Day, BICQS, University of Bremen 16 May 2018 (funded by the Canadian Embassy in Berlin, Délégation générale du Québec à Munich i.a.)
with Marius Henderson, Jasmin Humburg, Julia Lange, Mariya Nikolova, and Samira Spatzek. PGF program at the annual GAAS conference (PGF meeting and panel discussion), Leibniz Universität, Hanover, Germany, 8-11 June 2017; annual PGF conference of GAAS, University of Hamburg, Germany, 6-8 Oct. 2016.
with Doc-Network, University of Bremen. „Performative Dimensionen von Rassismus und seiner Kritik sowie performative Gegenentwürfe: Ein theatraler Workshop für Nicht-Schauspieler*innen“ with Lara-Sophie Milagro (Label Noir), University of Bremen, 20-22 Jan. 2018; Doctoral Workshop on Afro-Pessimism with Prof. Dr. Jaye Austin Williams, Aug. 2016; Critical Whiteness and Empowerment workshop with Kim Annakathrin Ronacher and Pasquale Virginie Rotter, 2015; Writing workshop for doctoral students with Isabell May, 2014.