Sladja Blažan

Sladja Blažan received her Ph.D. in North American Literature and Culture from Humboldt University Berlin and her Habilitation from University Würzburg. From 2012 to 2021 she was an assistant professor of literary and cultural studies in the English and American Studies department at the University of Würzburg and until 2024 she was an interim professor for literature and media studies at the University of Marburg. She has previously taught at New York University, Dutch Art Institute, Free University Berlin, Humboldt University Berlin, University College Dublin, and Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson. Her areas of research include speculative fiction, critical posthumanism, environmental humanities, critical refugee studies, and migration. In addition to her academic career, she has worked as a theater director, dramaturg, and translator.

Recent publications:
Ghosts and Their Hosts: The Colonization of the Invisible World. University of Virginia Press, 2024.

“Feminismus und Utopie." Geschlechterforschung: Handbuch für Wissenschaft und Studium, edited by Carmen Birkle, Christl M. Maier, Susanne Maurer, Bettina Wuttig. Nomos, 2025.

“A Murmur in the Trees”: Ethics Beyond the Human in Arboreal Sounds.” Resonance, Special Issue Too Great for Words: The Ineffable in Sound and Text, edited by Abby Fagan, Elena Furlaneto, Philip Grider, 2025.

“Citizenship.” The SAGE Encyclopedia of Refugee Studies, edited by Yến Lê Espiritu, SAGE Publications, 2025.

"Asylum, Migration, Border Crossings: In Their own Voices and Images." Bloomsbury Encyclopedia of Visual Culture, edited by Barry Sandywell and Martin Hand, Bloomsbury, 2025. 

"Haunting." INSERT: Artistic Practices as Cultural Inquiries. Special Issue: Troubled Matter – Fractured Temporalities, Sublime Radiations. Edited by Ulrike Gerhardt and Julia Wolf. Zürcher Hochschule der Künste, 2024. https://insert.art/ausgaben/troubled-matter/the-moment-you-lock-eyes/

“The Promise of the Nonhuman: An Existentialist Trope in the Anthropocene.” The White West: Fascism, Unreason, and the Paradox of Modernity, edited by Kader Attia, Anselm Franke and Ana Teixeira Pinto, Sternberg Press, 2023, pp. 161-180. 

“‘Something Beyond Pain’: Gender, Violence, and Hyperempathy in Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower.” Gender Forum, Special Issue, Gender, Violence, and the State in Contemporary Speculative Fiction, edited by Judith Rauscher and Marta Usieknewicz, volume 21, number 1, 2022. https://journals.ub.uni-koeln.de/index.php/genderforum/article/view/2573/2700. 

Image: Teresa Marenzi

Contact:
Dr. Sladja Blazan
North American Literature and Culture
[email protected]