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 American Studies department at the University of Würzburg. She has previously taught at New York University, 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.

Books:

• Ghosts and Their Hosts: Race and Nature in Early U.S. American Literature and Culture (in progress)
• American Fictionary: Postsozialistische Migration in der U.S. amerikanischen Literatur. Heidelberg: Winter, 2006.

Edited Volumes:

• Haunted Nature: Entanglements of the Human and the Nonhuman. Palgrave Macmillan, 2021. 
• with Nigel Hatton. Refugees and / in Literature. Special Issue Literatur in Wissenschaft und Unterricht. 2/3, Königshausen & Neumann, 2018. 
• with Avital Ronell. What Was I Thinking: A Critical Autobiography and Spectral Colloquy. Hauptstadtkulturfonds, 2011.
• Ghost Stories and Alternative Histories. Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2007.

Articles / Book Chapters (selection):

• “‘Something Beyond Pain’: Gender, Violence, and Hyperempathy in Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower.” Gender Forum. Special Issue on Gender, Violence, and the State in Contemporary Speculative Fiction. Fall 2021 (in print)
• “Haunting and Nature: An Introduction” Haunted Nature: Entanglements of the Human and the Nonhuman, edited by Sladja Blazan, Palgrave Macmillan, 2021. (in print)
• “Vegetomorphism: Exploring the Material within the Aesthetics of the Ecogothic in Stranger Things and Annihilation.” Haunted Nature: Entanglements of the Human and the Nonhuman, edited by Sladja Blazan, Palgrave Macmillan, 2021. (in print)
• “Lithic Corporeality: Elemental Philosophy in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Short Stories.” Revisiting Hawthorne’s Short Stories. Special Issue Nathaniel Hawhtorne Review, edited by Monika Elbert and Laura Laffrado, Penn State University Press, 2021. (in print)
• “Von Hannah Arendts 'We Refugees' to Viet Thanh Nguyens The Refugees: Re-Evaluierung der Flüchtlingsdesignation im gegenwärtigen nordamerikanischen Roman.” Non-Persons: Grenzen des Humanen und des Humanitären in Literatur, Kultur und Medien, edited by Stephanie Catani and Stephanie Waldow, Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 2020, pp. 131-145.
• “Literature and the Agency of the Refugee: An Analysis of Narrative Structures Employed in Elfriede Jelinek’s Die Schutzbefohlenen and Viet Thanh Nguyen’s The Refugees.” Special Issue Literatur in Wissenschaft und Unterricht, edited by Sladja Blazan and Nigel Hatton, vol. 2, nb. 3, Königshausen & Neumann, 2018. 

Image: Teresa Marenzi


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