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Regensburg European American Forum
Leibniz ScienceCampus: Annual Conference 2026
LSC Annual Conference 2026 | In/ter/dependence: Transitions of Power, Frictions of Freedom
Join REAF and partner organizations for the LSC Annual Conference 2026 | In/ter/dependence: Transitions of Power, Frictions of Freedom (external link, opens in a new window)! 17-19 June 2026
For more information and the full conference program, please visit Leibniz ScienceCampus (external link, opens in a new window)' website.
REAF Lights
Guest Scholars for the Summer Semester
Amrita Myers
REAF is excited to announce that Prof. Dr. Amrita Chakrabarti Myers (external link, opens in a new window) will be joining us for the whole summer semester of 2026!
She will provide one of the keynote lectures for the Leibniz ScienceCampus' Annual Conference (external link, opens in a new window): "'Dangerous Characters': Black Women, Constructions of Freedom, and White Violence in the Post-Civil War South" on June 18.
Amrita Chakrabarti Myers earned her doctorate in US History from Rutgers University, specializing in African American History and Women’s History. A historian of Black Women, her research interrogates power, privilege, citizenship, and freedom in the Old South.
Prof. Dr. Myers has been the recipient of several awards for her scholarship, including a fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies; the 2012 Julia Cherry Spruill Book Prize from the Southern Association of Women Historians; and the 2011 Anna Julia Cooper-C.L.R. James Book Prize from the National Council for Black Studies.
In addition to her scholarly work, Myers is regularly interviewed by the media about racial justice matters. She has appeared on outlets as varied as PBS NewsHour and Fox News’ “Fox and Friends.” For several years she helped to co-anchor Indiana’s award-winning African American radio show, “Bring It On!” and she’s written op-eds for and been interviewed by various publications including the Bloomington Herald-Times, the Indianapolis Star, the Los Angeles Times, the Louisville Courier-Journal, and the Washington Post.
Her first book, Forging Freedom: Black Women and the Pursuit of Liberty in Antebellum Charleston, was published by UNC Press in 2011 and was the recipient of four book prizes. Myers’ second monograph, The Vice President’s Black Wife: The Untold Life of Julia Chinn, was released by UNC/Ferris & Ferris Books in late 2023. It won the 2024 Publication Award from the Kentucky Historical Society, was shortlisted for the 2024 Stone Book Award by the National Museum of African American History, and received an honorable mention for the 2024 Letitia Woods Brown Book Prize from the Association of Black Women Historians.
For AY 2025-26, Myers is a visiting scholar in the History Department at Georgia State University and a fellow at the GSU Humanities Research Center. She is the Ruth N. Halls Professor of History at Indiana University, Bloomington (external link, opens in a new window).
During her stay in Regensburg, Amrita Myers' office will be in room PT3.2.87.
Marike Janzen
Prof. Dr. Marike Janzen (University of Kansas) will join us on campus from May to July as a Leibniz ScienceCampus Visiting Professor (external link, opens in a new window).
She will teach the seminar Citizens, Refugees, Humans. Find this seminar on SPUR (external link, opens in a new window) to register. Please note: there will be an introductory Zoom session on 05 May, 4p.m.
Prof. Dr. Marike Janzen (external link, opens in a new window) is an Associate Professor in the Department of Slavic, German, and Eurasian Studies at the University of Kansas. She also serves as the Director of the Max Kade Center for German-American Studies (external link, opens in a new window). Her research focuses on 20th and 21st-century German literature, literature of human rights, migration and refugee experience, literary publics, and the literature of the international left, as well as broader questions in comparative and world literature. She holds a Ph.D. and M.A. in Comparative Literature from the University of Texas at Austin.
During her time in Regensburg, she will be based at REAF, offering talks, discussions and contributions to teaching.
During Marike Janzen's stay in Regensburg, her office will be in room PT3.2.87
Ben Chappel
REAF has the honor of welcoming Prof. Dr. Ben Chappel back to Regensburg this summer semester.
Ben Chappell is Associate Professor of American Studies at the University of Kansas. He is the author of Lowrider Space: Aesthetics and Politics of Mexican American Custom Cars as well as numerous articles and essays on ethnography and cultural politics. His current research projects include Mexican American Fastpitch, a multi-sited ethnography of vernacular sport and The Cultural Lives of Neoliberalism, a critique of neoliberal epistemology embedded in discourse. In the ASA he has served on the Task Force for American Studies Departments (2012-15), as chair of the Graduate Education Committee, and currently, as founding convener of the Ethnography Caucus.
Ben Chappell will be chairing the LSC Annual Conference's Roundtable “The (In)Dependence of Knowledge? Academic Freedom Today” on 17 June.
Roundtable: The (In)Dependence of Knowledge? Academic Freedom Today
Claudia Sadowski-Smith
REAF is honored to announce Prof. Dr. Claudia Sadowski-Smith's (Arizona State University (external link, opens in a new window)) return to Regensburg this semester. She will stay here for June and July as a Leibniz ScienceCampus (external link, opens in a new window) Fellow.
Claudia Sadowski-Smith is Professor of English and American Studies at Arizona State University. She is the author of The New Immigrant Whiteness: Neoliberalism, Race, and Post-Soviet Migration to the United States (New York University Press, 2018) and Border Fictions: Globalization, Empire, and Writing at the Boundaries of the United States (University of Virginia Press, 2008). She is the editor of Globalization on the Line: Culture, Capital, and Citizenship at U.S. Borders (Palgrave, 2002) and of three special journal issues--on the cultures of global postsocialisms, comparative border studies, and postsocialist literatures in the United States. In addition, Sadowski-Smith has published on climate migration, comparative histories of US migration, transnational adoption, and transnational reality TV.
About REAF
Regensburg European American Forum
The Regensburg European American Forum (REAF) is dedicated to transnational American Studies in research and practice. It serves as the central international and interdisciplinary platform for collaborative research, academic exchange and cooperation, political intervention, and public outreach in the field of European American Studies at the University of Regensburg. REAF was founded in 2008 by the Chair of American Studies, Prof. Dr. Udo Hebel. It collaborates with on-site, national, and international partners in American Studies, Critical Area Studies, and related fields.
Drawing on its interest in transnational areas, trajectories, and entanglements, REAF fosters cutting-edge research in European-American relations, interactions, and crossroads and their multifarious historical, cultural, and political dimensions. REAF hosts visiting scholars from all interdisciplinary areas of American Studies and organizes special lectures and conferences with nationally and internationally acclaimed speakers. It supports innovative interdisciplinary BA-, MA-, and PhD-programs in American Studies and European-American Studies with international courses, graduate research roundtables, and an MA / PhD exchange program with the University of Kansas. A highly visible crossroads in transnational American Studies, REAF creates a network of scholarly cooperation for Regensburg faculty and graduate students as well as for its international guests.
We welcome you to REAF and its vibrant academic community.
People @ REAF
Chair of American Studies: N.N.
REAF Managing Director: Dr. Birgit Hebel-Bauridl (external link, opens in a new window)
REAF Founding Director (2008): Prof. Dr. Udo Hebel (external link, opens in a new window)
REAF Administrative Manager: Rye Bittl (opens your email program)
REAF Undergraduate Student Assistants: Wolfgang Henneberger (opens your email program), Katharina Nagel (opens your email program), Emily Van-Bergeyk (opens your email program)
REAF Office: Sabine Kirmayer (external link, opens in a new window)
Contact
Email: reaf(at)uni-regensburg.de (opens your email program)
Offices:
+ 49-(0)941-943 3477
+ 49-(0)941-943 3510
Mail:
Regensburg European American Forum
University of Regensburg
93040 Regensburg