Publications

Univ.-Prof. Dr. Catrin Gersdorf

Monographs

The Poetics and Politics of the Desert: Landscape and the Construction of America. New York and Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2009.

reviewed in:

• The Goose: A Journal of Literature, Environment and Culture in Canada 6 (Fall 2009).
• ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment 17.2 (Spring 2010).
• Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik (ZAA) 2/2010.
• Journal of American Studies 44 (2010).
• Ecozon@: European Journal of Literature, Culture and Environment 1.2 (2010).
• PAN: Philosophy, Activism, Nature 7 (2010).
• American Literary History 24.1 (Spring 2012).

Edited Volumes

Gardening (against) the Anthropocene. Ecozon@: European Journal of Literature, Culture and Environment 14.1 (2023). (with Catriona Sandilands).

Texts, Animals, Environments: Zoopoetics and Ecopoetics. Freiburg i. Br.: Rombach Verlag, 2019. (with Frederike Middelhoff, Sebastian Schönbeck, Roland Borgards)

America After Nature: Democracy, Culture, Environment. Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter, 2016. (with Juliane Braun)

Urban Ecologies. Thematic section. Ecozon@: European Journal of Literature, Culture and Environment 7.2 (2016).

The Cultural Career of Coolness: Discourses and Practices of Affect Contol in European Antiquity, the United States, and Japan. New York: Lexington Books, 2013. (with Ulla Haselstein, Irmela Hijiya-Kirschnereit, Elena Giannoulis)

Nature in Literary and Cultural Studies: Transatlantic Conversations on Ecocriticism. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2006. (with Sylvia Mayer)

Natur, Kultur, Text: Beiträge zu Ökologie und Literaturwissenschaft. Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter, 2005. (with Sylvia Mayer)

Queering America/Queering American Studies. Special Issue. Amerikastudien/American Studies 46.1 (2001). (with Ralph Poole).

Geschlechterdifferenz und Amerikastudien in Deutschland. Leipzig: Leipziger Universitätsverlag, 1999. (with Anne Koenen)

Articles

“Forests, Sustainability, and the Ecological Cynicism of the Anthropocene: Reading Annie Proulx’ Barkskins.” Eds. Jolene Mathieson, Marius Henderson, Julia Lange. The Public Mind and the Politics of Postmillenial U.S.-American Writing. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2022: 179-198.

“Kritik der Einsamkeit: Gedanken zu Henry David Thoreaus ‘Walden’.“ Kulturen der Einsamkeit. Ed. Ina Bergmann and Dorothea Klein. Würzburg: Verlag Könighausen & Neumann, 2020: 301-317.

"Climate, the Anthropocene, and the Early American Republic." Anglophone Literature and Culture in the Anthropocene. Ed. Gina Comos and Caroline Rosenthal. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publ., 2019: 66-82.

“Nature and Environment.” Handbook of the American Novel of the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries. Ed. Christine Gerhardt. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2018. 130-153.

“Willa Cather, My Ántonia (1918).” Handbook of the American Novel of the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries. Ed. Timo Müller. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2017. 148-61.

“Urban Ecologies: An Introduction.” Ecozon@: European Journal of Literature, Culture and Environment 7.2 (2016): 1-9. ecozona.eu/article/view/1151/1224

“Political Ecology: Nature, Democracy, and American Literary Culture.” Handbook of Ecocriticism and Cultural Ecology. Ed. Hubert Zapf. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2016: 174-93.

“Democracy after Nature: National Legacies, Global Futures.” America After Nature: Democracy, Culture, Environment. Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter, 2016: 13-26. (with Juliane Braun)

“Early American Cool: Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and the Affective Foundation of Republican Government.” Cosmopolitanism in the Age of Thomas Jefferson. Ed. Hannah Spahn et al. Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter, 2013: 195-224.

“Kinds of Cool: Emotions and the Rhetoric of Nineteenth-Century American Abolitionism.” The Cultural Career of Coolness: Discourses and Practices of Affect Control in European Antiquity, the United States, and Japan. Ed. Ulla Haselstein et al. New York: Lexington Books, 2013: 81-108.

“Flânerie as Ecocritical Practice: Thoreau, Benjamin, Sandilands.” Ecology and Life Writing. Ed. Alfred Hornung and Zhao Baisheng. Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter, 2013: 27-53.

“Paper Pleasure: The Book as Medium, Metaphor, and Artifact in Fahrenheit 451.” PhiN. Supplement 5/2012. Audiences, Networks, Performances: Studies in U.S. American Media History. Ed. Antje Kley and Peter Schneck. web.fu-berlin.de/phin/beiheft5/b5i.htm

“Nature in the Grid: American Literature, Urbanism, and Ecocriticism.” Transcultural Spaces: Challenges of Urbanity, Ecology, and the Environment. Ed. Stefan L. Brandt et al. Tübingen: Narr Verlag, 2010: 21-40.

“Authenticity Redux: Ecology and the ‘Ethics of Representing’ in Ruth Ozeki’s My Year of Meat.” The Pathos of the Authenticity: American Passions of the Real. Ed. Ulla Haselstein et al. Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter, 2010: 59-73.

“America/Deserta: Postmodernism and the Poetics of Space.” Anglia 126.2 (2008): 25-41; Themenheft “New Cultural Geography and Literature.” Ed. Stephan Kohl.

“Imaginary Ecologies: Landscape, American Literature, and the Reconstruction of Space in the 21^st Century.” Anglia 124.1 (2006): 45-69. Themenheft: Literatur und Ökologie / Literature and Ecology. Ed. Hubert Zapf.

“‘A Sort of America’: History and Ecology in Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars Trilogy.” Tamkang Review 37.1 (Autumn 2006): 29-42.

“Nature and Body: Ecofeminism, Land Art, and the Work of Ana Mendieta.” Geschlechterdiskurse zwischen Fiktion und Faktizität. Internationale Frauen- und Genderforschung in Niedersachsen. Ed. Waltraud Ernst and Ulrike Bohle. Reihe Focus Gender Band 6. Münster: Lit, 2006: 212-230.

“Nature in Literary and Cultural Studies: Defining the Subject of Ecocriticism — An Introduction.” Nature in Literary and Cultural Studies: Transatlantic Conversations on Ecocriticism. Ed. Catrin Gersdorf and Sylvia Mayer. Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, 2006: 9-21.

“Ökologie und Literaturwissenschaft: Eine Einleitung.” Natur, Kultur, Text: Beiträge zu Ökologie und Literaturwissenschaft. Ed. Catrin Gersdorf and Sylvia Mayer. Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter, 2005: 7-28.

“Nathanael West, the American Renaissance, and Literary History as Cultural Ecology.” Transatlantic Cultural Contexts: Essays in Honor of Eberhard Brüning. Ed. Hartmut Keil. Tübingen: Stauffenberg-Verlag Brigitte Narr, 2005: 49-64.

“History, Technology, Ecology: Conceptualizing the Cultural Function of Landscape.” ICON: The Journal of the International Committee for the History of Technology 10 (2004): 34-52.

“Sexing the Visible, or What We Talk About When We Talk About Gender.” Wie natürlich ist Geschlecht? Gender und die Konstruktion von Natur und Technik. Ed. Ursula Pasero and Anja Gottburgsen. Opladen/Wiesbaden: Westdeutscher Verlag, 2002: 293-305.

“The Gender of Nature's Nation: A Queer Perspective.” Amerikastudien/American Studies 46.1 (2001): 41-54.

“Queering America: Introduction.” Amerikastudien/American Studies 46:1 (2001): 5-9. (with Ralph Poole)

“Ecocritical Uses of the Erotic.” Bucknell Review 44.1 (March 2000): 175-191.

“The American Desert as a Space of Contested Identity.” Ceremonies and Spectacles: Performing American Culture. Ed. Teresa Alves et al. VU University Press: Amsterdam, 2000: 408-421.

“Sehen in Literatur und Geschichte: Paul Austers Roman Moon Palace (1989).” Rhetorische Seh-Reisen: Fallstudien zu Wahrnehmungsformen in Literatur, Kunst und Kultur. Ed. Alfonso de Toro and Stefan Welz. Vervuert Verlag: Frankfurt am Main, 1999: 101-117.

“Das irritierende Geschlecht: Liebe und Sexualität in Djuna Barnes’ Roman Nightwood (1936).” Geschlechterdifferenz und Amerikastudien in Deutschland. Ed. Anne Konen and Catrin Gersdorf. Leipzig: Universitätsverlag, 1999: 113-125.

“German American Studies East and West – A Multicultural Project?” Multiculturalism In Transit: A German-American Exchange. Ed. Klaus J. Milich and Jeffrey M. Peck. New York, Oxford: Berghahn Books, 1999: 119-128.

“Postmoderne Aventiure: Don Quijote in Amerika.” Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik 2.46 (1998): 142-156.

“The Digedags Go West: Images of America in an East German Comic Strip.” Journal of American Culture 2.19 (Summer 1996): 35-45.

“Reading American Literature in the G.D.R.” Democracy and the Arts in the United States. Ed. Alfred Hornung et al. München: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 1996: 311-317.

“Groteske Realitäten: Die Romane Nathanael Wests.” Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik 4.37 (1989): 333-338.

“Nathanael West und Hollywood: Zwischen Traum und Apokalypse.” Potsdamer Forschungen. Gesellschaftwissenschaftliche Reihe 92 (1988): 101-111.

Shorter Contributions, Interviews, Literary Editions, etc.

“Tiere und Umwelt.” Tiere: Kulturwissenschaftliches Handbuch. Ed. Roland Borgards. Stuttgart: Metzler, 2016: 24-29.

Vogler, Jesse. “Pan American Trust: On Property, Speculation, and Boundary Maintenance at Tres Peidras Estates.” Response. Forty-Five: A Journal of Outside Research. Dec 30, 2016. forty-five.com/papers/164.

“Francis Parkman, The Oregon Trail” (Überarbeitung), “Bobbie Ann Mason, In Country” (Überarbeitung), “Willa Cather, O Pioneers!, My Ántonia und Death Comes for the Archbishop”, “Bobbie Ann Mason (Bio)”, “Francis Parkman (Bio)”. Kindlers Literatur Lexikon. 3., völlig neu bearbeitete Auflage, Ed. Heinz Ludwig Arnold. Stuttgart: Verlag J. B. Metzler, 2009.

“Ecofeminism”, “Sisterhood”, “Susan Griffin”. Metzler Lexikon Gender Studies: Geschlechterforschung. Ed. Renate Kroll. Stuttgart: Verlag J. B. Metzler, 2002.

“The Language of Poetic Justice: Interview with Joy Harjo.” American Studies Journal 46 (Winter 2000): 33-37.

“Djuna Barnes”, “Audre Lorde”, “Leslie Marmon Silko”. Metzler Autorinnen Lexikon. Ed. Ute Hechtfischer et al. Stuttgart: Verlag J. B. Metzler, 1998.

Barnes, Djuna. Was Sehen Sie, Madame? Geschichten, Reportagen, Porträts. Leip­zig: Verlag Philipp Reclam Jr., 1990. (Hrsg. und Nachwort)

Translations

Cultural Landscape Studies: Texte zur Landschaftstheorie. Ed. Brigitte Franzen and Stefanie Krebs. (Köln: Verlag der Buchhandlung Walter König, 2005). Includes essays by Carl Sauer, J.B. Jackson, Peirce Lewis, Dolores Hayden, Anthony B. King, Lucy Lippard, Linda McDowell, Paul Groth & Chris Wilson, Grady Clay, Denise Scott Brown.

Androutsopoulos, Jannis. “Hip-Hop and Language: Vertical Intertextuality and the Three Spheres of Pop Culture.” High fidelity eller rein jalla? Problems of Purism in Culture, Language and Aesthetics. Ed. Petter Dyndahl and Lars Anders Kulbrandstad. Vallset: Oplandske Bokforlag, 2005: 161-188.

Dufallo, Richard. “Interview with Earle Brown.” formlos!(?). Ed. Musica Nova e.V. 12.-15. January 1995.

Robert Fitterman. “The Ear Inn: L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E Lyrik in New York.” Chelsea Hotel 6.2 (1994): 110-113.

“Brief von John Cage an Pierre Boulez vom 22. Mai 1951” and John Cage, “Sona­tas and In­terludes.” Zu­fall. Konzerte mit Neuer Musik. Ed. Forum Zeitge­nössi­scher Musik Leipzig e.V., 14.-17. January 1992.

Essays by Mildred Harnack-Fish. V­a­ria­t­i­o­nen über das Thema A­m­eri­ka: S­tu­dien zur Lite­ra­tur der USA. Ed. Eber­hard Brü­ning. Berlin: Auf­bau Ver­lag, 1988.

Miscellaneous other translations for Topos: The European Landscape Magazine, Foundation Landscape Architecture Europe, Land Niedersachsen, Deutsches Institut für Internationale Pädagogische Forschung, Bach-Museum Leipzig, Westfälisches Landesmuseum für Kunst und Kulturgeschichte, Max-Planck-Institut für Evolutionäre Anthropologie, Leipziger Volkszeitung.

Book Reviews

LeMenager, Stephanie. Living Oil (EH Book Chat on August 1st, 2015). ESEH European Society for Environmental History. Moderation Hannes Bergthaller and Sarah Elkind. eseh.org/eh-book-chat-on-stephanie-lemenagers-living-oil/

Environmental Criticism for the Twenty-First Century. Ed. Stephanie LeMenager et al. New York: Routledge, 2011. Anglia: Zeitschrift für Englische Philologie 131.2-3 (2013): 454-457.

Recker, Astrid. “But truth is ever incoherent…”: Dis/Continuity in Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick. Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter, 2008. 292pp. Amerikastudien/American Studies 55.1 (2010): 177-179.

“Ökologie als Paradigma der Literatur- und Kulturwissenschaft.” Zu Michael P. Branch and Scott Slovic. The ISLE Reader: Ecocriticism 1993-2003. Athens and London: The U of Georgia P, 2003; Giesecke, Michael. Von den Mythen der Buchkultur zu den Visionen der Informationsgesellschaft: Trendforschungen zur kulturellen Medienökologie. Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp, 2002; Zapf, Hubert. Literatur als kulturelle Ökologie: Zur kulturellen Funktion imaginativer texte an Beispielen des amerikanischen Roman. Tübingen: Niemeyer, 2002. KulturPoetik 6.1 (2006): 121-129.

Shackel, Paul A. Myth, Memory, and the Making of the American Landscape. Gainesville et al.: UP of Florida, 2001. Amerikastudien/American Studies 48.3 (2003): 466-467.

Tallmadge, John and Harrington, Henry. Reading Under the Sign of Nature: New Essays in Ecocriticism. Salt Lake City: The U of Utah P, 2000. Amerikastudien/American Studies 47.1 (2002): 154-158.

Lindemann, Uwe. “Kulturzeichen ‘Wüste’.” Die Wüste – Terra incognita, Erlebnis, Symbol: Eine Genealogie der abendländischen Wüstenvorstellungen in der Literatur von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart. Heidelberg: C. Winter, 2000; Lindemann, Uwe and Schmitz-Emans, Monika. Was ist eine Wüste? Interdisziplinäre Annäherung an einen interkulturellen Topos. Würzburg: Könighausen & Neumann, 2000. KulturPoetik 2.1 (2002): 127-130; http://www.fernuni-hagen.de/EUROL/kulturpoetik/inhalte.htm (15. März 2002).

Schlichter, Annette. Die Figur der verrückten Frau: Weiblicher Wahnsinn als Kategorie der feministischen Repräsentationskritik. Edition Diskord, 2000. Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik 49.3 (2001): 304-305.

Stange, Martina. Modernism and the Individual Talent: Djuna Barnes’ Romane Ryder und Nightwood. Essen: Verlag Die Blaue Eule, 1999. Amerikastudien/American Studies 46.1 (2001): 163-165.

Stein, Rachel. Shifting the Ground: American Women Writers’ Revision of Nature, Gender, and Race. Charlotteswille, London: U of Virginia P, 1997. Referatedienst zur Literaturwissenschaft 3.31 (1999): 559-562.

Westling, Louise. The Green Breast of the New World: Landscape Gender, and American Fiction. Athens and London: The U of Georgia P, 1996. Referatedienst zur Literaturwissenschaft 2.30 (1998): 331-334.

Glotfelty, Cheryll and Fromm, Harold. The Ecocriticism Reader: Landmarks in Literary Ecology. Athens and London: The U of Georgia P, 1996. Referatedienst zur Literaturwissenschaft 2.30 (1998): 235-238.

Witlac, Janet. Native North American Literature. New York and London: Gale Research, 1994. Referatedienst zur Literaturwissenschaft 1.30 (1998): 61-62.

Lubbers, Klaus. Born for the Shade: Stereotypes of the Native American in United States Literature and the Visual Arts, 1776-1894. Amsterdam and Atlanta, GA: Rodopi, 1994. Referatedienst zur Literaturwissenschaft 3.28 (1996): 451-454.

Martin, Richard. Reading Life/Writing Fiction: An Introduction to Novels by American Women, 1920 – 1940. Frankfurt/Main: Lang, 1994. Amerikastudien/American Studies 2.41 (1996): 302-303.

Hooks, Bell. Black Looks - Popkultur, Medien, Rassismus. Berlin: Orlanda Frauenverlag, 1994. Widersprüche des Multikulturalismus (Gulliver Bd. 37). Ed. Christiane Harzig and Nora Räthzel (Hamburg: Argument-Verlag, 1995):164-166.

Brettell, Caroline B. and Sargent, Carolyn F. Gender in Cross-Cultural Perspective. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1993. Referatedienst zur Literaturwissenschaft 4.27 (1995): 677-680.

Pichon-Kalau v. Hofe, Brigitte. Krisen: Kontrollen und Kontin­genzen. Nathanael West und die drei­ßiger Jahre. Heidelberg: Carl Winter Universitätsverlag, 1990. Zeit­schrift für Ang­li­stik und Ame­rikani­stik 3/4.39 (1991): 356-357.

Heuermann, Hartmut. Mythos, Literatur, Gesellschaft: Mythokri­tische Analysen zur Ge­schichte des amerikani­schen Romans. München: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 1988. Zeit­schrift für Ang­listik und Ame­rikani­stik 2.38 (1990): 187-188.