Profile
Abstract
I received both my BA and my MA in American studies from American Studies Leipzig and completed my dissertation in 2018, on a project that investigated a new trend in contemporary US popular culture that I called ‘narrative instability.’ Since then, I have been pursuing a postdoctoral project on privilege in nineteenth-century US literature. I have been working at ASL since 2011, first in an administrative position and later as a researcher and teacher (as a Wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter since 2015 and as an Akademischer Assistent since 2020).
I am broadly interested in American culture and literature (and, from a cultural perspective, US politics), but my specific research interests center around popular culture (especially film, TV, and video games), contemporary literature and culture, (post-)postmodernism, 19th-century literature, intersections of race, class, and gender (particularly masculinity and whiteness), and questions of textuality and narrativity, including transmediality, adaptation theory, genre theory, and digital textuality. Overall, in my research, I particularly try to uncover the manifold connections between culture and literature, understanding ‘America’ as an intermingling of both cultures and narratives, and to scrutinize the cultural work and the textual ‘politics’ of diverse cultural artifacts.
In 2018, I completed my doctoral thesis, which identifies a tendency in contemporary popular culture to engage in a fragmentation and obfuscation of storyworlds that I term ‘narrative instability.’ I argue that such moments of confusion do not actually frustrate contemporary audiences but activate them, serving as sites to interrogate these texts’ narrative constructedness. I frame this as a new facet of understanding popularity, one that works in a distinct transmedial fashion, and I carve out the complex, ambivalent ‘politics’ of these texts’ projects. The dissertation was published in 2019. Since then, I have been working on a postdoctoral project on privilege in nineteenth-century US literature.
- show detailsSchubert, S.Narrative Instability: Destabilizing Identities, Realities, and Textualities in Contemporary American Popular CultureHeidelberg: Winter. 2019.
- show detailsSchubert, S.Dystopia in the Skies: Negotiating Justice and Morality on Screen in the Video Game BioShock InfiniteEuropean journal of American studies. 2018. 13 (4).DOI: 10.4000/ejas.14089
- show detailsSchubert, S.Narrative and Play in American Studies: Ludic Textuality in the Video Game Alan Wake and the TV Series WestworldIn: Pöhlmann, S. (Ed.)Playing the Field: Video Games and American Studies. Berlin: De Gruyter. 2019. pp. 113–130.
- show detailsSchubert, S.; Mayar, M. (Eds.)Video Games and/in American Studies: Politics, Popular Culture, and PopulismEuropean Journal of American Studies. 2021. 16 (3).
- show detailsSchubert, S."Liberty for Androids!": Player Choice, Politics, and Populism in Detroit: Become HumanEuropean Journal of American Studies. 2021. 16 (3).DOI: 10.4000/ejas.17360
I have taught classes introducing BA students to literary and cultural studies, thematic BA and MA seminars focusing on specific aspects of US literature and (popular) culture, as well as project seminars guiding MA students through the publication process of the graduate journal aspeers. My teaching combines a general overview of American literature and culture with my own interests and areas of expertise, such as film, television, games, contemporary and nineteenth-century literature, digital and transmedial culture, narrativity, genre, textuality, and studies of masculinity and whiteness. In my classes, I aim to enhance students’ abilities in analytical and critical thinking by focusing on close readings of different types (genres, modes, media, etc.) of texts, encouraging students to self-reflexively question their preconceptions through theoretical readings, and highlighting the reach and importance of narrativity and textuality in all areas of life.