Julia Nitz is associate professor of Anglo-American cultural studies at Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg. She has served as Executive Director at the Center for American Studies and is co-founder of the Intercontinental Crosscurrents Network for the study of transatlantic women’s networks in the long nineteenth century (crosscurrents.uni-halle.de). Her research focusses on the American Civil War, women’s life writing, intertextual cultural studies, historiographic and museum narratology as well as Anglophone (Caribbean) film and adaptation studies. Her publications include Georg III. Rezeption und Konstruktion in den kritischen Medien (1990–2006) (WVT, 2010), Towards a Historiographic Narratology (2011),
and with Sandra H. Petrulionis and Theresa Schön, an edited volume on Intercontinental Crosscurrents: Women’s Networks across Europe and the Americas (2016).
Her most recent monograph Belles and Poets: Intertextuality in the Civil War Diaries of White Southern Women (LSUP, 2020) establishes the extent to which literature offered a means of exploring ideas and convictions about class, gender, and racial hierarchies in the Civil
War-era South.
Apart from her interest in British and American cultural studies, Julia is a passionate player of Ultimate Frisbee and an ardent reader.
Jiann-Chyng Tu is lecturer and research associate in American literature and culture at MLU Halle-Wittenberg. He received his BA in German and English from Wake Forest University (USA) and his MA in American Studies (Literature and Culture) from Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, where he is also a doctoral candidate in American literature. Before joining MLU Halle-Wittenberg, he held teaching positions at universities in Berlin, Münster, Bamberg, Regensburg, and Augsburg. His research interests include African American literature and culture, multiethnic literature of the United States, transnational American studies, Black internationalisms, literary history, and food studies. Currently, he serves as one of the two postgraduate representatives to the advisory board of the German Association for American Studies (GAAS/DGfA).