Silvia Schultermandl
University of Graz, Department of American Studies, Faculty Member
- Silvia Schultermandl is an associate professor of American Studies at the University of Graz, where she teaches cours... moreSilvia Schultermandl is an associate professor of American Studies at the University of Graz, where she teaches courses in American literature/culture studies since 2007. Before coming to Graz, she was at Rutgers University for a Post-Doc and subsequently taught at UT Knoxville. In 2014, she was Visiting Assistant Professor at Williams College. Silvia is the author of Unlinear Matrilineage: Mother-Daughter Conflicts in Asian American Literature (2009) and States of Ambivalence: Transnationalism as Aesthetic Experience in American Literature (forthcoming) and co-editor of five collections of essays which explore various themes in transnational studies, American literature and culture, as well as family and kinship studies. Her articles have appeared in the following journals, among others: Meridians, Atlantic Studies, Interactions, Journal of Transnational American Studies, and Journal of American Culture. She is currently developing the Palgrave Series in Kinship, Representation, and Difference and is embarking on a new project on kinship and social media, an edited collection that grows out of the MESEA conference she hosted in Graz in 2019 and a special issue for Atlantic Studies on the topic of Kinship and Ocean Studies. Her areas of interest include affect theory, literary theory, critical race theory, queer theory, visual culture and transnational feminism.edit
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In the context of the recent "oceanic turn" (DeLoughrey 2016), the world's oceans have not only been (re-)valued as objects of study, but they have inspired a range of formative new theories and methodologies in literary and cultural... more
In the context of the recent "oceanic turn" (DeLoughrey 2016), the world's oceans have not only been (re-)valued as objects of study, but they have inspired a range of formative new theories and methodologies in literary and cultural studies. On the metaphorical level, the oceans' watery ways provide models for "nonlinear or nonplanar thought" (Blum 2013: 152), placing notions of circulation, fluidity, mobility, and mingling at the center of attention. Thereby, they also beckon a (reconsideration n of "transoceanic connections" (Burnham 2016: 154) between different bodies of water, their cultures, and histories (e.g. DeLoughrey 2007). Increasingly venturing below the ocean's surface, scholars immerse themselves in the sea's material and nonhuman dimensions, inquiring into the realm of the biological, the geophysical, and the ecological (e.g. Steinberg 2013). This special issue sets forth from Hester Blum's argument that we may "find capacious possibilities for new forms of relationality through attention to the sea's properties, conditions, and shaping or eroding forces" (2013: 152), investigating its particular applicability to questions of kinship. More specifically, it uses the notion of kinship as a critical idiom and conceptual lens to examine the oceanic turn's potential for rethinking forms of (human and nonhuman) belonging. In other words, it considers kinship a particularly salient concept through which to explore the new concepts and ideas coming from oceanic studies. Following anthropologist Linda Stone, we depart from a notion of kinship as first and foremost "an ideology of human relationships" (2000: 6) and are interested in the various representational and affective strategies through which oceanic texts and performances attend to questions about kinship. In so doing, we do not think of kinship as signifying common ancestry but as a multi-dimensional social practice, not, to borrow from David Eng, as characterized by "racial descent, filiation, and biological traceability, but through the lens of queerness, affiliation, and social contingency" (2010: 13). By invoking kinship as our methodological approach, we seek alternatives to concepts such as imagined communities and families of nations which reference nation-bound and anthropocentric ideologies of human relationships. Instead, we are interested in the particular intersections between oceanic studies' emphasis on "mobility across transoceanic surfaces" and theories of "oceanic submersion" (DeLoughrey 2017: 32) and kinship studies' notions of a "mutuality of being" (Sahlins 2013: 2). Conceiving of kinship as a particular kind of affect best described as the "feeling of kinship" (Eng 2010) and a formation of solidarity synecdochically referencing the social writ large (Berlant 2011), we are interested in questions such as the following:
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, in conjunction with the Austrian Science Fund (FWF), announces a call for papers for an interdisciplinary, transnational conference on contemporary im/migrant literature and innovative aesthetics. Many important texts of the 21st... more
, in conjunction with the Austrian Science Fund (FWF), announces a call for papers for an interdisciplinary, transnational conference on contemporary im/migrant literature and innovative aesthetics. Many important texts of the 21st century reflect complex processes of memory, migration, and identity formation from the margins of migrant communities globally. Exciting opportunities exist to integrate im/migrant literature from an interdisciplinary, transnational approach. This conference asks: what narratives are shaping our understanding of the dynamics and identities involved in and around im/migration processes and, more importantly, what forms do these narratives take? Through face-to-face interaction and hands-on work, this conference showcases how innovative literature is not simply abstract expressions of remote concepts, but is directly informed by and informing the material realities that shape human existence. Words have power. While data driven social science research can inform important public policy debates and affect policy outcomes, such conversations and policy decisions should also consider the cultural values and criticisms expressed in literature and the arts more generally. This conference argues that thoughtful cultural and literary study can help to give voice to the voiceless and can create opportunities to unite, through readership and through a wider circulation of texts, communities which might not otherwise come into contact with each other. This conference's emphasis on form argues (drawing on scholars such as Jameson, Nussbaum, Sontag, Spivak) that it is also because of form that the arts matter. It is the very materiality of texts and formal qualities of certain stories that impact readers and shape public knowledge. To read about migration and its effects not only through news media or online sources, but also through innovative storytelling creates opportunities for greater empathy, or at least understanding, with diverse audiences of readers. How literature's formal attributes can bring us, as readers, into powerful experiences that we do not yet know how to name has been theorized variously by many scholars in recent times—as " empathy " by Nussbaum or " affect " by Jameson, for example. Yet by calling attention to what is not yet incorporated into the status quo, such a relationship between a text and its
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We invite monographs, edited collections, and shorter single-authored books (30,000 – 50,000 words) for the exciting new book series, This book series brings together analyses of familial and kin relationships with emerging and new... more
We invite monographs, edited collections, and shorter single-authored books (30,000 – 50,000 words) for the exciting new book series, This book series brings together analyses of familial and kin relationships with emerging and new technologies which allow for the creation, maintenance and expansion of family. We use the term " family " as a working truth with a wide range of meanings in an attempt to address the feelings of family belonging across all aspects of social location: ability, age, race, ethnicity, nationality, sexuality, gender identity, body size, social class and beyond. This book series aims to explore phenomena located at the intersection of technologies including those which allow for family creation, migration, communication, reunion and the family as a site of difference. The individual volumes in this series will offer insightful analyses of the representations of these phenomena in media, social media, literature, popular culture and corporeal settings. Possible book topics include: • technologies of family creation and maintenance: the use of alternate reproductive technologies; the use of communication technologies to share information; • queer family creation and representation through technology; making queer family visible through traditional, popular and social media; alternate family connections including non-normative parenting arrangements (more than two parents, multiple different shades of parenting); " new " family through donor sibling relationships; • technologies of class mobility, including the impact of smartphone technology on mediating/ curtailing aspects of the digital divide; shifting family relationships through generational moves in class status • fat family: the ways that narratives of obesity have had impacts on the creation and representation of family (for example: obese women who are denied reproductive technologies or access to international adoption); the ways these rhetorics have shifted differently in different jurisdictions; representation of fat family; intersection of fat and working class identities in popular culture • trans families: both in terms of gender identity but also in terms of other families that " confound " —families that do not " match " one another, or that otherwise transgress normative models • technologies of disability: the use of technology to enhance or bolster independence, the ways that disabled people are seen as incapable of parenting; on the other hand, the technologies which come into play around parenting children with disability, both prenatally and once children are born; representation of disability and family (fetishization and the perceived martyrdom of parents) Please send inquiries to may.friedman@ryerson.ca AND silvia.schultermandl@uni-graz.at
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LIT Verlag (Berlin, Münster, Vienna, London) is accepting book-length manuscripts and proposals from scholars in gender studies, postcolonial theory, feminist anthropology, cultural geography, literary theory, critical theory, and other... more
LIT Verlag (Berlin, Münster, Vienna, London) is accepting book-length manuscripts and proposals from scholars in gender studies, postcolonial theory, feminist anthropology, cultural geography, literary theory, critical theory, and other interdisciplinary fields, and especially seeks projects that offer new theoretical insights and/or grounded empirical research that contribute to the emerging field of transnational feminism. This book series (peer-reviewed) is envisioned as a medium to create an international forum for innovative discussions of gender in a transnational context. Emphasis on gender dynamics within transnational contexts enables this book series to investigate and engage various aspects of power and privilege at play in the interaction of peoples, ideas, and commodities in a global economy. We consciously adopt the term " transnational " instead of " global " because we are convinced that the steady mass-movement of people and cultures contributes to a world in which borders and boundaries of nation, culture, race, and gender need to be conceptualized and theorized anew. Unlike global feminism, which was characterized by its tendency to centralize Western concepts of gender and essentialize all other concepts of gender, transnational feminism offers a more nuanced set of parameters, diction and framework for a contemporary discussion of the dynamics at play at experiences of migration across times and places. In the past, " global feminism " has often been confused with a Western feminist theory laid out onto an international context. This series refutes such practices and recognizes the importance of analyzing the specific locations that contribute to the social construction of people's lived worlds, as well the global inequalities that emerge from a world order based on binary oppositions and neo-liberal notions of economy. We invite book-length discussions on a variety of aspects in transnational feminism which embrace an academic or
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We are looking for original chapters which discuss representations of family and kinship in online media such as Twitter, PostSecret, Facebook, Storify and Instagram and the ways in which these digital autobiographies innovate our... more
We are looking for original chapters which discuss representations of family and kinship in online media such as Twitter, PostSecret, Facebook, Storify and Instagram and the ways in which these digital autobiographies innovate our understandings of life writing genres. Our collection seeks to bring together research on the self-in-relation from both a narratological angle and from the perspective of gender studies, queer theory, postcolonial and transnational studies. We are interested in discussing new and shifting understandings of how we define life writing practices differently in an age of online expressions in various verbal and visual forms, and through the lens of family, broadly defined.
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This chapter analyzes the aesthetics of quick media epistolary novels with the help of Lauren Myracle’s Internet Girls series and argues that through the adoption of a quick media format which mimics real-life conversations between three... more
This chapter analyzes the aesthetics of quick media epistolary novels with the help of Lauren Myracle’s Internet Girls series and argues that through the adoption of a quick media format which mimics real-life conversations between three teenage girls, quick media epistolary novels generate both boredom and astonishment as aesthetic effects. The constant online presence, which is so familiar to Myracle’s teenage readers as well as their parents, materializes through the novels’ fast-paced conversations, the representation of exaggerated outpours of feelings over minor events, and the linguistic appropriation of teenage slang and netspeak. These stylistic properties of Myracle’s novels invite readers’ curiosity in the protagonists’ lives yet frustrate them with formulaic plotlines and predictable cliff hangers. Considering this instant-messaging as an aesthetic feature of quick media epistolary novels raises issues about the kinds of aesthetic effects such texts can have on readers. This chapter shows that this simultaneous experience of boredom and astonishment functions as a social commentary on quick media usage, especially on the discrepancy between ‘using’ online media to communicate and constantly ‘being’ online and available.
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This chapter discusses social networking sites (SNSs) as locales of transnational kinship building and intermedial life writing. Through a critical analysis of Family Line-Ups, a curated online art project which features family... more
This chapter discusses social networking sites (SNSs) as locales of transnational kinship building and intermedial life writing. Through a critical analysis of Family Line-Ups, a curated online art project which features family photographs and personal narratives, this chapter investigates intermedial representations of family and kinship which throw into relief the constructed nature of transnational families. In particular, the gaps between the visual and the verbal texts featured
on Family Line-Ups highlight the tension between the verbal and visual representations of family genealogy. In this light, intermedial representation of kinship in social networking sites are read here as rhizomatic storytelling which pushes the boundaries of the auto/biographical genre at the same time as it calls into question notions of identity in a networked world.
on Family Line-Ups highlight the tension between the verbal and visual representations of family genealogy. In this light, intermedial representation of kinship in social networking sites are read here as rhizomatic storytelling which pushes the boundaries of the auto/biographical genre at the same time as it calls into question notions of identity in a networked world.
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In light of the recent " transnational turn " in American Studies, there has been a steady interest in questions about literary productions and aesthetic education. Already Friedrich Schiller's definition of the concept of aesthetic... more
In light of the recent " transnational turn " in American Studies, there has been a steady interest in questions about literary productions and aesthetic education. Already Friedrich Schiller's definition of the concept of aesthetic education in 1794 holds that literature has the potential to assume the role of an agent working towards a paradigm shift away from the national as representational category and towards the embracing of transnational concepts. My article examines the relevance of aesthetic education apparent in a selection of Shirley Lim's work. Framed through the personal experiences of protagonists and lyrical personae that are always issuing meta-referential comments on the creation of literature or the production and dissemination of knowledge, Lim emphasises the role of aesthetic education as a politically-charged feeling of beauty and belonging. Examples from Lim's fictional and non-fictional work allow me to trace the ontological dimensions aesthetic education acquires in a transnational context.
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... Lea Povozhaev 3 'Neither the End of the World nor the Beginning': Transnational Identity Politics in Lisa Suhair Majaj's Self-Writing 55 Silvia Schultermandl 4... more
... Lea Povozhaev 3 'Neither the End of the World nor the Beginning': Transnational Identity Politics in Lisa Suhair Majaj's Self-Writing 55 Silvia Schultermandl 4 Identity and Belonging among Second-Generation Greek and Italian Canadian Women 69 Noula Papayiannis 5 Time ...
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Recent debates in transnational feminism have examined the different aspects of power and agency in relation to sexual labor. Some critics argue that sex workers are agents in a service-oriented global business trend pivotal to the New... more
Recent debates in transnational feminism have examined the different aspects of power and agency in relation to sexual labor. Some critics argue that sex workers are agents in a service-oriented global business trend pivotal to the New Economy (cf. Sassen; ...
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In Nora Okja Keller's Comfort Woman (1997), the Korean American protagonist reconciles with her Korean heritage through the act of spreading her mother's ashes. This essay looks at Keller's use of a "language of the... more
In Nora Okja Keller's Comfort Woman (1997), the Korean American protagonist reconciles with her Korean heritage through the act of spreading her mother's ashes. This essay looks at Keller's use of a "language of the body" that protests against rape and other forms of oppression of the female body. This language of the body does not rely on essentialist parameters
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... Page 10. Silvia SchuZtermandl in Barbara Kingsolver's The Bean Trees and Pigs in Heaven." Southern Studies 5 (1-2) (Spring-Summer): 155-64. Purdue, Theda, and Michael D. Green, eds. 1995. ... New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers... more
... Page 10. Silvia SchuZtermandl in Barbara Kingsolver's The Bean Trees and Pigs in Heaven." Southern Studies 5 (1-2) (Spring-Summer): 155-64. Purdue, Theda, and Michael D. Green, eds. 1995. ... New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Rich, Adrienne. 1986 [1976]. ...
... "Gendering Time in Globalization: The Belatedness of the Other Woman and Jamaica Kincaid's Lucy." Tulsa ... Nashville and London: Vanderbilt UP, 1997. Mayock, EUen C. "The Bicultural Construction of Self in... more
... "Gendering Time in Globalization: The Belatedness of the Other Woman and Jamaica Kincaid's Lucy." Tulsa ... Nashville and London: Vanderbilt UP, 1997. Mayock, EUen C. "The Bicultural Construction of Self in Cisneros, Alvarez, and Santiago." Bilingual Review 23.3 (Sep-Dec. ...