Antje Kley

Antje Kley holds the Chair of American Studies, especially Literary Studies. After her Master’s in Women’s Studies at Emory University in Atlanta and her state examination at the University of Mannheim, she worked on her dissertation on multi-ethnic forms of literary life writing in the USA in the late 20th century. Already in this context, she was interested in the intertwining of political and poetic dimensions of literary texts. At Kiel University, she researched the media history of the British and US American novel as part of her habilitation project and deepened her interest in the ethical reflective performances of literary textuality. Her research on cultural hybridity, recognition and literary knowledge production revolves around questions of socio-cultural difference and focuses on the function of literature for describing ‘things of concern’ (Bruno Latour). Not least, her six-year tenure as vice-president at FAU has made her realise that the humanities need to do a better job of explaining the relevance of their findings in order to assert their role in central academic debates. Antje Kley is currently working on a monograph on current US end-of-life narratives as an important form of alternative knowledge production to culturally dominant medical, nursing and insurance discourses around death. She lives with her dog Parker in Nuremberg and in the Rhön.

Publications on the topic of literature and the public sphere from recent years:

 

 

• “‘No one dies a natural death.’ Lebendige Geister und die Politik der Toten in George Saunders Roman Lincoln im Bardo (2017).” Die Politik der Toten: Figuren und Funktionen der Toten in Literatur und Politischer Theorie. Ed. Marcus Llanque and Katja Sarkowsky. Bielefeld: transcript, 2023. 121-142.
• “Vulnerability and masculinist notions of control in late capitalist societies. Reading Paul Kalanithi’s autopathography When Breath Becomes Air (2016).” Kulturwissenschaftliche Zeitschrift2 (2022): 49-69.
• “US Print Culture, Literary Narrative, and Slow Reading in the Age of Big Data: Steve Tomasula’s VAS – An Opera in Flatland.” Medium, Object, Metaphor: The Printed Book in Contemporary American Culture. Heike Schaefer und Alexander Starre. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019. 53-67.
• “Public Humanities and Literary Knowledge: Four Theses on How Reading Matters for Public Debate.” American Counter/Publics. Ulla Haselstein, Frank Kelleter, Alexander Starre, Birte Wege. Heidelberg, 2019. 397-408.
• “What Literature Knows: An Introduction.” What Literature Knows: Forays into Literary Knowledge Production. Antje Kley und Kai Merten. Frankfurt/M.: Peter Lang, 2018. 9-25.
• “Literary Knowledge Production and the Natural Sciences in the US.” Knowledge Landscapes North America. Simone Knewitz, Christian Klöckner, Sabine Sielke. Heidelberg: Winter, 2016. 153-177.