Heike Schaefer is Professor of American Studies at Goethe University, Frankfurt. Her research focuses on literary theory and aesthetics, especially the media and materialities of North American literature, the intersections of literary history and media history (19th to 21st centuries), and literary experiments to produce reality effects and experiences of immediacy. In her media comparative, feminist, and ecocritical work, she has been particularly interested in the ways literary texts intervene in and contribute to other forms of knowledge production, such as discourses on gender, race, and the environment. Currently, she works on the poetics and politics of erasure and the cultural struggle over censorship, book bans, and intellectual freedom. Her point of departure is John Dewey’s understanding of democracy as a creative task.
