Prof. Dr. Susanne Gehrmann
Prof. Dr. Susanne Gehrmann
Short Bio
Susanne Gehrmann is a professor of African literatures and cultures at the institute of Asian and African studies, Humboldt University Berlin. She holds MA degrees from the Universities of Paris, Sorbonne Nouvelle, and Bochum and a PhD in Romance and Comparative literature from the University of Bayreuth and is a Studienstiftung and Alexander von Humboldt alumna. Her research foci are on representations of violence, intermediality, autobiography, gender and genre innovation in African literatures with a regional focus on West and Central Africa; the RDC, Senegal and Togo in particular. She teaches mainly French and English language literatures from Subsahara and the African Diaspora and has a growing interest in African cinemas in both teaching and research. She was project leader of “Media change and intermediality in Togolese culture” (AvH) as well as of “African Child Soldiers in Literature and Film. Representation, Discourse, Esthetics” (DFG). Her collaborations on the African continent include exchange and joint research with partners at the University of Nairobi, Université de Lomé, University of Ibadan and Université Cheikh Anta Diop, Dakar. As member of the executive committee of the Association for the Study of African Literatures in France, she is organizing the next APELA congress at HU-Berlin in 2021 which will be devoted to queer African literatures.
Selected Publications
- edited with Charlott Schönwetter: The Ubiquitious Figure of the Child Soldier. Interviews with African Writers, Academics and Cultural Activists followed by a comprehensive bibliography. WVT, Trier, LuKA 2019, 229 p.
- "Emerging Afro-Parisian ‘chick lit’ by Lauren Ekué and Léonora Miano", in: Feminist Theory 2/2019, 215-228.
- "Africa", in: Martina Wagner-Egelhaaf (ed.): Autobiography/Autofiction. An International and Interdisciplinary Handbook, vol. 2, de Gruyter, Berlin/Boston 2019, 897-963.
- "Remediating Romance. Functions of New Media in Contemporary Love Stories from Togo and South Africa" in: Africa Today 65/1, 2018, 64-84.
- "Le roman intermédiatique à la togolaise", in: Miriam Lay Brander (ed.): Genre and Globalization. Transformación de géneros en contextos (post-) coloniales/Tranformation des genres dans des contextes (post-) coloniaux. Olms, Hildesheim 2017, 137-159.