Literature and other kinds of cultural texts, products, and practices are a central part of our societies and ways of life. In my research and teaching, I have been interested in the specific role that literary and cultural texts have in shaping our sense of self and our perception of the world and others. Literatures and cultures provide us with scripts and ideals of who (and how) to be and lead our lives, but they can also question norms that we often take for granted.
In that sense, the literary and cultural studies can be an arena in which we can critically engage with how we see, experience, and change the world, ourselves, as well as our relations to others.
Office hours (starting 10 October):
Thursday, 9:00-10:00
For office hours we will meet onsite (online over Zoom possible, if necessary).
Please register for a time slot via Termino using the following link:
https://www.termino.gv.at/meet/de/p/c72ef357b7ae0bf677fbc82686795460-364427
Please do not add your email address on Termino. After registering for your slot online, please write an email to Prof Heinz.
***Latest*** Online Presentation on "Cultural Consequences of COVID-19: Understanding the Pandemic" as part of the Royal Irish Academy's Online Conversation Series: "Perspectives and Pathways in a Time of Crisis" (Conversation 10); available on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5QafvYLPz6Q
CV
Since July 2017: Full Professor for English and Anglophone Literatures at the Department of English and American Studies, University of Vienna, Austria
Apr. 2019-May 2020: Parental Leave
Aug. 2018: Returning Visiting Scholar at the Institute for Research on Women and Gender, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, USA
Apr. 2016-June 2017: Parental Leave
Apr. 2015-March 2016: Guest Professor at the English Department, Humboldt University Berlin, Germany
Jan.-Apr. 2015: Visiting Scholar at the Institute for Research on Women and Gender (IRWG) at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, USA
May 2014: Oral Habilitation Presentation, granting of the venia legendi "Anglistische Literatur- und Kulturwissenschaft" [English Literary and Cultural Studies]
2013: Submission of Habilitation at the School of Humanities, University of Mannheim, Germany
Title of Habilitation Treatise: "The Relative Skin: Whiteness in Contemporary Irish Literature and Film"
2009-2014: Juniorprofessor for British Literary and Cultural Studies at the School of Humanities, University of Mannheim
2008-2009: Juniorprofessor for English Literature/Cultural and Media Studies at the School of Humanities, University of Passau, Germany
2006-2008: Instructor at the Department of British Literary and Cultural Studies (Chair of English Literature and Culture, Anglistik II, Prof. Dr. Meinhard Winkgens) at the University of Mannheim
2003-2006: PhD in English Literature (summa cum laude)
Title of Doctoral Thesis: "Die Einheit in der Differenz: Metapher, Romance und Identität in A.S. Byatts Romanen" [Unity in Difference: Metaphor, Romance and Identity in A.S. Byatt's Novels]
1997-2003: Master of Arts in English, Linguistics, and Media and Communication Studies at the University of Mannheim
Born 1978 in Groß-Gerau, Germany
Teaching and Supervision
Among others, I have held lectures, facilitated seminars, and organised workshops in the following areas:
- Contemporary British drama and narrative literature
- The contemporary Anglophone novel
- Theories of intersectionality and race, specifically whiteness
- Theoretical and narrative conceptualisations of transcultural encounters
- Filmic, dramatic, and narrative representations of race, gender, class, and nation from Shakespeare to today
- Cultural discourses of identity, normality, and normalisation
For a full list of my courses, course evaluations, and my teaching dossier, see my personal homepage.
I welcome supervision proposals in all these areas. If you are interested in doing a thesis project with me, please come to my office hours and bring any material that you might find helpful to outline your idea and research plan.
Research Interests
- Postcolonial Theory, specifically Critical Whiteness Studies, Intersectionality, and Critical Race Theory
- Anglophone Literatures and Cultures, specifically the Contemporary Novel
- Transnational Discourses of Home and Homeland in Contemporary British and Anglophone Literature and Cultural Production
- British Drama and the Novel since 1800
- Contemporary Irish Literature, Film, and Culture in the Context of Postcolonial Studies and Globalisation
- Intermediality, Intertextuality, and Adaptation
- Theories of Identity and Subjectivity
Selected Publications and Presentations
In my publications and presentations, my focus has been the connection between literature, the self, and the cultures we live in. I am interested in the contingent and shifting subject positions that a cultural context can construct for us and in the ways in which such identities can be represented, contested, and developed by literary texts.
For a full list of publications and presentations, see my personal homepage.
Selected Books and Edited Work
Heinz Sarah, Lukas Klik, Kevin Potter, and Tatiana Prorokova, eds. Special Issue "Disturbances of the Home/land in Anglophone Postcolonial Literatures." Humanities 9 (2020). Open Access Journal
URL: www.mdpi.com/journal/humanities/special_issues/anglophone_postcolonial
Kuster, Nora, Stella Butter, and Sarah Heinz, eds. Subject Cultures: The English Novel from the 18th to the 21st Century. Tübingen: Gunter Narr, 2016.
Butter, Stella, and Sarah Heinz, eds. Special Issue "Focus on Community in Contemporary Cultural Production." Anglistik 26.1 (Spring 2015).
Heinz, Sarah. Die Einheit in der Differenz: Metapher, Romance und Identität in A.S. Byatts Romanen [Unity in Difference: Metaphor, Romance and Identity in A.S. Byatt's Novels]. Tübingen: Gunter Narr, 2007.
Selected Journal Articles
Heinz, Sarah. "Revision as Relation: Adapting Parable in Chigozie Obioma's The Fishermen." Adaptation Dec. (2020): 14 pages. Open Access Publication. doi.org/10.1093/adaptation/apaa039. Peer Review.
---. "Unsettling Australia: Disturbing White Settler Homemaking in Peter Carey's True History of the Kelly Gang." Humanities 9.4 (2020): 11 pages. Open Access Journal. doi.org/10.3390/h9040115. Peer Review.
---. "Beyond Sedentarism and Nomadology: Yaa Gyasi's Homegoing and the Ambivalent Desire for Home." Special Issue "Prekäre Heimat: Ökologe - Affekt - Praxis." Kulturwissenschaftliche Zeitschrift 5.1 (2020): 119-132. Open Access Journal. doi.org/10.2478/kwg-2020-0030
---. "The Immobilised Family: Home, Homeland and Domopolitics in Chigozie Obioma's The Fishermen." Special Issue "Imaginative Geographies of Home." Literary Geographies 5.2 (2019): 200-215. Open Access Journal: URL: https://www.literarygeographies.net/index.php/LitGeogs/article/view/180. Peer Review.
---. "Not White, Not Quite: Irish American Identities in the US Census and in Ann Patchett's Novel Run (2007)." Amerikastudien / American Studies 58.1 (2013): 79-100. Peer Review.
Selected Book Chapters
Heinz, Sarah. "Making Yourself at Home: Performances of Whiteness in Cultural Production about Home and Homemaking Practices." Routledge Handbook of Critical Whiteness Studies. Eds. Shona Hunter and Christi van der Westhuizen. London: Routledge, accepted for publication. Peer Review.
---. "Homemaking Practices and White Ideals in Ian McEwan's Saturday and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Purple Hibiscus." The Intersections of Whiteness. Eds. Evangelia Kindinger and Mark Schmitt. London: Routledge, 2019. 182-199. DOI: 10.4324/9781351112796-11. Peer Review.
---. "Celtic Tiger Ireland and the Politics of Disgust: White Trash in Leonard Abrahamson's Film Adam and Paul and Sebastian Barry's Play The Pride of Parnell Street." Narrating Ireland in Different Genres and Media. Ed. Katharina Rennhak. Trier: WVT, 2016. 133-149.
---. "Drama after Postmodernism: Martin Crimp's Attempts on Her Life and Patrick Marber's Closer." A History of British Drama: Genres - Developments - Interpretations. Eds. Sibylle Baumbach, Birgit Neumann and Ansgar Nünning. Trier: WVT, 2011. 399-412.
---. "The Age of Transition as an Age of Transgression? Victorian Poetry and the Taboo of Sexuality, Love and the Body." Taboo and Transgression in British Literature from the Renaissance to the Present. Eds. Stefan Horlacher, Stefan Glomb and Lars Heiler. Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010. 159-176. Peer Review.
Selected Shorter Articles and Reviews
Heinz, Sarah. "Breathe." Creative Writing Essay. ROAM - Representations of Home Creative Journal: accepted for publication.
---. Book Review of Shakespeare Films: A Re-Evaluation of 100 Years of Adaptation, by Peter E.S. Babiak. MEDIENwissenschaft 03 (2017): 404-405.
---. Report on CDE Conference 2016, Eichstätt: "Theatre and Mobility." The ESSE Messenger, 2017. Online. URL: https://essenglish.org/messenger/blog/conference-report-25th-annual-conference-of-the-german-society-for-contemporary-theatre-and-drama-in-english-cde/
---. "A.S. Byatt." Kritisches Lexikon zur fremdsprachigen Gegenwartsliteratur [Critical Encyclopedia of Contemporary Foreign Language Literature]. Eds. Sebastian Domsch et al. München: edition text + kritik. 3/2013. 1-14.
---. Book Review of Lad Trouble: Masculinity and Identity in the British Male Confessional Novel of the 1990s, by Andrea Ochsner. JMMS 5.1 (2011): 26-28. Print, Web. 11 Oct. 2014.
Selected Presentations and Invited Talks
Heinz, Sarah. "Lockdown! Re-Assessments of Im/Mobility in COVID-19 British Fictions of Home." Conference "Entangled Im/Mobilities: Perspectives from the Humanities and Social Sciences." Research Platform Mobile Cultures and Societies. University of Vienna, Austria. 18-20 March 2021.
---. "Whose House is this? Everyday Bordering and the Intersection of Home and Nation in British Property TV Shows." BritCult 2020: British Borders. Universität des Saarlandes, Germany. 19-21 November 2020.
---. "Un/welcomed Homes: Negotiating Homing Desire in Yaa Gyasi's Homegoing." Invited Talk at Workshop "Global Concepts of 'Heimat'." TU Dresden, Germany. 13-14 September 2018.
---. "The Immobilized Family: Home and Homeland in the Nigerian Novel." Symposium "Mobilizing Home(s): New Approaches to the Study of Home in Contemporary Literature and Culture." Aarhus Institute for Advanced Studies, Aarhus, Denmark. 14-15 September 2017.
---. "What's it like to be white?: Representations of Whiteness in Contemporary Irish and Anglophone Literature." Invited Talk at the Institute for Research on Women and Gender, University of Michigan, USA. 12 February 2015.