CV

Welcome to my website!

I am a professor of Anglophone Cultural and Literary Studies at the University of Education Upper Austria with a research and teaching focus in American Studies. I also teach as senior postdoc in the Department of English and American Studies at the University of Vienna. I have a wide range of teaching and research experience in Austria, Germany, the UK, the USA, the Netherlands, Italy, and Brazil.

In my research and teaching, I explore the intersections between literature, media, and the arts. I believe that it is only through social interaction and reflective dialogue—across and beyond national and institutional boundaries—that we can reach our fullest potential as scholars, students, artists, and teachers.

If you are interested in collaborating across and beyond cultural and institutional borders, please send an email to:

martina.pfeiler@ph-ooe.at (University of Education Upper Austria)

martina.pfeiler@univie.ac.at (University of Vienna)

From September 2021 until May 2024 I was a Senior Researcher and Vice-PI in the ERC/FWF funded project “Poetry Off the Page” at the University of Vienna, conducting research on contemporary poetry performances, interviewing poets in the UK, and doing archival research on spoken word poetry. From October 2016 – September 2021 I taught as interim commissionary chair in American Studies (Kommissarische Lehrstuhlvertretung Amerikanistik; Englisches Seminar) at Ruhr-University Bochum, Germany. In November 2017, I completed my Habilitation at TU Dortmund University in Germany, where I received the venia legendi in American Literary and Cultural Studies with a Habilitation-thesis titled Ahab in Love: The Creative Reception of Moby-Dick in Popular Culture. Previously, I taught as Assistant Professor of American Studies at TU Dortmund University, where I completed my PhD summa cum laude with a thesis titled Poetry Goes Intermedia: U.S.-amerikanische Lyrik des 20. und 21. Jahrhunderts (2010).

I taught as guest lecturer at Oglethorpe University in Atlanta, USA (2005-2006), as Visiting Assistant Professor in the American Studies Department at Radboud University in Nijmegen, Netherlands (2009/2010). I was Visiting Researcher at Harvard University and at the Melville Society Archive in New Bedford (March 2012), and at SUNY New Paltz (July-Aug 2000).

In 2003 I published Sounds of Poetry: Contemporary American Performance Poets, based on my MA thesis at Karl-Franzens-University Graz.

My research and teaching interests include:

• U.S. American Literature, Cultural Studies, and Media Studies: from the 19th to the 21st centuries
• Critical Media Literacies
• Legacies and New Trajectories in Teaching Literary Classics
• U.S. American and British Poetry
• Herman Melville, Moby-Dick
• Transnational Studies and Transcultural Studies
• Popular Culture, Visual Culture, Sound Studies
• Adaptation Studies and Reception Studies
• Digital Archives and Digital Databases