Institut für England- & Amerikastudien (IEAS)

Linda Heß joined the IEAS in October 2016 as assistant professor (wiss. Mitarbeiterin) after receiving her Ph.D from the University of Münster. She is author of the monograph Queer Aging in North American Fiction (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019) and co-editor of the volume Exploring the Fantastic: Genre, Ideology, and Popular Culture (transcript, 2018).

Her main areas of research and teaching are aging studies, queer studies, and gender studies, but also environmental narratives, science fiction, life writing, and, more generally, U.S. literature and culture from the 19th to the 21st century. In connection with her habilitation project, she has recently become interested in concepts of nature, and nationhood and their interrelations.

Curriculum Vitae (PDF)

After April 1, 2020 Linda Heß will be working at the University of Augsburg.
Email: linda.hess@phil.uni-augsburg.de

Exploring representations of queer aging in North American fiction, this book illuminates a rich yet previously unheeded intersection within American culture. At a time when older LGBTQ persons gradually gain visibility in gerontological studies and in the media, this work provides a critical perspective concerned with the ways in which the narratives and images we have at our disposal shape our realities. Each chapter shines a spotlight on a significant work of queer fiction, beginning with post-WWII novels and ending with filmic representations of the 2010s, exploring narratives as both reflections and agents of broader cultural negotiations concerning queer sexuality and aging. As a result, the book not only redresses queer aging’s history of invisibility, but also reveals narratives of queer aging to be particularly apt in casting new light on the ways in which growing older is perceived and conceptualized in North American culture.

https://www.palgrave.com/gp/book/9783030034658

The fantastic represents a wide and heterogeneous field in literary, cultural, and media studies. Encompassing some of the field's foremost voices such as Fred Botting and Larissa Lai, as well as exciting new perspectives by junior scholars, this volume offers a mosaic of the fantastic now. The contributions pinpoint and discuss current developments in theory and practice by offering enlightening snapshots of the contemporary Anglophone landscape of research in the fantastic. The authors' arguments and analyses thus give new impetus to the field's theoretical and methodological approaches, its textual materials, its main interests, and its crucial findings.

https://www.transcript-verlag.de/978-3-8376-4027-4/exploring-the-fantastic/