Keynote Speakers

Dr. Andrea Geier is Associate Professor in the German department at Trier University, Germany. Her areas of specialization are Rhetoric, Philosophy, Postcolonial and Gender Studies. Her work explores contemporary German fiction that centers around concepts of cultural belonging and transnational identities against the backdrop of ethnicity, class and gender.

Selected Publications:

• with Birkner, Nina, and Helduser, Urte. Spielräume Des Anderen : Geschlecht Und Alterität Im Postdramatischen Theater. Bielefeld: Transcript, 2014.
• with Strobel, Jochen. Deutsche Lyrik in 30 Beispielen. Paderborn: Wilhelm Fink, 2011
• “Bildgedächtnis Und Bildkritik in Der Deutschsprachigen Prosa Seit 1945 (H. Böll, A. Duden, K. Drawert, U. Hahn).” Oxford German Studies2 (2008): 270-91.
• “Gewalt” Und “Geschlecht” : Diskurse in Deutschsprachiger Prosa Der 1980er Und 1990er Jahre. Tübingen: Francke, 2005.
• “Paradoxien Des Erinnerns. Biografisches Erzählen in Animal Triste.”German Monitor 1 (2002): 93-122.

Dr. Habiba Ibrahim is Associate Professor in the English department at the University of Washington, Seattle. Her areas of specialization are 20th-century African American Literary and Cultural Studies, Feminist Theory and Critical Race Theory. Her work explores the cultural politics of race and racial genealogies. More specifically, it explores how black novelists, essayists, and memoirists interpret and represent the twentieth century, colloquially known as the “long American century.” She examines how black writers represent the manifold changes in the meaning of “blackness” across the changing legal and political situation of the United States.

Selected Publications:

• Troubling the Family: The Promise of Personhood and the Rise of Multiracialism. University of Minnesota Press. 2012.
• “Toward Black and Multiracial Kinship after 1997, or How a Race Man Became Cablinasian.” Black Scholar3-4 (2009).
• “Canary in a Coal Mine: Performing Biracial ‘Difference’ in Caucasia.” LIT: Literature Interpretation Theory2 (2007).
• “‘Toni Morrison’ and ‘Double Standard’.” Encyclopedia of Women in World History. Macmillan Reference. 2007.
• “‘The Scottsboro Case’ and ‘Afrocentrism’.” Encyclopedia of Sex and Gender. Macmillan Reference. 2007.