Frau Dr. Mariya Nikolova

2020-2022: lecturer at the University of Potsdam, Humboldt University of Berlin, and Friedrich Schiller University Jena; researcher at Goldenstein Rechtsanwälte

November 2020: PhD., University of New South Wales/ Potsdam University, American Studies (summa cum laude)

2016-2020: RTG Minor Cosmopolitanisms, joint PhD fellowship (Sydney/Potsdam)

November 2015: M.A., University of Bremen, Transnational Literature, Theatre, and Film

July 2011: B.A., University of Bremen/Birmingham City University, English-Speaking Cultures/Political Science

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Areas of Interest in Research and Teaching

• Critical Race Theory and Critiques of Modernity
• Afropessimism
• Avant-Garde literature & theatre
• Performance Studies
• Contemporary Anglophone literatures and cultures
• Critical Whiteness Studies
• Law & Literature
• Gender, Feminism, and Queer Theory
• Ecofeminism & Queer Ecology

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Current Projects:
• Contours/Conceptualizations of Emptiness

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Monographs
• “How Whiteness Claimed the Future.” De Gruyter, 20 Mar. 2023, https://www.degruyter.com/document/isbn/9783110799996/html.

Articles

• with Verena Adamik and Nicole Waller,`Changeling Genres and the Glamour of the Human: Victor LaValle’s The Changeling,` forthcoming.
•`Cult & Guts & Gender: S for Strength for Sabotage, F for Fuck Functionality.`
Narrating, Representing, Reflecting ‘Disability: 21st American perspectives , forthcoming.
•`Weiche Rahmen aus Baumwolle`, 100% Baumwolle.TenDenZen, 2022.
• “Nekrologika.” MUZ 2, 2022.
• `Reaching the Limit. Or, How Kathy Acker Used Blackness to Abandon Haiti and Arrive
Home Safely.` The Minor on the Move. Doing Cosmopolitanisms, Edition Assemblage, 2021.
• “Jumpcut”& “Pinecones.” Minor Cosmopolitan: Thinking Art, Politics and the Universe
Together Otherwise, Diaphanes, 2020.
• "On Breaking Dissertations, or How I Read Sideways." U.S. Studies Online: Forum for
New Writing, 22 January 2018, http://www.baas.ac.uk/usso/on-breaking- dissertations-or-how-i- readsideways/
• “White Violence and Spectral Blackness in Don DeLillo’s Zero K.” COPAS: Current
Objectives of Postgraduate American Studies, Vol 20, No. 2,
https://copas.uni- regensburg.de/article/view/320
• , et al."Current Objectives of Postgraduate American Studies." COPAS 18.1(2017).
https://copas.uni- regensburg.de/issue/view/34.
• “Race.” Critical Cultural Literacy Online
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Conference and Workshop Papers

February 2024 - Guest lecture, `Deer Women: Cut in The Straight Story. An Ecofeminist reading of road movies and roads.` University of Bremen.

June 2023 - Guest lecture, `Cult & Guts & Gender: S for Strength for Sabotage, F for Fuck Functionality.` Narrating, Representing, Reflecting Disability: 21st Century American perspectives, CIAS, Center for InterAmerican Studies, Bielefeld.

September 2021 - Conference paper, `How Whiteness Claimed the Future`. American Crisis/American Renewal?
Australian and New Zealand American Studies Association, Macquarie School of Social Sciences.

October 2019 – Guest lecture, 'Antiblack Violence and White Risk in Kathy Acker's Kathy Goes to Haiti'. Research Seminar Series. School of the Arts and Media. University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia.

June 2019 – Guest lecture, 'How Whiteness Claimed the Future. Spectres of Newness in US-American Literature'. Symposium: African American and Africana Studies in Germany, Potsdam University.

December 2018 – Conference paper, 'PROJECTORS OFF. Or, What Happens to Objects in Full Darkness'. Minor Cosmopolitan Weekend. Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW), Berlin, Germany.

September 2018 – Guest lecture, 'Miss/Reading Beloved: White Feminists' Violence and Imagining the Future.' Research Seminar Series. School of the Arts and Media. University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia.

June 2018 – Conference paper, 'Split Future(s)- Trans*Posing Bodies. Interventions on Materialities and Flight.' Critical Insurrections: Decolonizing Difficulties, Activist Imaginaries, and Collective Possibilities: The 4th Critical Ethnic Studies Association Conference. University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC. Unceded Musqueam, Tsleil-Waututh, and Squamish Territory.

March 2017 – Conference paper, 'Feminism on the Move'. Second Biennial EAAS Women' Network Symposium (European Association for American Studies Women's Network), Lausanne, Switzerland.

July 2016 – Conference paper, 'Madness and the End of the World - Tropes and Territories of White Violence in Reading Toni Morrison's Beloved'. 9th Global Meeting of Madness Project, Oxford, UK.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Conference and Workshop Organisation

February 2018 – Co-Organizer, ‘Minor Cosmopolitan Justice and Aesthetics.’ Summer School, Macquarie University. Sydney, Australia.

February 2018 – Moderator; Lecture by Prof. Alana Lentin, ‘The Invention of ‘Cultural Racism’ and the Apparent Resurgence of White Supremacy.’ Summer School. Sydney, Australia.

June 2017 – Co-Organizer and Moderator; Guest Lecture by Natasha A. Kelly, "Afro-Culture: On being Human and other Myths." Lecture series Minor Cosmopolitan Theories. Potsdam, Germany.

June 2017 – Panel Co-organizer and Moderator; "Meet the Speakers." Panel at the Annual Conference of the German Association of American Studies. Hannover, Germany.

October 2016 – Co-Organizer; "Postgraduate Forum." Annual Postgraduate Conference of the German Association of American Studies (DGfA/GAAS). Hamburg, Germany.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Available to Supervise Module Papers and BA/MA/MEd Theses on

• British & American literatures and cultures
• Texts and topics related to my areas of interest in research and teaching