Univ.-Prof. Dr. Ralph Poole

Professor für Amerikanistische Literatur- und Kulturwissenschaft / American Literature and Cultural Studies

Institutional Responsibilities

Univ.-Prof. of American Studies (Amerikanistische Literatur- und Kulturwissenschaft) Head of DepartmentMember of AKGMember of IERCoordinator ISEPDeputy Coordinator DSP “Popular Culture Studies”Faculty Member DSP “macht.bildung.gesellschaft“

Research Projects

My FWF-project on “Remember the Ladies: Gender and Comedy in the Age of the American Revolution  https://earlyamericantheater.com;  https://researchoutreach.org/articles/remembering-the-ladies/ has ended – at least for now – with the publication of  The Politics of Gender in Early American Theater: Revolutionary Dramatists and Theatrical Practices, ed. with Leopold Lippert (2021).

Another long-term project comes to a preliminary conclusion with the publication of  Queer Turkey: Transnational Poetics of Desire (2022).

The current focus of my research is on a collaborative project on “Rugged Rocks, Gentle Men: The Politics of Gender and Transnationality in the Postwar Austrian Heimatfilm” with Annette Keck, LMU Munich.

Another plan relating to the Heimatfilm but with a contemporary trans-European perspective is my research and book project on “Queer Heimatfilm: Transnational Aesthetics and Transforming Genre”.

I also continue to work on talks and essays relating to my project on “Extravagant Strangers: Queerness and Exile in Caribbean Literature and Popular Culture”.

Recent Publications

  • Queer Turkey: Transnational Poetics of Desire. Bielefeld: transcript, 2022.

  • Contemporary Quality TV: The Auteur, the Fans, and Constructions of Gender. Ed. with Saskia Fürst. Wien: Lit Verlag, 2021.

  • The Politics of Gender in Early American Theater: Revolutionary Dramatists and Theatrical Practices. Ed. with Leopold Lippert. Bielefeld: transcript, 2021.

  • “Affective Deception: Experiencing Genderplay in Louisa May Alcott”. European Journal of American Studies (forthcoming)

  • “The Future Was Dark: Das finstere Tal as Alpine Western”. Cultural Politics and Propaganda: Mediated Narratives and Images in Austrian-American Relations. Ed. Waldemar Zacharasiewicz. Wien: ÖAW Verlag, 2021. 393-420.

  • “’Ta, te, ti, toe, too’: The Horrors of the Harsh Female Voice in 1950s Hollywood Comedies”. JAAAS: Journal of the Austrian Association for American Studies 1.2 (2020): 283-301. Special Issue “Soundscapes, Sonic Cultures, and American Studies”, eds. Nassim W. Balestrini, Katharina Fackler, and Klaus Rieser.   https://doi.org/10.47060/jaaas.v1i2.36

  • “25 Buts: Grace King as Southern Humorist”. Nineteenth-Century Southern Women Writers: Grace Kind and Modernism.  Eds. Melissa Walker Heidari and Brigitte Zaugg.  Routledge Studies in Nineteenth-Century Literature (52). London: Routledge, 2020. 41-60.

  • “‘Huck Finn at King Arthur’s Court’: F. O. Matthiessen, the Salzburg Seminar, and American Studies”. JAAAS: Journal of the Austrian Association for American Studies 1.1 (2020): 1-26. Special Issue “The Salzburg Seminar and Its Legacies in American Studies”, eds. Joshua Parker and Hanna Wallinger.   https://doi.org/10.47060/jaaas.v1i1.70

  • “Rugged Rocks, Gentle Men: Hollywood’s Influence on the Austrian Heimatfilm”.geschlecht_transkulturell: Aktuelle Forschungsperspektiven. Eds. Eva Hausbacher, Liesa Herbst, Julia Ostwald, and Martina Thiele. Wiesbaden: Springer, 2020. 105-130.   https://doi.org/10.1007/ 978-3-658-30263-4

  • “The Fun of Deep Gossip: Lord Cornbury as Queen in Drag”. Anecdotal Modernity: Making and Unmaking History. Eds. James Dorson, Florian Sedlmeier, MaryAnn Snyder-Körber, and Birte Wege. Anglia Book Series (68). Berlin et al.: de Gruyter, 2020. 199-216.    https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110668490-014

  • “‘Romance is over, welcome to Haiti’: Open Secrets and Hidden Scandals in Vers le sud“.Polémiquer, scandaliser, provoquer. Eds. Peter Kuon, Béatrice Laville, Elisabeth Magne, Suzanne Winter. Eidôlon (128). Bordeaux: Presses Universitaires de Bordeaux, 2020. 133-149.

  • “‘the body can become conscious’: Robert Wilsons kinetisches Theater als postmodernes Gesamtkunstwerk”. Moderne Sprachen 63.1 (2019): 39-52.

  • “‘my natural instincts as a gentleman’: The Infatuated Detective in Anna Katharine Green’s The Leavenworth Case“. Neglected American Women Writers of the Long Nineteenth Century. Eds. Verena Laschinger and Sirpa Salenius. New York and London: Routledge, 2019. 173-188. DOI: 10.4324/9780429201837-13

  • “‘One sees it better from a distance’: James Baldwin’s Staging America in Turkey”. The Turkish-American Conundrum: Immigrants and Expatriates between Politics and Culture. Eds. Gönül Pultar, Louis Mazzari and Belma Ötüşet Baskett. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2019. 153-168.

  • ”’Rise like two angels in the night:’ Sexualized Violence against Queers in American Film”. European Journal of American Studies4 (2018).   http://journals.openedition.org/ejas/14078