Jutta Ernst, Professor and Chair of American Studies as well as Executive Board member of the Obama Institute for Transnational American Studies at the University of Mainz, Germany, is particularly interested in the intersections of North American Studies and Translation Studies, focusing in her research on the mobility of authors, editors, media, texts, and ideas as well as on the shifts in language, style, and format that go along with these transcultural dynamics. Among her more recent publications are Amerikanische Modernismen: Schreibweisen, Konzepte und zeitgenössische Periodika als Vermittlungsinstanzen, a study which traces the emergence and consolidation of competing concepts of modernism and identifies the actors and institutions involved, highlighting the role of contemporary magazines as cultural mediators. In “‘Poetics of the Potent’: Yann Martel’s Life of Pi, Edgar Allan Poe’s The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket, and Modes of Transcreation,” Ernst adopts Haroldo de Campos’s concept of “transcreation” for a reading that not only aims at establishing in how far Life of Pi is a new Canadian version of a U.S. American classic, but sheds light on modes of writing that are on the rise in a globalized 21st century. “Lives in Transition: Eugene Jolas’s Man from Babel, the Obama Presidency, and Transnational American Studies” connects the transcultural life writing of poet, translator, and magazine editor Eugene Jolas with the larger issues at stake in the burgeoning field of Transnational American Studies. The concept of ‚transculturality‘ and cross-cultural processes in general stand in the center of the co-written introduction "Transkulturelle Dynamiken – Entwicklungen und Perspektiven eines Konzepts."

Selected Publications

Ernst, Jutta, and Brigitte Johanna Glaser, eds. Shifting Grounds: Cultural Tectonics along the Pacific Rim. Heidelberg: Winter, 2020.

Amerikanische Modernismen: Schreibweisen, Konzepte und zeitgenössische Periodika als Vermittlungsinstanzen. Saarbrücker Beiträge zur vergleichenden Literatur- und Kulturwissenschaft 82. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2018.

“‘Poetics of the Potent’: Yann Martel’s Life of Pi, Edgar Allan Poe’s The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket, and Modes of Transcreation.” Gained Ground: Perspectives on Canadian and Comparative North American Studies. Hg. Eva Gruber und Caroline Rosenthal. Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2018. 57-75.

“Lives in Transition: Eugene Jolas’s Man from Babel, the Obama Presidency, and Transnational American Studies.” Obama and Transnational American Studies. Ed. Alfred Hornung. Heidelberg: Winter, 2016. 471-91.

"Einleitung: Transkulturelle Dynamiken – Entwicklungen und Perspektiven eines Konzepts.” Transkulturelle Dynamiken: Aktanten – Prozesse – Theorien. Ed. Jutta Ernst and Florian Freitag. Bielefeld: Transcript, 2015. 7-30. (with Florian Freitag).