Featured Fellow: Carsten Junker

Carsten Junker, Assistant Professor of English and American Studies, University of Bremen, Germany

Ebeling Fellowship Project: “Reading Affect in 18th-Century Abolitionist Debates”

Professor Junker’s project examines late eighteenth-century texts that envisioned an end to the enslavement of African-diasporic people in the North American colonies and early republic. The struggle to overcome slavery was fought by many – by the enslaved themselves and by white abolitionists – and in many different genres. Essays, letters, pamphlets, and other short texts are the genres Carsten Junker plans to analyze closely at the American Antiquarian Society. Within this framework, the question of how abolitionists sought to provoke affective responses in their audiences – from empathy, guilt and shame to fear, outrage and grief – will be central to his analysis.

While Professor Junker is at AAS on an Ebeling Fellowship, he also intends to learn more about the namesake of his fellowship – Christoph Daniel Ebeling (1741-1817). The Christoph Daniel Ebeling Fellowship is jointly administered by the German Association for American Studies (DGfA) and AAS. Application for this short-term fellowship is made through the DGfA. The AAS-DGfA Fellowship is open to German citizens or permanent residents at the post-graduate or postdoctoral stages of their careers. The Fellow will be selected on the basis of the applicant’s scholarly qualifications, the scholarly significance or importance of the project within the field of American studies in general and its German context, and the appropriateness of the proposed study to the Society’s collections. For more information about applying for the Ebeling Fellowship, see the German Association for American Studies website.

More information about fellowships at AAS, including a directory of fellows and their work, is available on our website.

Published by

Elizabeth Watts Pope

Curator of Books, American Antiquarian Society

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *