Team > Dr. Christine Vogt-William

Biography

Originally from Singapore, Christine Vogt-William studied English, German and Psychology at the University of Essen, Germany. She completed her doctoral thesis at the Centre for Women’s Studies at the University of York, England as a Marie Curie Gender Graduate Fellow.

She is the author of Bridges, Borders and Bodies: Transgressive Transculturality in Contemporary South Asian Diasporic Women’s Novels (2014) and is co-editor of Disturbing Bodies (2008), an essay collection on artistic and literary representations of “deviant” bodies. She has published on South Asian and African diasporic and mixed race literatures, queer and critical race approaches to Tolkien’s works, literary representations of transracial adoption and transnational surrogacy in postcolonial women’s writing. She is a guest editor of a special issue on ‘Shame in Anglophone Literatures’ for the European Journal of English Studies.

Vogt-William was a Visiting Scholar at the Department of Women’s Studies at Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia, USA from 2008 to 2010. She has taught in the Postcolonial and North American Studies departments at the universities of Münster, Freiburg and Frankfurt am Main. Vogt-William was Interim Professor for Postcolonial and Gender Studies at the English and American Studies Department, Humboldt University, Berlin from 2014 to 2017, where she taught literary and cultural studies.

She is currently working on her second book on cultural representations of biological twinship in Anglophone literatures.  Vogt-William is the Director of the Gender and Diversity Office with the Africa Multiple Cluster (funded by the German Research Council) at the University of Bayreuth.

Selected Publications

• Co-authored with Stefan Ouma, Franklin Obeng-Odoom, Abena D. Oduro, Tanita J. Lewis, Lebohang Liepollo Pheko, Sara Stevano & Ingrid Kvangraven (28 Jul 2023): Reconfiguring African Studies, reconfiguring economics: centring intersectionality and social stratification, Critical African Studies, DOI: 10.1080/21681392.2023.2226774
• ‘Staying with the Trouble’: Decolonial Care and Intersectional Responsibility in Knowledge Production in Covid-19 Times. In: Arndt, S., Yacouba, B., Lawanson, T., Msindo, E., Simatei, P. (eds) Covid-19 in Africa: Societal and Economic Implications. African Histories and Modernities. (2023). Palgrave Macmillan, Cham.https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-40316-3_12
• ‘“Having Words with the Likes of Dragons”: The Power and Authority of Gender Amongst Literary Dragons.’ In Hither Shore: Interdisciplinary Journal on Modern Fantasy Literature. (Volume 16).  Macht und Autorität in Tolkiens Werk – Power and Authority in the Works of J.R.R. Tolkien. Hrsg. Thomas Fornet-Ponse, Thomas Honegger, Evelyn Koch. Essen: Oldlib Verlag. 2023. 88-105.
• Co-authored with Rüdiger Seesemann and Sabelo Ndlovu-Gatsheni. “African Studies in Distress: German Scholarship on Africa and the Neglected Challenge of Decoloniality”. Africa Spectrum. Spring 2022. 1-18. DOI: 10.1177/00020397221080179.
• Shame and Shamelessness in Anglophone Literature. Special Issue European Journal of English Studies (2019). Co-Edited with Katrin Röder.
• ‘You have done our shame’: interrogating shame and honour in diaspora in Jasvinder Sanghera’s Shame trilogy, European Journal of English Studies, 23:3, (2019) 340-355, DOI: 10.1080/13825577.2019.1655239
• Afterword: “Nothing Can be Changed until it is Faced”. COPAS [Current Objectives of Postgraduate American Studies] Special Issue White Supremacy in the United States and Beyond. Vol. 20, No.2 (2019).  109-126. http://dx.doi.org/10.5283/copas.338
• The Fraught ART of Life and Family Fictions: Wombs for Rent in Contemporary South Asian Women’s Novels. Kairos: A Journal of Critical Symposium, [S.l.], v. 3, n. 1, p. 2-22, Dec. 2018. ISSN 2581-7361. Available at: <http://www.kairostext.in/index.php/kairostext/article/view/50>.
•  ‘”A Ghostly Twin Struggling for Its Own Place”: Biological Twinship, Homes and Hauntings in Canadian (Sub)Urban Spaces’. Zeitschrift für Kanada-Studien 38 (2018). 64-89. (peer-reviewed)
• ‘”In the Perilous Realm or in Its Shadowy Marches’“: Standing Between Spaces and Inhabiting Multiple Worlds with the Eld Green and Kyn Folk”. Hither Shore: Interdisciplinary Journal on Modern Fantasy Literature 14 (2017). 181-203.
• ‘Tolkien’s Green Man: The Racialised Cultural Other Within and Green Spaces in The Lord of The Rings’. In: There and Back Again: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Tolkien and His Works. Monika Ludwig-Kirner et al. Cormare Series. Zollikofen: Walking Tree Publications, 2017. 305-339.
• ‘Girls Interrupted, Business Unbegun and Precarious Homes: Literary Representations of Transracial Adoption in Contemporary South Asian Diasporic Women's Fiction’. In: International Adoption in North American Literature and Culture: Transnational,Transracial and Transcultural Narratives. Mark Shackleton (ed.). Basingstoke: Palgrave McMillan, 2017. 221-253.
• “Brothers-in-Arms: Death and Hobbit Homosociality in The Lord of the Rings”. Die Inklings und der Erste Weltkrieg: Symposium 17. und 18. September 2016 in Aachen. Inklings Jahrbuch für Literatur und Ästhetik 34. Dieter Petzold und Klaudia Seibel (Hrsg.) Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang Verlag, 2017. 81-95.
• "HeLa and The Help: Justice and African American Women in White Women's Narratives." Postcolonial Justice. Lars Eckstein, Anja Schwarz, Dirk Wiemann (eds.). Amsterdam: Brill/Rodopi, 2017. 139-172.
• "'lf it's a game of colors you want to play': Contemporary Literary Representations of African-American GIs in Germany". Diasporas, Cultures of Mobilities, 'Race', Vol. 3. African-Americans, "Race" and Diaspora'.Series PoCoPages, Coll. "Horizon Anglophone". Claudine Raynaud and Claudine DuBoin (eds.) Montpellier: Presses Universitaires de la Mediterranee, 2016. 145-161.
• "Split Me In Two: Gender, Mixed Race Relations and Dougla ldentities in lndo-Caribbean Women's Fiction." Anglistentag 2015 Paderborn Proceedings. Christoph Ehland, Ilka Mindt and Merle Tönnies (eds.). Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier, 2016. 123- 134.
• "Meeting Mr. Hyde and Dr. Stone: Mixed Race Twins and White Fathers in Contemporary Diasporic Novels." Diasporas, Cultures of Mobilities, 'Race', Vol. 2: Diaspora, Memory and lntimacy. Sarah Barbour et al (eds.) Series PoCoPages, Call. "Horizons Anglophones." Montpellier: Presses Universitaires de la Mediterranee, 2015. 135- 154.
• '"Black Indian' Women and Blood Rules: Hyphenated Hybridities and the Margins of America". lndigenous Knowledge: Language, Literature, Arts. Vol. 3. Ganesh Davy, Geoffrey Davis and K.K. Chakravarthy. (eds.). India: Routledge, 2015. 175-208.
• "Masculinities Out of Line: Navigating Queerness and Diasporic ldentity in Shyam Selvadurai's Funny Boy and Shani Mootoo's Cereus Blooms at Night". Diasporas, Cultures of Mobilities, 'Race'. Judith Misrahi- Barak and Claudine Raynaud (eds.) Series PoCoPages, Call. "Horizon Anglophone". Montpellier: Presses Universitaires de la Mediterranee, 2014. 323-344.
• Bridges, Borders and Bodies: Women and Transgressive Transculturality in Contemporary South Asian Diasporic Fiction. Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2014.
• "Partitions, Private Lives and Co-Wives: Women, Modernity and Nation in Shauna Singh Baldwin's What the Body Remembers and Manju Kapur's Difficult Daughters". Changing Nations / Changing Worlds: The Concept of Nation in the Transnational Era. Joel Kuortti and Om P. Dwivedi (eds.). Jaipur: Rawat, 2011. 34-69.
• "Transcultural Tea Times: An Overview of Tea in History". Hybrid Cultures - Nervous States. Ulrike Lindner et al (eds.) Amsterdam, New York, Atlanta: Rodopi, 2010. 127-150.
• "Smells, Skins and Spices: Indian Spice Shops as Gendered Diasporic Spaces in the Novels of Indian Women Writers of the Diaspora." Shared Waters: Soundings in Postcolonial Literatures. Stella Borg-Barthet. (ed.) Amsterdam, New York, Atlanta: Rodopi, 2009. 151-166.
• "Transcultural Gendered lnterrogations in Bride and Prejudice: lntertextual Encounters of the South Asian Diasporic Kind." Word & Image in Colonial and Postcolonial Literatures and Cultures. Michael Meyer (ed.). Amsterdam, New York, Atlanta: Rodopi, 2009. 237-260.
• "Of Serpents and Swastikas: Transcultural lnterrogations in Poems by Two Indian Women Writers of the Diaspora". Translation of Cultures. Petra Rüdiger and Konrad Grass (eds.). Amsterdam, New York: Brill, 2009. 149-168.
• "Routes to the Roots: Transcultural Ramifications in Bombay Talkie." Transcultural English Studies: Theories, Fictions, Realities. Frank Schulze-Engler et al. (eds.). Amsterdam, New York: Rodopi, 2009. 309-322.
• Disturbing Bodies. Berlin: Trafo Verlag, 2008. Co-edited with Sylvia Mieszkowski.
• "Hijras and Drag Queens: Cross-Dressing Disturbed in Contemporary Stage Musicals". Disturbing Bodies. Sylvia Mieszkowski and Christine Vogt-William (eds.). Berlin: Trafo Verlag, 2008. 89-118.
• "Bhangra Babes: Masala Music and Questions of ldentity and Integration in South-Asian British Women's Writing". Global Fragments: (Dis)Orientation in the New World Order. Anke Bartels and Dirk Wiemann (eds.). Amsterdam, New York: Rodopi, 2007. 73-88.
• "Rescue Me: Anita and Me and A Wicked Old Woman." Towards a Transcultural Future: Literature and Society in a Postcolonial World. Geoff Davis et al eds. Amsterdam, New York: Rodopi, 2005. 378-388.
• "Language is the Skin of My Thought". The Politics of English as a World Language: New Horizons in Postcolonial Cultural Studies. Christian Mair (ed.) Amsterdam, New York: Rodopi, 2003. 394-404.
• "Just Call Me Thelma: Reflections on Black British and Other Britons". Hard Times, Nr. 73 (2001). 12-18.

Dr. Christine Vogt-William
Director of Gender & Diversity Office

Room 3.3.12
ZAPF Gebäude 3, Nürnberger Str. 38 

Phone: +49 921 55-4791
E-mail: christine.vogt-william@uni-bayreuth.de