Hannah Spahn

Dr. Hannah Spahn serves as Privatdozent (PD) at the Department of Culture, John F. Kennedy Institute for North American Studies, Free University of Berlin. Previously, she held positions as Interim Professor at the University of Potsdam and Assistant Professor at the Kennedy Institute, alongside a Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of Edinburgh's Institute for Advanced Studies and a Gilder Lehrman Junior Research Fellowship at the International Center for Jefferson Studies.

Her research centers on Enlightenment reception, African American literary traditions, theories of time/history, and intellectual history of the American Revolution/Early Republic. She critically examines intersections of enslavement, emancipation, and discourses of character, identity, cosmopolitanism, and nationhood, with particular focus on Thomas Jefferson's legacy and early African American writers. Her methodology bridges intellectual history, literary theory, and critical race studies to analyze how marginalized voices engaged Enlightenment frameworks.

Analysis of her recent publications reveals consistent engagement with transnational perspectives on American intellectual history. Her scholarship demonstrates how cosmopolitan ideals were negotiated within contexts of slavery and racial formation, particularly through examinations of Haitian Revolution reception, anti-lynching campaigns, and autobiographical narratives. This work establishes connections between Enlightenment thought and contemporary racial justice frameworks while challenging universalist claims through situated analyses of Black intellectual production.

• Shortlisted for the Kenshur Prize (2025) for Black Reason, White Feeling: The Jeffersonian Enlightenment in the African American Tradition
• Gilder Lehrman Junior Research Fellowship at International Center for Jefferson Studies

Dr. Spahn secured significant research funding as Principal Investigator for the DFG-funded project Cosmopolitanism and Character in Nineteenth-Century African American Literature. Her editorial work includes the German edition of Frederick Douglass's autobiography (Mein Leben als amerikanischer Sklave) and co-edited volumes on Jefferson-era cosmopolitanism. She actively contributes to academic discourse through the Kennedy Institute's Terra Foundation initiatives and research colloquia, with forthcoming scholarship examining the emotional dimensions of African American intellectual history.