Maria Sulimma

Maria Sulimma is a Tenure-Track Assistant Professor for North American Literature and Cultural Studies at the English Department of Albert-Ludwigs-University of Freiburg. Her research focuses on intersections of popular culture, seriality, feminist media studies, and urban studies, with particular emphasis on gentrification narratives and climate humanities. She leads the North American Studies Section within the English Department and is actively involved in multiple research initiatives including the City Scripts project.

Dr. Sulimma's research interests span across multiple interconnected fields. Her work examines how television and literature represent urban transformations, particularly gentrification processes, through the lens of serial narratives. She investigates gender and queer representations in popular media, exploring how feminist perspectives shape contemporary cultural production. Her scholarship also extends to climate fiction and environmental humanities, analyzing how speculative narratives address ecological challenges in urban contexts. Through her interdisciplinary approach, she bridges literary studies, media theory, and urban geography to develop nuanced understandings of contemporary cultural phenomena.

Dr. Sulimma's scholarly output reveals a consistent trajectory toward examining everyday practices within urban environments, particularly how leisure activities and micro-narratives reveal larger patterns of urban transformation. Her recent work increasingly focuses on multispecies approaches to urban studies, examining human-animal relationships in gentrifying neighborhoods. She has developed innovative frameworks for understanding 'microscripts' of urban change through mundane practices, contributing significantly to literary urban studies and environmental humanities.

• FRIAS Junior Fellowship 2023/2024
• Fulbright American Studies Award (2022)
• Rolf Kenter-Dissertation Prize (2019)
• Fulbright American Studies Institute (2018)
• Elsa Neumann-Dissertation Scholarship of the State of Berlin (2017–2018)

Dr. Sulimma actively mentors students through her diverse seminar offerings including 'Gentrification on the Page and Screen,' 'Popular Culture and Seriality,' and 'Climate Change Screen Cultures.' She has organized numerous international conferences that foster collaborative research across disciplinary boundaries, including the 'Gentrification Imaginaries' conference at FRIAS. Her research is supported by multiple prestigious grants, including her current FRIAS Junior Fellowship which enables deep exploration of urban transformation narratives. She has also co-edited significant volumes such as 'City Scripts: Narratives of Postindustrial Urban Futures' (2023) and 'Gender and Seriality: Practices and Politics of Contemporary US Television' (2021).

Dr. Sulimma collaborates with the City Scripts research group, which investigates postindustrial urban futures through transatlantic perspectives. She serves as Book Review Editor and on the Editorial Board of the Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik / A Quarterly of Language, Literature and Culture, and is a board member of the Association of Literary Urban Studies. Her work connects with multiple research networks focused on urban studies, media studies, and gender studies, creating interdisciplinary bridges between these fields. Current projects examine the intersection of canine-human relationships with gentrification processes and the representation of climate change in television narratives.