Ilka Brasch

PD Dr. Ilka Brasch is a Lecturer and Acting Professor for American Studies at Leibniz University Hannover and the University of Hamburg (2024-2025). Her research focuses on American literature and film, particularly the early American Republic (18th-19th centuries) and film history before 1950. She co-leads the DFG-funded research network Voice & Agencies: America and the Atlantic, 1600-1865 (2021-2024).

• Education
  • Habilitation (2024): "H.H. Brackenridge's Modern Chivalry: Materiality, Archival History, Nation & Empire"
  • PhD (2017): "Operational Detection: Film Serials and the American Cinema, 1910-1940"
  • MA (2011): "Instrument-Mediation and the Melodramatic Experience"
  • BA (2009): "Daisy Miller between Literary Text and Filmic Adaptation"

Research Interests:

• Archival theory and early American literature
• Media archaeology and technological narratives
• Serialization in film and literature
• Democracy and cultural production
• Political discourses in pre-1865 America

Academic Trends: Her publications span film serials, media modernity, archival practices, and early American literature. She explores intersections between technological innovation and narrative structure.

Scientific Awards:

• Fulbright American Studies Award (2018)
• Doctoral scholarship (Evangelisches Studienwerk Villigst, 2013)
• Tuition Fee Scholarship (Friends of Leibniz University, 2010-2011)

Collaborative Academic Work: She has co-organized conferences like Managing Mass Culture: Serialization, Standardization, and Modernity (2015) and contributed to edited volumes such as Modernities and Modernization in North America (2018).