Dr. Mahshid Mayar

Assistant Professor | wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin
North American Literature and Culture
Faculty of Linguistics and Litrature
Bielefeld University
Postfach 10 01 31
33501 Bielefeld

Office: UHG C4 - 222
Office Hours: Teusdays 1:00 - 2:00 p.m. and by appointment
E-Mail: mahshid.mayar[at]uni-bielefeld.de

Dr. Mahshid Mayar

I am a literary critic and cultural historian. Since Oct. 2016, I am an assistant professor of American Studies at Bielefeld University, where I teach historical and literary American childhoods, transnational American literature, 19th-century US cultural history, and critical game studies. In my current position, I follow two lines of research: While I engage with the 'blank' in postmodern American literature ('erasure' and 'blackout' literature) for my second-book project, I also conduct research on digital games, where I theorize the study of digital games and examine game titles that open dialogues on US history and culture.

My first book, Citizens and Rulers of the World: American Children and World Geography at the Turn of the 20th Century, is under contract with the University of North Carolina Press. The volume is scheduled to come out late in 2020.

In 2017, I was a post-doctoral fellow at the English Department, Amherst College.

To view my academic CV, please click here.

Research

Since the start of my career in American Studies, I have enjoyed working at the borders between disciplines. I my research and teaching, I navigate the contact zones between cultural geography and childhood studies, history of empires and critical game studies, post-modern US literature as well as transnational American studies. To get an overview of the various lines of research I have been working on since 2010, please click on the links below.

Childhood Studies | American Studies / Literature | Critical Game Studies

  • 2021

    Edited Volume

    Special Issue “American Video Games and the Politics of Popular Culture” (co-edited with Dr Stefan Schubert, Universität Leipzig) (forthcoming with European Journal of American Studies 2021.3)

  • 2021

    Peer-Reviewed Article

    “Affect and Ambivalence: Islam(-o-Phobia) and Digital Games,” article in special issue “American Video Games and the Politics of Popular Culture” (forthcoming with European Journal of American Studies 2021.3)

  • 2019

    Keynote Lecture

    “Banal, Boring, Banned: Unplayability in Digital Games,” Future and Reality of Gaming (FROG), Vienna

  • 2019

    Scholarly Essay

    “Weirding the Empire in West of Loathing and Other Digital Games,” U.S. Studies Online (USSO) blog series “American Studies and Video Games.”

  • 2019

    Co-Organized Panel

    “Video Games and the Politics of Popular Culture” at DGfA, Hamburg

  • 2019

    Conference Talk

    “The 2eX Game: Ambivalence and Affect toward Muslims in Digital Games” at DGfA, Hamburg

  • 2019

    Conference Talk

    “Art, Adventure, and Affect: Deep Time and Spatial Floatability in American Video Games” at Playing the Field II, Duisburg-Essen

  • 2018

    Peer-Reviewed Article

    “Survival as Species Narrative: (Supra-)Referentiality in Humanitarian Crisis Video Games” in Loading…

  • 2018

    Book Chapter

    “Überleben im Anthropozäne. Wege zu einer Definition von. Humanitarian Crisis Games” in Weltmaschine Computerspiel

  • 2018

    Journal Special Issue

    Encounters in the ‘Game-Over Era’: The Americas in Videogames for fiar

  • 2018

    Introduction to Journal Special Issue

    “A game (simulation) is a game (interactive technology) is a game (lifestyle) is a game (live archive): An Introduction” for Encounters in the ‘Game-Over Era’: The Americas in Videogames

  • 2018

    Interview for Journal Special Issue

    “The Post-Apocalyptic and the Ludic: An Interview with Dr. Stephen Joyce” for Encounters in the ‘Game-Over Era’: The Americas in Videogames

  • 2017

    Critical Game Studies Research & Teaching

    Game Studies Research and Teaching: Kickoff Meeting (with Tyll Zybura), Bielefeld University

  • 2017

    Peer-Reviewed Article

    “A Case for Serious Play: Virtual Pacifism and Historical Digital Games” in Zeitschrift des Arbeitskreises Militär und Gesellschaft in der Frühen Neuzeit

  • 2017

    Organized Panel

    “Empires in the ‘Game-Over Era’: Videogames and the Question of Historical Narrative” at 5th ENIUGH, Budapest

  • 2014

    Conference Talk

    “At Gamer-Explorer-Cartographer’s Will: Rewriting History and Redoing Cartography in the Strategy Game Age of Empires” at 4th ENIUGH, Paris

  • 2012

    Conference Talk

    “Playing Empire: Where does Empire Stand in Age of Empires” at Forces at Play: Bodies, Power, and Spaces, Amherst, MA.

  • 2020

    Peer-Reviewed Journal Article

    “The Child in the Archive: Historical Presence, Childhood Studies, and American Studies” (in preparation)

  • 2019

    Commentary

    “Verbs of Violence: 19th-Century Jigsaw Puzzles, Otherness, and American Childhood” for SHCY Commentaries, The Society for the History of Children and Youth (SHCY)

  • 2018

    Conference Talk

    “‘our work is done and now for some fun and play’: Personal Fictions of the World and (Counter)Publics of Childhood” at DGfA, Berlin

  • 2018

    Book Review

    Reid, Jason. Get out of my room! A History of Teen Bedrooms in America

  • 2017

    Visiting Fellowship

    With Professor Karen Sanchez-Eppler, English Departmnet, Amherst College, Amherst, MA.

  • 2016

    Book Chapter

    “From Tools to Toys: American Dissected Maps and Geographic Knowledge at the Turn of the Twentieth Century.” Knowledge Landscapes North America. Eds. Sabine Sielke, Christian Klöckner, and Simone Knewitz. Heidelberg: Winter

  • 2016

    Conference Talk

    “The Child in the Archive: A Question of Historical Agency” at Bielefeld-York-Lund PhD Conference, Bielefeld

  • 2016

    Encyclopedia Entry

    “Children, Impact of War on” for SAGE Encyclopedia of War

  • 2015

    Book Review

    C. Dallett Hemphill, Siblings: Brothers and Sisters in American History

  • 2014/15

    Research Fellowship

    International Youth Library, Munich

  • 2014

    Encyclopedia Entry

    “Child Study Association of America” for Social History of the American Family: An Encyclopedia

  • 2014

    Encyclopedia Entry

    “Tabula Rasa” for Social History of the American Family: An Encyclopedia

  • 2021

    Edited volume

    The Anechoic Chamber: Construction and Reception of Silence in Language, Literature, Culture, and History (co-edited with Marion Schulte, Universität Bielefeld) (in preparation)

  • 2020

    Monograph

    Citizens and Rulers of the World: American Children and World Geography at the Turn of the 20th Century (forthcoming with UNC Press, Chapel Hill)

  • 2020

    Conference Organized

    “The Anechoic Chamber: Construction and Reception of Silence in Language, Literature, Music, Politics, and History,” Zentrum für interdisziplinäre Forschung (ZiF), Bielefeld (co-organized with Dr Marion Schulte) (forthcoming)

  • 2020

    Panel Organized

    “Silence in/of Archives: Absence, Erasure, Censorship, and Archival Politics,” panel proposed to 6th European Congress on World and Global History (ENIUGH), Turku, Finland (forthcoming)

  • 2019-ongoing

    Habilitation/Second-Book Project

    The (W)Hole: Erasure and Arrival in Times of Textual Trouble (working title)

  • 2020

    Peer-Reviewed Article

    “Slated Globes as Imperial Palimpsest: School Geography and the US Empire at the Turn of the 20th Century” (under review)

  • 2019

    Conference Talk

    “What on earth! Slated Globes, School Geography, and the U.S. Empire at the Turn of the Twentieth Century,” Striking Back: On Imperial Fantasies and Fantasies of Empire, Max Planck Institute, Göttingen

  • 2018

    Book Review

    Anthony Pagden, The Burdens of Empire: 1539 to the Present

  • 2017/18

    MA Seminar

    “‘Childhood is a foreign country’: American Literature, Youth, and the World”, Bielefeld

  • 2016

    Dissertation Prize

    westfälisch-lippische Universitätsgesellschaft Dissertation Prize, Bielefeld

  • 2014

    Conference Talk

    “Our Infant Navy: A Turn-of-the-Century Conversation between American Youths and American Imperialists” at EAAS 60th Anniversary Conference, The Hague

  • 2013

    Book Review

    Hsuan L. Hsu, Geography and the Production of Space in Nineteenth- Century American Literature

  • 2013

    Conference Talk

    “Domestication of Play, Globalization of Playthings: Geography Games and World Cartography in Turn-of-the-Century United States” at Joint BAAS/IAAS Conference, Nottingham

  • 2011

    Visiting Fellowship

    History Department, Georgetown University, Washington, D.C.

  • 2010-2016

    Doctoral Dissertation

    Citizens and Rulers of the World: American Children and World Geography at the Turn of the 20th Century, Bielefeld

  • 2010-2014

    DFG Doctoral Scholarship

    DFG-Funded Doctoral Research at Bielefeld Graduate School in History and Sociology (BGHS), Bielefeld

  • 2009

    MA Thesis

    An American Breakfast: A Smaller World in the 1890s, Heidelberg

  • 2008-2009

    MA Scholarship

    HCA-Funded Master of Arts at Heidelberg Center for American Studies (HCA), Heidelberg

Publications

So far, my publications have appeared in three broad fields: childhood studies (including history of education in the United States, juvenile periodicals, war and childhood, children as archival presences and childhood as archival material), cultural geography of the US Empire (including my forthcoming first book on world geography knowledge at the turn of the 20th century, theoretical speculations on terra incognita in slated, blank globes, and production of geographic knowledge through geographical toys), and critical game studies (including the study of pacifism in strategy games, speculations on the intersections of game studies and American studies, a study of historical digital games in the Anthropocene, and genre interventions in the study of Western digital games).

Evolving out of my long-standing interest in absence, silence, and blank as points of contention (see, for instance, the forthcoming articles on blank as imperial and erasure as a quality of children’s toys in the 19th-century US market), my second-book project focuses on postmodern American literature, examining erasure and redaction in literary texts as a matter of inter-textuality and at the service of political ends.

Manuscripts/Edited Volumes | Journal Articles/Book Chapters| Scholarly Essays| Encyclopedia Entries| Book Reviews

Monograph

2020
Citizens and Rulers of the World: American Children and World Geography at the Turn of the Twentieth Century (forthcoming with University of North Carolina Press).

Edited Volumes

2021
Edited Volume The Anechoic Chamber: Construction and Reception of Silence in Language, Literature, Culture, and History (co-edited with Marion Schulte, Universität Bielefeld) (in preparation)
2021
Special Issue “American Video Games and the Politics of Popular Culture,” co-edited with Dr Stefan Schubert, Universität Leipzig (forthcoming with European Journal of American Studies) (2021.3).
2018
Special Issue “Encounters in the ‘Game-Over Era’: The Americas in Videogames,” editor, fiar: Forum for Inter-American Research 11.2 (2018).
2018
Special Issue “Done with Eurocentrism? Directions, Diversions, and Debates in History and Sociology,” co-editor with Yaatsil Guevara González, InterDisciplines: Journal of History and Sociology 8.2 (2017).

Book Chapters

2018
“Überleben im Anthropozäne. Wege zu einer Definition von. Humanitarian Crisis Games,” Weltmaschine Computerspiel: Mythen und Techniken der Globalisierung im digitalen Spiel. Eds. Eugen Pfister and Tobias Winnerling. Verein zur Studien interkultureller Geschichte: Mandelbaum Verlag (2018).
2016
“From Tools to Toys: American Dissected Maps and Geographic Knowledge at the Turn of the Twentieth Century.” Knowledge Landscapes North America. Eds. Sabine Sielke, Christian Klöckner, and Simone Knewitz. Heidelberg: Winter (2016).

Journal Articles

2021
“Affect and Ambivalence: Islam(-o-Phobia) and Digital Games,” article in special issue “American Video Games and the Politics of Popular Culture” (forthcoming with European Journal of American Studies 2021.3).
2020
“Slated Globes as Imperial Palimpsest: School Geography and the US Empire at the Turn of the 20th Century” (under review).
2018
“Survival as Species Narrative: (Supra-)Referentiality in Humanitarian Crisis Video Games,” Loading…. 11.18 (2018).
2018
“The Child in the Archive: Historical Presence, Childhood Studies, and American Studies” (in preparation to be submitted to Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth).
2018
“A game (simulation) is a game (interactive technology) is a game (lifestyle) is a game (live archive): An Introduction,” introduction to “Encounters in the ‘Game-Over Era’: The Americas in/and Video Games,” fiar: Forum for Inter-American Research 11.2 (2018).
2018
“The Post-Apocalyptic and the Ludic: An Interview with Dr. Stephen Joyce,” in “Encounters in the ‘Game-Over Era’: The Americas in/and Video Games,” fiar: Forum for Inter-American Research 11.2 (2018).
2018
“Done with Eurocentrism? Unpacking a Plural Construct,” introduction to “Done with Eurocentrism? Directions, Diversions, and Debates in History and Sociology,” co-written with Yaatsil Guevara González, InterDisciplines: Journal of History and Sociology 8.2 (2017).
2017
“A Case for Serious Play: Virtual Pacifism and Historical Digital Games,” in “Frühneuzeitlicher Krieg in Digitalen Spielen,” Zeitschrift des Arbeitskreises Militär und Gesellschaft in der Frühen Neuzeit 20 (2016).

Scholarly Essays

2019
“Weirding the Empire in West of Loathing and Other Digital Games,” U.S. Studies Online (USSO) blog series “American Studies and Video Games”.
2019
“Verbs of Violence: 19th-Century Jigsaw Puzzles, Otherness, and American Childhood,” Society for the History of Children and Youth (SHCY).

Encyclopedia Entries

2016
“Children, Impact of War on.” In SAGE Encyclopedia of War: Social Science Perspectives. London: Sage Reference, 2016.
2014
“Child Study Association of America.” In Social History of the American Family: An Encyclopedia. London: Sage Reference, 2014.
2014
“Tabula Rasa.” In Social History of the American Family: An Encyclopedia. London: Sage Reference, 2014.

Book Reviews

Reviews have appeared in Global Media Journal, Ex Historia, International Journal of Localities, die Historische Zeitschrift, US Studies Online, Nineteenth Century Studies Association, H-Net Empire, and H-Soz- Kult.

2020
William Rankin, After the Map: Cartography, Navigation, and the Transformation of Territory in the Twentieth Century (University of Chicago Press, 2016), for US Studies Online (forthcoming).
2020
Bonnie J. Smith, Modern Empires: A Reader (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018), for H-Net Empire (forthcoming).
2018
Jason Reid, Get out of my room! A History of Teen Bedrooms in America (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2016), for H-Soz-Kult.
2018
Steven Cassedy, Connected: How Trains, Genes, Pineapples, Piano Keys, and a Few Disasters Transformed Americans at the Dawn of the Twentieth Century (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2014), for Nineteenth Century Studies Association.
2018
Anthony Pagden, The Burdens of Empire: 1539 to the Present (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015), for H-Net Empire.
2015
C. Dallett Hemphill, Siblings: Brothers and Sisters in American History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), for US Studies Online.
2014
Valeska Huber, Channelling Mobilities: Migration and Globalisation in the Suez Canal Region and Beyond 1869-1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), for die Historische Zeitschrift, Vol. 298.
2013
Hsuan L. Hsu, Geography and the Production of Space in Nineteenth-Century American Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), for Ex Historia, Vol. 5.
2012
Ulrike Freitag and Achin von Oppen, ed.s, Translocality: The Study of Globalizing Processes from a Southern Perspective (Leiden: Koninklijke Brill, 2009), for International Journal of Localities, Vol. 1.
2011
Barry Gills and William R. Thompson, ed.s, Globalization and Global History (London: Routledge, 2006), for Ex Historia, Vol. 3.
2010
McKenzie Wark, Virtual Geography: Living with Global Media Events (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994), for Global Media Journal, Vol. 8.

Invited Lectures

Furthermore, I have given talks at various national, European, and international conferences and workshops (complete list of my conference activities since 2010 can be found in my CV). Listed here are the talks I have been invited to deliver at various venues, including the keynote lecture delivered at the Future and Reality of Gaming (FROG), Vienna, Austria.

Keynote Lecture | Invited Talks

Keynote Lecture

Oct. 2019
“Banal, Boring, Banned: Unplayability in Digital Games,” Future and Reality of Gaming (FROG), Vienna.

Invited Talks

July 2019
“Erasure and Arrival in Postmodern American Literature,” Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik, Universität Potsdam, Potsdam.
June 2019
“The 2eX Game: Ambivalence and Affect toward Muslims in Digital Games,” DGfA 2019, Universität Hamburg, Hamburg.
Nov. 2019
“The Ultimate Metaphor: Game Studies in/and American Studies,” Austrian American Studies Association, Salzburg.
WS 2016-17
“‘Home Geography’ and the World: Mapping the US Empire in School Primers 1875-1900,” Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik, Friedrich-Alexander Universität Erlangen-Nuremberg, Erlangen.

Teaching

At the teaching end, the seminars I design and teach are writing-intensive (essay writing phases) and offer frequent possibilities to the students to lead small-group discussions (in ‘discussion islands’ about a given, supplementary topic). Depending on the topic, I help the students develop presentations which are either completely research-based or depend on performance and exhibition (‘thematic museums’).

Courses Designed and Taught | Co-Teaching

Courses Designed and Taught

SS 2020
“Shhhhhh! Silence in US History and Culture,” Department of British and American Studies, Universität Bielefeld (BA/MEd).
WS 2019/20
“Advanced Academic Writing,” Department of British and American Studies, Bielefeld University (BA).
SS 2019
“Words and Verbs of Empire: Language and Power in US Litrature, Culture and Politics,” Department of British and American Studies, Bielefeld University (BA).
WS 2018/19
“Playing in the Backstreet: Children and Childhood in North America (Civil War to Present),” Department of British and American Studies, Bielefeld University (BA).
SS 2018
“Playing in the Garden: Children and Childhood in North America (Colonial Times to Civil War),” Department of British and American Studies, Bielefeld University (BA).
WS 2017/18
“‘Childhood is a foreign country’: American Childhood, American Literature, and the World,” Department of British and American Studies, Bielefeld University (MA)
SS 2017
“Childhood Narratives in the United States: Civil War to Present,” Department of British and American Studies, Bielefeld University (BA).
WS 2016/17
“Growing up in America: Children and Childhood in the United States,” Department of British and American Studies, Bielefeld University (BA).
SS 2016
“Theories of Play: From Games in Literature to Literary Gaming,” Department of British and American Studies, Bielefeld University (MA).
SS 2015
“Spaces of Empire: Cultural Geography of the US at the Turn of the 20th Century,” Department of History, Bielefeld University (MA).
SS 2011
BGHS Interdisciplinary Colloquium, with Dr. Annika Wellmann, Bielefeld University (PhD).

Co-Teaching

WS 2019/20
“Analyzing and Interpreting Literary and Cultural Texts: US-American Literatures,” Department of British and American Studies, Universität Bielefeld (rotating lecture - BA).
SS 2018
“Playing with Horror: Analyzing Horror in Video Games” Co-supervised student seminar (with Tyll Zybura) (Anglistik, Bielefeld University) (Media, Arts, and Communication, Anglistik, BA).
SS 2016
“History and Theory: A Wesleyan-Bielefeld Dialogue” Co-taught with Prof. Gary Shaw (Wesleyan University, USA) and Prof. Dr. Angelika Epple (Bielefeld University), Department of History, Bielefeld University (MA/PhD).
WS 2012-2013
“Where the Global Meets the Local: United Nations in the 21st Century” Co-taught with Alexandra Nitz (Bielefeld University), Internationale Studium, Bielefeld University (General Studies, BA/MA).