Western European Literatures - Prof. Dr Andrea Allerkamp
Professorship for Western European Literatures
We understand the term ‘Chair for Western European Literature’ as a challenge to examine ways of representation especially (but in no way exclusively) in literary texts. This requires a critical approach to study, teaching and research. What is said depends on how it is said – this rhetorical insight is essential for scientific work in literary studies.
In addition to the analysis of the complex interaction of rhetorical, aesthetical, medial and material practices, strategies and procedures, we also call for a reading of tradition which goes against the grain, for the exploration of mechanisms of canonization and for careful philological work on ‘another canon’. The attribute ‘Western European’ does not so much define a narrowly delineated area but rather an, often tacit, perspective on literature, aesthetics and culture. This requires an adequate comparative and cultural-theoretical reflection. Carrying out literature studies within a context of cultural studies means, for us, the tearing down of barriers: we understand literature as an object that is never unambiguously determinable.
The Frankfurt model of literary studies, with its special location, invokes its founding figures Baumgarten and Kleist. As crossers of boundaries, these two names stand for a constantly recurring moment of crisis that productively sets in motion the orders of knowledge between philosophy and literature, science and art, thought and representation.
Christin Eichstädt
- Große Scharrnstr. 59
- 15230 Frankfurt (Oder)
- +49 335 5534 2581
- Dekanat-Kuwi@europa-uni.de
Room: HG 058
Professor
Prof Dr Andrea Allerkamp (emeritus)
Andrea Allerkamp has held the W3 Professorship for Western European Literatures at the European University Viadrina in Frankfurt (Oder) since 2011. From 2011 to 2015 she was the spokesperson for the DFG Research Training Group "Life Forms + Life Knowledge". She is the academic manager of the double master's programme "Philosophy and Cultural Studies" (track in the master's programme "Literaturwissenschaft: Ästhetik - Literatur - Philosophie") in cooperation with the Université Paris 1 and has been co-editor of "Rhetorik - Ein internationales Jahrbuch" since 2022.
After a DAAD lectureship, she taught at French universities for 22 years: as a professor at the Université d'Aix-Marseille and at the Université de Poitiers and as Maître de Conférences at the Université de Toulouse II. In 2004, she completed her HDR at the Université de Sorbonne-IV, in 2002 she habilitated at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, and in 1990 she received her doctorate from the University of Hamburg. She has received numerous international invitations; most recently she was a visiting professor at the Université Paris I-Sorbonne and a fellow at the Morphomata International Centre at the University of Cologne.
Jardin du Luxembourg
Andrea Allerkamp
Interim professor
PD Dr Andrea Gremels
Andrea Gremels will fill Andrea Allerkamp's professorship in winter semester 2026/27. She completed her doctorate and habilitation in Romance Studies at Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main. Her research focuses on French, Caribbean and Latin American literatures and cultures of the 20th century, with an emphasis on diaspora and migration literatures, transcultural studies and international avant-gardes as well as postcolonial theory, inter- and transmediality and world literature. Her numerous publications include the monographs Kubanische Gegenwartsliteratur in Paris zwischen Exil und Transkulturalität ("Cuban Contemporary Literature in Paris between Exile and Transculturality", 2014) and "Die Weltkünste des Surrealismus: Netzwerke und Perspektiven aus dem Globalen Süden" (The World Arts of Surrealism: Networks and Perspectives from the Global South", 2022).
She was an Alexander von Humboldt Fellow at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) in Paris, the Institute for Latin American Studies at the Free University of Berlin and the Colegio de México in Mexico City. She is a member of the editorial board of the International Journal of Surrealism (University of Minnesota Press) and a member of the academic advisory board of the André Breton Society (Association Atelier André Breton) in Paris.
Igor Link
Academic assistant
Norah El Gammal
Norah El Gammal has been a research associate, lecturer and PhD candidate at the Chair of Western European Literatures at the European University Viadrina since September 2024. She studied Comparative Literature, French Studies, English Studies, and Sociocultural Studies in Saarbrücken, Paris, and Frankfurt (Oder). Her doctoral project examines life writing by English- and French-speaking Caribbean authors through the lens of archival theory. Her research interests include postcolonial and deconstructive theory, twentieth- and twenty-first-century Caribbean literatures and philosophies, as well as archival and memory studies. Her most recent article, "Traces, or the Ocean as the Site of Disaster: Reading Glissant with Derrida and Levinas," appeared in (Trans-)Oceanic Imaginations, edited by Anne Kraume and Miriam Lay Brander (2025). In 2026, she was a visiting scholar at the University of the West Indies at St. Augustine (Trinidad and Tobago) and Cave Hill (Barbados), and co-organized the early-career conference "Fractured Connections in the Caribbean" for the Society for Caribbean Research (Socare).
Valeriia Lazareva