Prof. Dr. Wilfried Raussert_North American Studies / InterAmerican Studies

Mental Illness as Cultural Narrative: Contemporary Literature from the Contact Zones between the U.S., Canada, and the Caribbean

Contemporary times witness a striking increase of the presence of mental illness in society. Identity problems, gender and race conflicts, migration and diaspora experience are driving forces behind this phenomenon. This has also lead to a contemporary boom of mental illness narratives in literature. Centuries of systematic oppression such as slavery, displacement, exploitation, and discrimination have formed and continue to shape human encounters in the Americas. These lived experiences have found their way into literary representations and expressions of mental illness. The proposed project explores mental illness as a cultural narrative in 21st century Caribbean-Canadian and Caribbean-U.S. American literature and as a decolonizing practice and symptom of systematic power asymmetries that can be traced back to the concept of ‘coloniality.’ The research project argues that gender, race/ethnicity, community and experiences of racism, sexism, migration, and diaspora shape mental illness as a cultural narrative. The project is embedded in the context of Hemispheric American Studies and uses an InterAmerican and Critical Disability Studies approach to analyze ‘mental illness’ by close reading of selected novels and stories.

(Re-)Thinking 'Home': 21st-Century Caribbean Diaspora Writing and Geopolitical Imaginaries in North America (2018-2021; 230.000, 36 months) extended by one year due to the pandemic

Raussert and Brandel's DFG-funded project explores the multiple, diverse, and complex ideas of 'home' that emerge from a corpus of 21st-century literatures by authors with diverse Caribbean origins who write from a North American (Canada and the United States) diaspora location. Further, it reflects on conceptualizations of 'home' on a meta-level by exploring shifting geopolitical imaginaries of the Caribbean, Canada, and the US from inter-American perspectives.

Coordinators of the new CIAS NetworkHemispheric Black Americas
Matti Steinitz, Vilna Bashi Treitler, Giselle Anatol, Wilfried Raussert from left to right) This new network of international scholars working on Hemispheric Black Americas has been encouraged by a DFG (German Research Foundation) grant for the research project Between Spanish Harlem, Funky Colón, and Black Rio. Soul, Music Migration, and Translocal Identity Constructions in the Black Power Era (1965-1975). The new network explores the "Black Americas" through a transdiciplinary and hemispheric lens.

Between Spanish Harlem (Wilfried Raussert and Matti Steinitz.