American Studies scholar from Mainz University joins London-based Academy of Humanities, Letters and Sciences
15.01.2015
The Academia Europaea has admitted Professor Alfred Hornung of the American Studies division at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) as a member on the recommendation of the Academy's Nomination Committee. The London-based Academy of Humanities, Letters and Sciences was founded in 1988 and currently has about 2,800 members from across the whole European continent, including 52 Nobel laureates. Members include leading experts from physical science and technology, biological sciences and medicine, computer sciences, mathematics, social and cognitive sciences, the humanities as well as law and economics. Its purpose is to promote learning, education, and research in Europe as well as to promote interdisciplinary and international academic exchange.
"Being appointed a member of the Literary and Theatrical Studies section of the Academia Europaea represents a great recognition of the value of my scholarship and teaching in the area of American Studies," explained Hornung. "I look forward to the chance to use this network for further interdisciplinary exchange with international partners."
Professor Alfred Hornung has been teaching and researching at the Department of English and Linguistics of Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz since 1988. His specializations include American autobiographies, modernism and postmodernism, multiculturalism, interculturalism and migration, postcolonialism as well as American literary theory. He is the author of numerous academic publications and the editor of important text books and publication series in American Studies, including the American Studies Monograph Series. As a long-time editor and member of the editorial boards of journals including Amerikastudien/American Studies, American Studies Journal, Journal of Transnational American Studies (Stanford), a/b: Auto/Biography Studies (Routledge), and Contemporary Foreign Literature (Nanjing), he has decisively shaped international scholarship in his field. Hornung is also a member of the International American Studies Association (IASA), the American Studies Association (ASA), the European Association for American Studies (EAAS), the German Association for American Studies (GAAS), of which he was president for many years, the Modern Language Association (MLA), the International Auto/Biography Association (IABA), the Society for Multi-Ethnic Studies: Europe and the Americas (MESEA), which he co-founded and led as the first president, and the World Ecological Organization (WEO). Hornung has been a re-elected member of the Review Board of the German Research Foundation for European and North American literatures since 2007, and he chaired the national Review Board for the Evaluation of English and American Studies at German universities (2011-2013), conducted by the German Council of Science and Humanities. In November 2013, the American Studies Association, the world's largest scholarly organization of its type, awarded him the internationally prominent Carl Bode–Norman Holmes Pearson Prize for Outstanding Contributions to American Studies in recognition of his life's work, particularly his contributions to the internationalization and transnationalization of the discipline in Germany, the US, and the entire world.