Prof. Dr. Antje Kley

Antje Kley holds the Chair of American Studies, especially Literary Studies at FAU. After her Master's in Women's Studies at Emory University in Atlanta and her state examination at the University of Mannheim, she worked on her dissertation on multi-ethnic forms of literary life writing in the USA in the late 20th century. Already in this context, she was interested in the intertwining of political and poetic dimensions of literary texts. At Kiel University, she researched the media history of the British and US American novel as part of her habilitation project and deepened her interest in the ethical reflective performances of literary textuality. Her research on cultural hybridity, recognition and literary knowledge production revolves around questions of socio-cultural difference and focuses on the function of literature for describing 'things of concern' (Bruno Latour). Not least, her six-year tenure as vice-president at FAU has made her realise that the humanities need to do a better job of explaining the relevance of their findings in order to assert their role in central academic debates. Antje Kley is currently working on a monograph on current US end-of-life narratives as an important form of alternative knowledge production to culturally dominant medical, nursing and insurance discourses around death. She lives with her dog Parker in Nuremberg and in the Rhön.

Selected publications in the field of literature and the public sphere:

• Kley, Antje. "Literary Value Rests on Form." b2o: boundary 2 online 52.4 (December 2025). Special Issue: The Question of Literary Value. Ed. Alexander Dunst and Peter Vermeulen: https://www.boundary2.org/2025/12/antje-kley-literary-value-rests-on-form/
• Bosch, Aida und Antje Kley. "Einleitung." Literatur und mediale Öffentlichkeiten: orientierende Fallstudien. Ed. Aida Bosch und Antje Kley. Stuttgart: Metzler, 2025. 1-23. Open access: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-69735-1
• Bosch, Aida und Antje Kley. "Literarische Interventionen in polarisierten Öffentlichkeiten bei Claudia Rankine und Carrie Mae Weems." Literatur und mediale Öffentlichkeiten: orientierende Fallstudien. Ed. Aida Bosch und Antje Kley. Stuttgart: Metzler, 2025. 109-141. Open access: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-69735-1_1
• Kley, Antje. "No one dies a natural death:‘ Lebendige Geister und die Politik der Toten in George Saunders‘ Roman Lincoln im Bardo (2017)." Die Politik der Toten: Figuren und Funktionen der Toten in Literatur und Politischer Theorie. Ed. Marcus Llanque und Katja Sarkowsky. Bielefeld: transcript, 2023. 121 - 142.
• Kley, Antje. "Vulnerability and Masculinist Notions of Control in Late Capitalist Societies: Reading Paul Kalanithi’s Autopathography When Breath Becomes Air (2016)." Kulturwissenschaftliche Zeitschrift 7.2 (2022): 49-69.