Performance as Interpretation

Margit Peterfy studied Comparative Literature, English and American Studies, and Business Administration in Saarbrücken, in Cardiff, and at the University of Maryland, College Park. She received her doctorate from the University of the Saarland „summa cum laude“with a dissertation on William Carlos Williams“s reception in Germany (publ. in 1999). Her affiliation with the Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz started in 1999. In 2001 she received a prize for excellence in research („Preis für besonders begabte Nachwuchswissenschaftlerin“) and in 2006 a grant of the Kalkhof-Rose Stiftung. She fi nished her Habilitation in January 2008. She is currently completing a book on the popular American reception of John Greenleaf Whittier“ s and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow“ s poetry. She lives in Mainz with her husband and three children.

Research interests include Early American History (Indian-Colonial relations, rhetorical traditions), literary and visual American iconography, German-American relations, and the popular culture of nineteenth-century, early modern US, in particular musical theater, and 19th-century American poetry, literary and visual American iconography, performance and popular culture of the Gilded Age, Early American Literature.