School of Humanities and Sciences
Showing 1-10 of 11 Results
-
Vera Geranpayeh
Ph.D. Student in German Studies, admitted Autumn 2024
Ph.D. Minor, Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality StudiesCurrent Research and Scholarly InterestsVera Geranpayeh is a PhD candidate in German Studies. Her current research examines female supernatural (übernatürlich) figures in literature transhistorically, spanning medieval to 19th-century German language works, with an emphasis on gender, identity, and spatiality. She engages with haunting, affect, and liminal frameworks to explore how these figures, positioned as the abject, gaze onto patriarchal structures from the periphery, transgress through and with their Otherness, and thus open transformative spaces for reevaluation. Vera amplifies the ancestral female voices in literature, both in terms of authorship and character representation, drawing on feminist and queer theoretical frameworks as well as knowledge traditions rooted in diverse global perspectives and systems of thought that exist beyond Eurocentric and patriarchal paradigms. Her work interrogates the ways in which these marginalized figures challenge dominant systems of power and knowledge.
During her Master’s studies at the University of Colorado Boulder, Vera examined the poetry and activism of May Ayim through a framework of hauntology, analyzing how Ayim’s work critiques racial and gender inequalities in post-reunification Germany from an Afro-German perspective while creating space for intersectional solidarity. Vera’s dedication to fostering educational equity and inclusive perspectives within institutionalized learning environments was deeply influenced by her experiences growing up as a first-generation German. During her Bachelor’s studies in English Philology and North American Studies at Georg-August-University Göttingen, she was first inspired by Critical Theory and began to appreciate the profound capacity of literary criticism and the humanities to challenge systems of power and spark social change.
