Dr. Marike Janzen

Marike Janzen
  • Associate Professor
  • 20th and 21st century German Literature | Literature of Human Rights | Literary Publics | Literature of the International Left
she/ her/ hers

Contact Info

785-864-0165
Wescoe Hall, Room 2070
1445 Jayhawk Blvd
Lawrence, KS 66045

Education —

Ph.D. in Comparative Literature, The University of Texas at Austin, 2005
M.A. in Comparative Literature, The University of Texas at Austin, 1999

Research —

Research interests:

  • 20th and 21st century German Literature
  • Literary Publics
  • Literature of Human Rights
  • Literature of the International Left
  • Comparative Literature and World Literature

Teaching —

Teaching interests:

  • 20th and 21st century German Literature
  • Literature of Human Rights
  • Citizenship and Refugee Studies
  • Literary Theory
  • World Literatures

Selected Publications —

Janzen, Marike S. “Buying Autonomy and Citizenship: The ‘Mischkalkulation’ in Germany’s Literature Industry.” Die Große Mischkalkulation: Institutions, Social Import, and Market Forces in the German Literary Field, edited by Donahue William and Kagel Martin, Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 2020, pp. 33–48.

Janzen, Marike S. “Mechanisms of Exclusion and ‘Invisible’ Integration in the E.U.: Refugees in Germany as Europeans.” Colloquia Germanica, vol. 51, no. 3–4, 2020, pp. 345–62.

Janzen, Marike S. “Revolutionäres Scheitern, Unheroisches Leben.” Handbuch Zu Anna Seghers, edited by Ilse Nagelschmidt and Carola Hilmes, J.B. Metzler Verlag, 2020, pp. 284–90.

Janzen, Marike S. “The Maxim Gorki Theater’s ‘Exil Ensemble’ as State-Sponsored Repudiation of Citizenship.” Writing Beyond the State: Post-Sovereign Approaches to Human Rights, edited by Alexandra S. Moore and Pinto Samantha, Palgrave, 2020, pp. 243–63.

Janzen, Marike S. “Berlin’s International Literature Festival: Globalizing the ‘Bildungsbürger.’” Cultural Topographies of the New Berlin, edited by Karin Bauer and Jennifer Hosek, Berghahn, 2018.

Janzen, Marike. Writing to Change the World: Anna Seghers, Authorship, and International Solidarity in the Twentieth Century. Camden House, 2018.

Janzen, Marike. “Solidarity, Human Rights, and the Poetics of Connection: Articulating Community in Bertolt Brecht’s ‘Mother Courage’ and Lynn Nottage’s ‘Ruined.’” Identity and Community after the Cold War Era, edited by Edith Clowes and Jarrett Bromberg Shelly, 2016.

Janzen, Marike. “Experiencing Form: Service Learning in the Literature of Human Rights Classroom.” Teaching Human Rights in Literary and Cultural Studies, edited by Alexandra Schultheis and Elizabeth Swanson Goldberg, 2015.

Janzen, Marike. “Is Normal Neutral? Performing Tolerance in the Berlin Republic.” Special Issue on, “Embracing the Other: Conceptualizations, Representations, and Social Practices of [In]Tolerance in German Culture and Literature,” edited by Elisabeth Herrmann and Florentine Strzelczyk, vol. 48, no. 3, Aug. 2012, pp. 365–78.

Janzen, Marike. “Messenger Writers: Anna Seghers and Alejo Carpentier in the Cold War.” Comparative Literature, vol. 62, no. 3, 2010, pp. 283–301.

Janzen, Marike. “Between the Pedagogical and the Performative: Personal Stories, Public Narratives and Social Critique in Anna Seghers’s Überfahrt.” German Quarterly, vol. 79, no. 2, 2006, pp. 175–91.