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My research covers periods, genres, media, and theoretical approaches to North American literatures, cultures, and history from the 18th century to the present. I am particularly interested in the following areas:

• Early North American Studies
• (Post-)Colonial American Studies
• Travel Writing, Autobiography, and Drama
• Inter-American and Atlantic Studies
• Transnational Migration and Border Studies
• the Black and Latinx Diasporas
• Gender and Sexuality Studies
• Science Studies, Medical and Environmental Humanities
• US American Popular Culture

 I am a member of the following research groups and networks:

• Research Group "Aesthetic and Cultural Studies," University of Bergen
• Research Network "Black Americas: Transdisciplinary Dialogues and Hemispheric Perspectives"
• Research Centre for Migration, Diaspora and Exile, University of Central Lancashire, UK
• Red de Norteamericanistas, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Mexico

Recent Conference Presentations

Haas, Astrid. “Articulating Central American Migrant Aspirations in US Latinx Superhero Comics.” 28th Conference, Nordic Association of American Studies (NAAS): Aspirations. University of Turku, Finland, 6/6/2025.

Haas, Astrid. “Black Mobility in Slavery and Freedom: Olaudah Equiano’s Interesting Narrative as Seafarer’s Life Narrative.” 14th Biennial Conference, Collegium for African American Research (CAAR): Knowledges in Motion: Black Travels, Belonging, and Transformation, Humboldt-University Berlin, 21/3/2025.

Haas, Astrid. “Central American Northward Migration in Latinx US Superhero Comics.” 8th Biennial Conference, International Association of Inter-American Studies (IAS): Possible Futures in the Americas. UNAM, Mexico City, 17/2/2025.Haas, Astrid. “Latinx Superhero Comics and Central American Migration to the USA.” Biennial Conference, American Studies Association of Norway, Inland Norway University of Applied Sciences, Hamar, Norway, 3-5/10/2024.

Haas, Astrid. “Moving Narratives, Mobilizing Faith: Diverse Mobilities in Black Loyalist Missionary Memoirs.” 13th MESEA Conference, University of Eastern Finland, Joensuu, Finland, 12/6/2024.

Haas, Astrid. “Spatial, Social, and Spiritual Mobilities in Black Loyalist Missionary Memoirs.” 45th Annual Conference, Association for Canadian Studies in German-Speaking Countries, Grainau, Germany, 17/2/2024.

Haas, Astrid. “Entangled Exploitations: Atlantic Slavery and the Anthropocene in Caribbean Slave Narratives.” 7th Biennial Conference, International Association of Inter-American Studies, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso, Chile, 3/10/2023.

Haas, Astrid. “Activism for the Undocumented as Micro-Utopia in Mexican American Graphic Fiction.” Symposium Micro-Utopias, Research Group “Aesthetic Imaginaries,” University of Bergen, 5/9/2023.

Haas, Astrid. “From Property to Proprietors: Free Black Entrepreneurialism in Mid-19th-Century Slave Narratives.” 69th Annual Meeting, German Association of American Studies, Rostock University, Germany, 3/6/2023.

Other Recent Talks and Lectures

Haas, Astrid. “Drawing Resistance in the Borderlands: Fighting Trumpism and Transborder Violence in/with the Peso Hero Comic Series.” Research Colloquy in Inter-American Studies, Bielefeld University, 16/12/2025.

Haas, Astrid. “Narrating Scientific Practices and Social Identities in the Works of Irete Lazo and Yaa Gyasi.”&�Բ�����;Bielefeld University, Germany, 15/7/2025.

Haas, Astrid. “From Property to Proprietors: Black Entrepreneurialism in African American and Caribbean Slave Narratives.” Bielefeld University, 26/1/2024.

Haas, Astrid. “Undocumented Border Crossing and Migrant Activism: The Artivism of Mexican American Graphic Fiction.” Research Group “Aesthetic Imaginaries,” University of Bergen, 9/5/2023.

Recent Event Organization

Convener: Conference Black Mobilities in the Atlantic World. Institute for Black Atlantic Research, University of Central Lancashire (online),13-14/01/2022.

I teach courses on various genres and periods of North American Literature and Culture. I am particularly interested in the following areas.

• Early American Studies
• Transnational North American Studies
• Atlantic and Inter-American Studies
• North American Short Fiction, Autobiography and Travel Writing
• American and British Crime Fiction and Drama
• Black Diaspora and Latinx Studies
• Gender and Sexuality Studies
• Science Studies
• US American Cities, Regions, and Popular Culture

Monographs

Haas, Astrid. Lone Star Vistas: Travel Writing on Texas, 1821-1861. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2021.

Haas, Astrid. Stages of Agency: The Contributions of American Drama to the AIDS Discourse. Heidelberg: Winter Verlag, 2011.

Journal Issues

Haas, Astrid, ed. The Harlem Renaissance from an Inter-American Perspective. Special Issue of FIAR: Forum for Inter-American Research 7.2 (July 2014). http://www.uni-bielefeld.de/cias/fiar/pdf/072/FIAR072-01-71-Complete-Harlem-Renaissance-Issue.pdf.

Haas, Astrid, and María Herrera-Sobek, eds. Transfrontera: Transnational Perspectives on the U.S.–Mexi­co Borderlands. Special Issue of The American Studies Journal 57 (May 2012): http://www.asjournal.org/57-2012/

Recent Journal Articles

Haas, Astrid. “Migración indocumentada y activismo migrante: El artivismo de la ficción gráfica mexico-estadounidense.”&�Բ�����;Visual Narratives: Approaches to Graphic Novels in the Americas. FIAR: Forum for Inter-American Research 17.2 (June 2024). 40-53.

Haas, Astrid. "Native Bondage, Narrative Mobility: African American Accounts of Indigenous Captivity." Journal of American Studies 56.2 (May 2022): 242-66.  

Haas, Astrid. “'Currents of Progress', 'Toy Store for Tourists': Nineteenth-Century Mexican Liberals View Niagara Falls.” Journal of Transnational American Studies 10.2 (Winter 2019/20). 165-85.  

Recent Book Chapters

Haas, Astrid. “From Property to Proprietors: Free Black Entrepreneurialism in Mid-Nineteenth-Century Slave Narratives.” America and Ownership: Territory, Bondage, Jubilee. Ed. Gesa Mackenthun and Nikita Vasyltsov. Heidelberg: Winter, 2025. 169-88.

Haas, Astrid. “Black Narrative Self-Making in a Changing Scene: The Life and Adventures of James Beckwourth as a Western Borderlands Autobiography.” Life Narratives, Creativity, and the Social in the Americas. Ed. Wilfried Raussert and Susana Rocha Teixeira. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2024. 113-27.

Haas, Astrid. "Langston Hughes and Mexico." Langston Hughes in Context. Ed. Vera M. Kutzinski and Anthony Reed. Literature in Context Series. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023. 150-59.

Haas, Astrid. “Borderlands Identities and Borderlands Ideologies in Willa Cather’s Death Comes for the Archbishop.” Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism. Vol. 421. Ed. Carol A. Schwartz. Farmington Hills, MI: Gale, 2022. 101-09.

Haas, Astrid. “‘This Long Disease, My Life’: Bodies of Contagion in Larry Kramer’s The Normal Heart and The Destiny of Me.”&�Բ�����;Embodying Contagion: The Viropolitics of Horror and Desire in Contemporary Discourse. Ed. Sandra Becker, Megen de Bruin-Molé, and Sara Polak. Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2021. 199-217.

Recent Bibliography and Handbook Article

Haas, Astrid. “Travel Writing (in the Atlantic World).” Oxford Bibliographies in Atlantic History. Ed. Trevor Burnard. New York: Oxford University Press, 2024.  

Haas, Astrid. “Travel Writing.”&�Բ�����;The Routledge Handbook to the Culture and Media of the Americas. Part I: Literature and Music. Ed. Wilfried Raussert, Giselle Anatol, and Joachim Michael. London: Routledge, 2020. 252-60.

Open Access to Full Texts

Many of my journal articles and book chapters are available open access at the academic repository The Stacks. See  

Black Inter-American Mobility and Autobiography in the Age of Revolutions, 1760-1860

In my current interdisciplinary project, I explore the ways transnational autobiographies by black authors address different forms of black mobility in the Americas during the Age of Revolutions and its aftermath (1760-1860). During that time, different black-authored narrative text genres emerged in the region. Among them are four major types of black autobiography: slave narratives, Indian captivity narratives, spiritual autobiographies, and Black memoirs-as-travelogues. In these, different forms of (im-)mobility played a defining role in shaping black identities and experiences. Drawing on the approaches of Inter-American Studies, Black Atlantic Studies, Mobility, and Autobiography Studies, my project closes a gap in the scholarship of Black Diasporic agency, mobility, and authorship the Americas and the Atlantic World.

This research project received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement No 834975. For more information, please visit the project website:

LatineGraphy: Latine Pasts, Presents, and Futures in US Latine and Latin American Graphic Narratives

This project, which is currently in an early  research phase, analyzes how 21st-century US Latine and latin American graphic narratives engage with the history, present, and future  of the Latine and Latin American population in the USA. As a popular communication medium and artistic genre that reaches broad transnational audiences, graphic narratives are particularly well suited for artistic intervention in social debates. This research project aims to explore this diverse body of work from a literary, cultural, and media studies perspective and, using relevant case studies, examine how these works contribute to the discourse on the historical presence of Latines in the USA, their current living environments, and their visions for the future through their artistic representation. A comparative analysis of selected works from the US and various Latin American countries will highlight the inter-American dimension of this discourse in the medium / genre of graphic narrative. The project combines approaches and theories from US Latine studies, Latin American and migration research with literary and cultural studies methods from comic studies.