Mobility in Contemporary Zimbabwean Literature in English: Crossing Borders, Transcending Boundaries. London: Routledge, 2021.

reviewed by: 

Dube, Nhlanhla. “Mobility in Contemporary Zimbabwean Literature in English: Crossing Border, Transcending Boundaries by Magdalena Pfalzgraf (review).” Research in African Literatures, 53.4 (Winter 2023): 175-177. 

Muchemwa, Kizito Zhiradzago. “Mobility in Contemporary Zimbabwean Literature in English: Crossing Borders, Transcending Boundaries.” Postcolonial Text, 18.3 (2023): 1-4. 

Stork, Michelle. “Mobility in contemporary Zimbabwean literature in English: Crossing borders, transcending boundaries.” Journal of Postcolonial Writing, 22 February 2023: 1-2.

Tagwirei, Cuthbeth. “Mobility in contemporary Zimbabwean literature in English: crossing borders, transcending boundaries.” Journal of the African Literature Association, 16.2 (2022), 386-387.

Pfalzgraf, Magdalena and Anna-Leena Toivanen (Editors). Moving Publicly, Writing Mobility: Public Transport in African Literatures. Special Issue of English Studies in Africa 67.2. (2024).

Anastasijevic, Silvia, Magdalena Pfalzgraf and Hanna Teichler (Editors). The Many Worlds of Anglophone Literature: Transcultural Engagements, Global Frictions. London: Bloomsbury, 2024.

Anastasijevic, Silvia, Magdalena Pfalzgraf and Hanna Teichler (Editors). Moving Centers & Traveling Cultures. Special Issue of Kairos. A Journal of Critical Symposium 4.1. (2019).

Toivanen, Anna-Leena and Magdalena Pfalzgraf (Editors). “Introduction: Moving Publicly, Writing Mobility: Public Transport in African Literatures.” Moving Publicly, Writing Mobility: Public Transport in African Literatures. Special Issue of English Studies in Africa 67.2. (2024): 1-15.

Pfalzgraf, Magdalena and Hanna Teichler. “Introduction: The Many Worlds of Anglophone Literature – The Mobilizing Potential of Transcultural World Literature.” The Many Worlds of Anglophone Literature: Transcultural Engagements, Global Frictions. Edited by Silvia Anastasijevic, Magdalena Pfalzgraf, and Hanna Teichler. London: Bloomsbury, 2024. 1-31. DOI: 10.5040/9781350374102-006

Pfalzgraf, Magdalena. “The Lion Became a Historian. Some Thoughts on Memory, History, and Storytelling.” Memories of Diversity – Diversity of Memory. Edited by Astrid M. Fellner, Laurence McFalls. Münster: Waxmann Verlag, 2023. 15-27.

Fellner, Astrid M., Hans-Jürgen Lüsebrink and Magdalena Pfalzgraf. “Aufklärung(en) und (Post)Kolonialismus – Einleitung.” Aufklärungen: Strategien und Kontroversen vom 17. bis 21. Jahrhundert. Edited by Johannes Birgfeld, Stephanie Catani, and Anne Conrad in collaboration with Sophia Mehrbrey. Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter, 2022. 421-428.

Fellner, Astrid M. and Magdalena Pfalzgraf. “Sexuelle Begegnungen im Pazifik: Alternatives Körperwissen und fluide Geschlechter.” Aufklärungen: Strategien und Kontroversen vom 17. bis 21. Jahrhundert. Edited by Johannes Birgfeld, Stephanie Catani, and Anne Conrad in collaboration with Sophia Mehrbrey. Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter, 2022. 523-440.

Pfalzgraf, Magdalena. “Walking Cities, Conquering Pavements. Foreword.” Tanaka Chidora. Because Sadness Is Beautiful? Poems. Harare: Mwanaka Media and Publishing, 2020. ix-xii.

Pfalzgraf, Magdalena. “Flânerie in Valerie Tagwira’s The Uncertainty of Hope (2006).” Tydskrif vir Letterkunde 58.2 (2021): 18-28.   

Anastasijevic, Silvia, Magdalena Pfalzgraf and Hanna Teichler (Editors). “Moving Centers & Traveling Cultures: Readings in Contemporary Anglophone Literatures.” Moving Centers & Traveling Cultures. Special Issue of Kairos. A Journal of Critical Symposium 4.1. (2019): 1-8.

Pfalzgraf, Magdalena. “Representations of White Zimbabwean Mobilities in Recent Anglophone Fiction Graham Lang’s Lettah’s Gift  (2011) and Ian Holding’s Of Beasts & Beings (2010).” Mobility and Minorities in Africa. Edited by Michele Carboni and Giovanni Sistu. Rome: Aracne, 2019. 235-257.

Pfalzgraf, Magdalena. “A Hundred Years After: The View from the Train as a Glimpse into a Lost Idyll in Edward Thomas’s ‘Adlestrop’ (1917).” Discourses of Mobility – Mobility of Discourse. The Conceptualization of Trains, Cars and Planes in 19th- and 20th-Century Poetry. Edited by Peter Wenzel and Sven Strasen. Trier: WVT, 2010. 71-79.

With Markus Metz and Georg Seeßlen.“ Doris Lessing: Warum die Schriftstellerin bespitzelt wurde.” Deutschlandfunk Kultur, November 2023. 

“Micropolitics of Modernity.” Keywords in Transcultural English Studies. Department of English and American Studies, Goethe University Frankfurt, May 2017. Web. 08/06/2018.

Colloquium of the IPP, July 2022 – March 2023

Co-Chair of the weekly doctoral colloquium of the IPP

Indian Classical Music in Contemporary Literature in English: Representations of the Raag in Selected Novels by Amit Chaudhuri and Neelum Saran Gour

Undergraduate seminar, Saarland University, summer semester 2022

Memories of Diversity: Diversity of Memories, zusammen mit Astrid M. Fellner

Lecture, Saarland University, winter semester 2021/22

An Introduction to the Novels of E.M. Forster

Proseminar, Goethe University Frankfurt, winter semester 2021/22

Western Classical Music in Contemporary Anglophone Novels: Transculturality and the Fugue

Undergraduate seminar, Goethe University Frankfurt, summer semester 2021

Between Leisure and Subversion: Urban Walkers in South African, Zimbabwean, and American Writing

Undergraduate seminar, Saarland University, summer semester 2021

Pianos in Strange Places: Colonial Legacies and Transcultural Mobilisations

Undergraduate seminar, winter semester 2020/21

The Black Atlantic across the Arts: Poetry, Narrative Fiction, Music

Undergraduate seminar, Saarland University, winter semester 2020/21

Music in Literature of the Anglophone World

Graduate seminar, Goethe University Frankfurt, summer semester 2020

West African Women’s Writing in English

Undergraduate seminar, Saarland University, summer semester 2020

From Victorian Adventurers to Postcolonial Detectives: Reading Southern African Literature across Genre and Time

Undergraduate seminar, Goethe University Frankfurt, winter semester 2019/20

Southern Africa’s Literary Urbanities

Undergraduate seminar, Saarland University, winter semester 2019/20

Rural-Urban Mobility Dynamics in Zimbabwean Literature in English

Undergraduate seminar, Goethe University Frankfurt, summer semester 2018 

Transcontinental Migration in Recent African Fiction in English

Undergraduate seminar, Goethe University Frankfurt, winter semester 2015/16

With Hanna Teichler: Organization of the panel stream “Transcultural Memory Studies and Postcolonial Studies. Convergences and Entanglements.“ 5th Memory Studies Association Conference. University of Warsaw, July 2021.

“Echoes of the Grand Tour in Teju Cole's Open City.” 5th Memory Studies Association Conference. University of Warsaw, July 2021.

Moderation of the reading: “Reading and discussion with Petina Gappah, author of Out of Darkness, Shining Light.” 31. GAPS Annual Members Meeting. University of Oldenburg, May 2021.

With Astrid M. Fellner: “Andere Aufklärungen. Ozeanische Welten, Körperwissen und fluide Geschlechter.” Wissenschaftliche Tagung "Kampfbegriff 'Aufklärung'. Intellektuelle Strategien und transkulturelle Kontroversen" der AG „Aufklärungen“. Saarland University, September 2020. 

Moderation of the panels: “Europäische Aufklärung – Transkulturell und kolonialistisch“. Wissenschaftliche Tagung "Kampfbegriff 'Aufklärung'. Intellektuelle Strategien und transkulturelle Kontroversen" der AG „Aufklärungen“. Saarland University, September 2020.

"‘The Present is Already the Past: Simultaneity in Shimmer Chinodya’s Strife and William Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom!“ 4th Memory Studies Association Conference. University of Virginia, Charlottesville, June 2020, Conference canceled due to pandemic.

“Memory and Ocean Crossings in Selected Texts by Caryl Phillips.” 17th Conference of the Research Network International Migration, Integration and Social Cohesion in Europe. University of Luxemburg, Juni 2020, Conference canceled due to pandemic.

With Sophia Mehrbrey and Jonas Nesselhauf: Organisation of the Memory Studies panels entitled “Journeys and Transcultural Practices of Remembering: Anglophone, Francophone and Italophone Travel Narratives Since 1800.” 31st GAPS Annual Conference. Goethe University Frankfurt, May 2020, Conference canceled due to pandemic.

“‘I hold on to one bag, but I relinquish the other’: Echoes of the Grand Tour in Teju Cole’s Open City.” 31st GAPS Annual Conference. Goethe University Frankfurt, May 2020, Conference canceled due to pandemic.

“Literary Perspectives on Whiteness in post-2000 Zimbabwe.” 27th Conference of the African Studies Association of the UK. University of Birmingham, September 2018.

Mit Deborah Nyangulu: Roundtable “Tropes of Urbanity: Imagining African Urban Spaces Across Media.” 42nd Annual Conference of the African Literature Association. Yale University, June 2017.              

“The Failed City as a Space of Transnational Movement and Transcultural Encounters:  NoViolet Bulawayo’s We Need New Names.” 16th Triennial EACLALS Conference. University of Oviedo, April 2017.

 “Mobile City Worlds in Zimbabwean Fiction Post-2000: Valerie Tagwira’s The Uncertainty of Hope (2006).” 17th Triennial ACLALS Conference. University of Stellenbosch, July 2016.

 “Adoption in Petina Gappah’s The Book of Memory.” 42nd Annual Conference of the African Literature Association. Kennesaw State University and Emory University, April 2016.

“‘The future is born from the seeds of the present but carries with it the ashes of the past.ʼ Contested Masculinities and Visions for Fatherhood in Selected Short Stories from Zimbabwe.” 41st Annual Conference of the African Literature Association. University of Bayreuth, June 2015.  

 “Transnational Migration in Recent Zimbabwean Fiction.” 26th GAPS Annual Conference. University of Münster, May 2015.

 “Widowhood, (Dis)inheritance and the Gender Asset Gap in Contemporary African Anglophone Literature.” 15th Triennial EACLALS Conference. University of Innsbruck, April 2014.

 “Border Crossings in Abdulrazak Gurnah’s By the Sea: Displacement or Translocation?” 9th Biennial MESEA Conference. Saarland University, Saarbrücken, May 2014.

 “’And suddenly one can't use the road one is used to.ʼ A Border Poetics Approach to Urbanisation in Anglophone Literature from Ghana and Tanzania.” 1st Annual Conference of the Postgraduate Forum Postcolonial Narrations. University of Göttingen, October 2013.

Goethe-University Frankfurt am Main, July 2020

Doctorate (final grade: summa cum laude)

Title of dissertation: “Crossing Borders, Transcending Boundaries: Dynamics of Mobility in post-2000 Zimbabwean Literature in English”

Evaluation: Prof. Dr. Frank Schulze-Engler (first supervisor), Prof. Dr. Astrid Erll (second supervisor), Prof. Dr. Mark Stein (third evaluation)

Goethe-University Frankfurt am Main, February 2013 – 2020

Doctoral researcher at the Department for English and American Studies, division New English Literatures and Cultures (NELK)

RWTH Aachen, October 2005 – October 2011

First State Exam in German Studies and English Studies/Deutsch und Englisch für das Lehramt an Gymnasien und Gesamtschulen (grade: 1,2)

State examination thesis: “Representations of Cultural Diversity in Contemporary Turkish-German and Black British Fiction” (grade: 1,0)

University of Warwick, September 2008 – July 2009

Visiting student, funded by the German Academic Scholarship Foundation

Junior Professor, University of Bonn, April 2023 – now

W1-Junior professorship for English Studies: Literary and Cultural Studies with tenure-track option to W2

Graduate Center for the Study of Culture (GCSC), Justus-Liebig University Gießen, July 2022 – March 2023

Coordinator of the International PhD Programme Literary and Cultural Studies

Saarland University, Saarbrücken, Oktober 2019 –  July 2022

Research assistant at the Chair of North American Literatures and Cultures Prof. Dr. Astrid M. Fellner

Goethe-University Frankfurt am Main, 2015 – 2022

Adjunct Faculty at the Institute for English and American Studies