Higher Education                                                                                                                 

since 2022                   PhD University     of      Duisburg-Essen,     Anglophone     Studies     (American Studies)/University of Göttingen, North American Studies

Dissertation Title: “Embodied Landscapes: Land, Beasts, and Skin in Settler and Indigenous Relations in Early New England, 1606-1763.”

 

Status: Submission June/July 2026

(Defense expected August/September 2026)

 

2018–2021                   MA Anglophone Studies (American Studies)/German Studies, University of Duisburg-Essen

MA-Thesis (American Studies): “Plants and Culture in the Work of George Washington Cable.”

Grade: 1.0

 

Academic Positions                                                                                                             

2022–2025                 Assistant Prof. (Wissenschaftliche*r Mitarbeiter*in) (50% TV-L 13)

Seminar for English Philology, North American Studies, University of Göttingen

 

2022                          Lecturer (0.4 FTE)

Faculty of Arts, American Studies, Radboud University Nijmegen, NL

 

2021–2022                 Student Assistant (WHK)

Department of Anglophone Studies, American Studies Program, Volkswagen Foundation Research Group “Scripts for Postindustrial Urban Futures: American Models, Transatlantic Interventions.” University of Duisburg-Essen

 

2021–2021                Lecturer (Parental Leave Substitute) (50% TV-L 13)

Department of Anglophone Studies, American Studies Program, University of Duisburg-Essen

2020–2021                Student Assistant (WHF)

Department of Anglophone Studies, American Studies Program, University of Duisburg-Essen

 

2019–2021                Student Assistant (WHF)

Department of Anglophone Studies, American Studies Program, DFG FOR 2600 “Ambiguity and Difference: Historical and Cultural Dynamics.”

Project 02 Neophytes, Renegados, Creoles: (Dis)Ambiguating Dynamics in North American Discourse—Between Colony and Nation.” University of Duisburg-Essen

 

2020–present             Freelance Copyediting and Translation

(Published monographs, dissertations, journal articles; details can be shared upon request)

Current Course

John F Kennedy Institute for North American Studies, Free University Berlin

Winter ’26/27

Embodied Landscapes in Early American Literature

Courses Taught

University of Göttingen

Summer ’25	Civil Rights and Racial Justice in American Literature
Winter ’24/’25	Advanced Cultural History and Rhetoric: American Countercultures
Winter ’23/’24	Introduction to Film and Media Studies: Analyzing Screen Media, Romantic and Gothic American Fiction
Summer ‘23	Nature, Landscape, and People in Early American Literature
Winter ’22/’23	America Through the Lens: Narratives from the Margins in North American Photography

Radboud University Nijmegen

Summer ’22

Survey American Literature

University of Duisburg-Essen    

Summer ’21

“A Land Hung in Mourning:” The Work of George Washington Cable A Survey of American Literature

Research Interests

Early American Literature and Culture
Indigenous Studies
Decolonial Critique
Postcolonial Studies
Settler-Colonial Studies
More-than-Human Studies
Ecocriticism

PUBLICATIONS/MANUSCRIPTS/CO-EDITORSHIPS

Forthcoming. Fagan, Abigail, and Phillip James Grider. “Enclosure(s): The Permeable Fence in Early
New England.” Contesting Agency, edited by Ilka Brasch and Elena Furlanetto, Palgrave
Macmillan, 2026/2027.

Forthcoming. Grider, Phillip James. “Ghosts and Their Hosts: The Colonization of the Invisible World in
Early America by Sladja Blažan (review). Configurations, vol. 34, no. 3, 2026.

Furlanetto, Elena, Ilka Brasch, Abigail Fagan, and Phillip James Grider, eds. Too Great for Words:
The Ineffable in Sound and Text. Special series in Resonance: A Journal of Sound and Culture, vol. 7,
no. 1-2, 2026, https://doi.org/10.1525/res.2026.7.2.181.

Fagan, Abigail, and Phillip James Grider. “Interlude: Listening to the Ineffable and the Ineffed.” Too
Great for Words: The Ineffable in Sound and Text. Special series in Resonance: A Journal of Sound
and Culture, vol. 7, no. 2, 2026, pp. 181-188, https://doi.org/10.1525/res.2026.7.2.181.

Grider, Phillip James. ““There Is a Beast They Call Aroughcun”: Raccoons and Colonialism in Early
America.” European Journal of American Studies, vol. 19, no. 1, 15 Feb. 2024,
https://doi.org/10.4000/ejas.21562.

Furlanetto, Elena, and Phillip James Grider. “Rather Pretty Legends: The Vanishing Gardens of
Lafcadio Hearn and George Washington Cable.” Stadt: Eine gebaute Lebensform zwischen
Vergangenheit und Zukunft, edited by Jens Beutman et al., WVT Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier,
2022, pp. 291-309.

CONFERENCE TALKS

Postgraduate Forum (DGfA/GAAS) Annual Meeting 2023
“Spaces of Affect in the Americas,” Leibniz University Hannover, November 9–11, 2023.
Paper Title: “‘A Vast and Howling Wilderness:’ Otherness in the Early American Landscape.”

DGfA/GAAS Annual Conference 2023                                                                                                                            “America and Ownership: Territory, Slavery, Jubilee,” Rostock University, June 1–3, 2023                                                      Panel: “[En]Closures: Spatial Confinement and Discursive Delineation in Early America.”                                                      Paper Title: “‘pro pelle cutem:’ Animal Skin and Otherness in Settler Colonial America.”

More-Than-Human Studies Symposium
University of Karlstad, Sweden, May 16–17, 2023
Paper title: “‘A Frenzied Mob of Weed and Thorns:’ Resistant Flora in George Washington
Cable.” (Cancelled)

PopMec Association for US Popular Culture Studies
Virtual Conference: “Animals in the American Popular Imagination.” Online, September 12-16,
2022.
Paper title: “The Raccoon as Agent of Colonialism in Early North America.”

Voices and Agencies: America and the Atlantic, 1600–1865
Workshop I: “Voices: Self-Writing in the Age of Un-Selfing.” FU Berlin, February