• American & African American Literature 
• Literary Theory, Critical Theory, Aesthetics & Praxeology
• Relations of Space and Place, esp. Public Space  
• American Cultural & Media History
• Pragmatism & Hermeneutics
• American Art & Architecture   
• Infrastructure, esp. Infrastructures of Race and Genre

My scholarly work revolves around the multiple and ever-changing social uses and functions of cultural practices and artifacts. I have a long-standing interest in the relation between aesthetics and politics and how it shapes our life-worlds. Specifically, I ask how U.S. cultural and literary history is intertwined with the technological and ideological developments that define ‘western modernity.’ Literary texts, cultural artifacts, and modern mass media thus come into view as agents shaping social developments—which, in turn, become tangible as fundamentally defined by aesthetic factors like sensory perception, modes of depiction and their critical evaluation.

My work is grounded in the belief that these dynamics deserve our attention because they define the worlds we live in, together with other human beings and non-human life forms. Understanding them is the first step toward creating less violent and more sustainable forms of coexistence.

My first book, Ästhetik der Immersion (transcript 2007) examines public spaces such as Washington’s government district, Chicago’s White City, and the Las Vegas Strip as sites that turn world-image-relations into immersive spectacles. My second book, Belonging and Narrative (transcript 2018) considers the human need to belong as a driving force of literary production and the American novel as a primary place and home-making agent. My most recent book, Reading for Democracy (Metzler 2025) explores the political functions and uses of literature in a series of essays, with topics ranging from reading as a political practice to literature as critical infrastructure, from the public sphere as a space of appearance to the art of the essay in the digital age.

I have been a research fellow at Heidelberg University, Harvard University, New York University, IFK Internationales Zentrum für Kulturwissenschaft Wien and UC Berkeley.

Prior to Bochum, I had academic positions at FU Berlin, Freiburg University and the University of Groningen.

I received my Magister degree (in American Studies, History and Philosophy) from FU Berlin. While writing my doctoral dissertation I was also a professional long-distance triathlete, with regular top-placements in international races including the World Championship in Hawaii.

I am a member of the DFG-funded Research Group “Infrastructure: Aesthetics and Supply,” where I lead the project “‘Race as Infrastructure’ and Literary Infrastructures of Resistance” and conduct two interrelated subprojects: on „Genre as Infrastructure and the Specter of Race“ and on „The Literary Engines of the Underground Railroad.“

Together with Philipp Loeffler, I am co-editing two special issues, both of which are due to come out in 2027: “After Contemporary Literature” for American Literature; and “What was Contemporary Literature? Or: The End of Periodization as We Know It” for Post45.

Go here for a Complete List of Publications.

Many of my publications are posted here: https://rub.academia.edu/LauraBieger 

Reading for Democracy. Heidelberg: Metzler, 2024.

Belonging and Narrative. A Theory of the American Novel. Bielefeld: transcript, 2018.

Ästhetik der Immersion. Raumerleben zwischen Welt und Bild. Las Vegas, Washington und die White City. Bielefeld: transcript, 2007.

„Literatur als Infrastruktur von Öffentlichkeit.“ In: Handbuch Literatur und Öffentlichkeit. Ed. Antje Kley, Dirk Niefanger, Antonia Villinger und Karin Hoepker. Heidelberg: Metzler (forthcoming).

“Literature as a Guide to the World as Experienced; or, Reading with William James (and against Sigmund Freud).” In: The Cambridge Companion to William James and Literary Studies. Ed. Kirsten Case and Kate Stanley. Cambridge UK: Cambridge University Press (forthcoming).

“The Underground Railroad and the Promise of Infrastructure.” Special Issue “Literature and Public World-Making.” Parallax 30.3. (2024)

“Audre Lordes Berlin, oder: Schreiben jenseits der Buchseite.” In: Berlin, Blicke: Fallbeispiele internationaler literarischer Austauschbeziehungen in der geteilten Stadt. Ed. Susanne Klengel, Jutta Müller-Tamm and Ulrike Schneider. Berlin: DeGruyter, 2023. 279-289.

“The 1619 Project as Aesthetic and Social Practice; or, the Art of the Essay in the Digital Age.” In: The Public Mind and the Politics of U.S. American Post-Millennial Writing. Ed. Jolene Mathieson, Marius Henderson and Julia Lange. London: Bloomsbury, 2022. 253-277.

“Public Intellectuals, Cultural Fields, and the Predicament of Popularity; or, Richard Wright Meets Pierre Bourdieu.” In: American Cultures as Popular Culture. Ed. Astrid Böger und Florian Sedlmeier. Heidelberg: Winter, 2022. 207-223.

“Toward a History (and Future) of the Human Being in American Art.” Mit Joshua Shannon und Jason Weems. In: “Humans.” Ed. Laura Bieger, Joshua Shannon and Jason Weems. Terra Foundation Essays in American Art, Vol. 6. (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2021): 10-38.

“Committed Writing as Common Ground: Jesmyn Ward’s Poetics of Breathing While Black.” Amerikastudien / American Studies 66.1 (2021): 73-79.

“What Dewey Knew: The Public as Problem, Practice, and Art.” European Journal of American Studies 15.1 (2020).

“Jean-Paul Sartre, Richard Wright, and the Relational Aesthetics of Literary Engagement.” The Return of the Aesthetic in American Studies. Hg. Johannes Voelz, Rieke Jordan and Stefan Kuhl. REAL Yearbook of Research in English and American Literature Vol. 35 (2020): 169-188.

“After Contemporary Literature.” Hg. mit Philipp Loeffler. American Literature 99.1 (forthcoming 2027).

“What was Contemporary Literature? Or: The End of Periodization as We Know It.” Hg. Mit Philipp Loeffler. Post45 (forthcoming 2027).

Dialogues with Winfried Fluck: Essays and Responses on American Studies. With Johannes Voelz. REAL Yearbook of Research in English and American Literature Vol. 38 (2023).

“Humans.” With Joshua Shannon and Jason Weems. Terra Foundation Essays in American Art, Vol. 6. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2021.    

“Space, Place and Narrative.” With Nicole Maruo-Schröder. Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik 1 (2016).

Revisiting the Sixties: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on America’s Longest Decade. With Christian Lammert. Frankfurt: Campus, 2013.

The Imaginary and Its Worlds: American Literature after the Transnational Turn. With Ramón Saldívar and Johannes Voelz. Dartmouth, NH: The University of New England Press, 2013.

Mode. Ein kulturwissenschaftlicher Grundriss. With Annika Reich and Susanne Rohr. München: Fink, 2012.

Winfried Fluck. Romance with America? Selected Essays on Culture, Literature and American Studies. With Johannes Voelz. Heidelberg: Winter, 2009.