Prof. Dr. Alfred Hornung

BACKGROUND: Hornung1-2
I am Professor of English and American Studies and received my doctoral and postdoctoral degrees at the University of Würzburg. My education and academic career were decisively influenced by various stays abroad, as a student at Wesleyan University in Middletown, CT, and at the Université de Caen, as fellow and visiting professor at various European, American, Canadian and Chinese Universities, including the National Humanities Center in North Carolina, Harvard, Yale, Columbia and Peking Univ. As director of the Center for Intercultural Studies at Mainz I promoted the interdisciplinary cooperation of the humanities and social sciences and initiated a number of international programs. My 20-year engagement with all forms of life writing and International Auto/Biography Associations finally finds its accomplishment in the cooperation with colleagues in life sciences.

THE GRK IS... an academic dream of transdisciplinary interaction come true. It provides an innovative approach to urgent questions about the meaning of life in our time for all members of the research training group. It opens up new avenues of research and launches new areas of professional careers, also outside of academia. _MG_1873

MY GOAL IS... twofold: on the one hand I want to continue our efforts to create trinational PhD programs with American and Chinese universities resulting in mutually accepted degrees. On the other hand I want to intensify my Chinese American research goals in conjunction with the wisdom of traditional Chinese medicine to promote an ecological awareness existing in indigenous customs and life.

MY PROJECT... Ecology and life writing in transcultural and transnational perspective. Ecobiographical correlations of diseases in human bodies and in nature.

CONTACT: Department of English and Linguistics (American Studies)