Werner Sollors

Werner Sollors, Henry B. and Anne M. Cabot Professor of English Literature and Professor of African and African American Studies. Dr. phil. 1975 Freie Universität Berlin.

Interests: American Literature; American Studies; Ethnicity; Comparative Literature; Themes and Motifs.

Selected Works:

• Beyond Ethnicity: Consent and Descent in American Culture (1986);
• Neither Black Nor White and Yet Both: Thematic Explorations of Interracial Literature (1997);
• Ethnic Modernism (2008);
• ed. The Promised Land (Mary Antin);
• ed. Theories of Ethnicity: A Classical Reader (1996);
• ed. Multilingual America (1998);
• ed. Interracialism (2000);
• ed. The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano (2000);
• co-ed. The Multilingual Anthology of American Literature (2000);
• ed. An Anthology of Interracial Literature (2003);
• ed. Georges (Alexandre Dumas);
• co-ed. A New Literary History of America (2009).

He is currently at work on a book tentatively called Tales of the 1940s.

His lectures "Americans All?" and "Goodbye Germany" have been posted on the web, as have his contributions to the Interroads discussion on multilingualism.

Professor Sollors is serving, and/or has served, on the following American Civilization dissertation committee(s):

“Beyond Broken Glass: Looking at the South Bronx in Ruin” (Peter L’Official)

“Rubber Souls: Rock and Roll and the Racial Imagination” (John C. Hamilton)

"Savage Preservation: Race, Culture, and the Making of Modern Media" (Brian Hochman)

"Like Me: Identity Immersion Journalism and the Dilemmas of Self-Making" (Sara Gebhardt)

“To the Heart of Europe: Americanism, the Salzburg Seminar, and Cultural Diplomacy” (George Blaustein)

“Pacific Crossings: China, the United States, and the Transpacific Imagination” (Hua Hsu)

“‘Ain’t Got No Home’: Race and American Narratives in the Depression Era” (Erin Royston Battat)

“Performing History: History and Politics in the Works of Suzan-Lori Parks, Anna Deavere Smith, Naomi Wallace, and Charles Mee” (Talaya Delaney)

“The Perpetrators’ Past: Consciousness and Conscience in the Historical Novel” (Peter Becker)

“‘They Call it Marriage’: The Interracial Louisiana Family and the Making of American Legitimacy” (Diana Williams)

“Peculiar Memories: Slavery and the American Cultural Imagination” (Salamishah Tillet)

“‘We’re Going Yankee’: American Films, Mexican Nationalism, Transnational Cinema 1917-1935” (Laura Serna)

“‘An American Type’: The Kikuchi Diaries, A Cultural Biography (1941-1947)” (Matthew Briones)

“Back to the Blanket: The Indian Fiction of Oliver La Farge, John Joseph Mathews, D’Arcy McNickle, Ruth Underhill, and Frank Waters, 1927-1944” (Nancy Elam Squires)

“Forging Memory, Hereditary Societies: Patriotism and the American Past, 1876-1898” (Woden Teachout)

“The Culture of Promises: Literary Ethics and American Cultural Politics, 1820-1870” (Penny Tucker)

“Performed Fictions: The Onstage and Offstage Lives of Bert Williams” (Camille Forbes)

“The Passing of a People: Creoles of Color in Mid-Nineteenth Century New Orleans” (Shirley Thompson)

Contact information:
- Department of African and African American Studies
- Department of English