Dr. Mahshid Mayar

Ass. Prof. Dr. Mahshid Mayar

Assistant Professor of American Studies


University of Innsbruck
Department of American Studies
Innrain 52d, 6020 Innsbruck

Humanities building, 3rd floor, room 40309

Phone: +43 512 507-41611
E-Mail:  Mahshid.Mayar@uibk.ac.at

Office hour: by appointment

Research and Teaching Interests

  • Intersections of Literature and History
  • American Poetry | Documental Protest Poetry
  • Archives and Politics of Archiving | Archival Silences
  • Transnational American Studies [ focus on race & racialization
  • Critical Sound Studies | Sound, Silence, Noise in Contemporary U.S. Literature
  • Empire Studies | Cartographies of Empire | Empire, Age, and Race
  • Historical Childhood Studies | History of Education

Current Research Project

weiße und orange Schrift auf grünem Grund

Erasure as Otherwise—Poetics, Politics, Performance 

Attending to the afterlives and ongoing operations of U.S. empire, the Habilitation project Erasure as Otherwise begins from the claim that archives do not merely store violence but actively conduct it, shaping what can be known, said, and remembered. Exploring the multiple ways in which erasure -- a critical practice of engagement with "pre-texts," such as naturalization forms, prison correspondence, Emily Dickinson's poems, and so on -- subjects documents to redaction, excision, and repetition, the book exposes the pressures under which language buckles, frays, and persists. Across six chapter, it asks what kinds of reading, spectating, and listening such language demands and what kinds it refuses.

Announcements

Call for Proposals "Deliberate Poetics"

The call for proposals is now closed for Deliberate Poetics: Erasure, Materiality, and the Politics of the Page, an essay collection edited by Mahshid Mayar, Michael Fuchs, & Sandra Tausel.

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International Conference "Anthropocene Necropoetics: Empire, Violence, and Ecological Ruin in US Poetry"

Co-organized by Mahshid Mayar & Judith Rauscher, the upcoming International Conference “Anthropocene Necropoetics: Empire, Violence, and Ecological Ruin in US Poetry” was held at the University of Cologne, Germany, from 28 to 30 January 2026. During this three-day event, US poetry will be discussed in terms of “anthropocene necropoetics,” a term that emerges from the crossover between postcolonial capitalism and chemical modernity and in relation to the United States as both a state and an empire.

The conference poster can be viewed here.

Art Installation during the International Conference "Making Sense of America - Conversations on Matter & Methods"
As part of the "Making Sense of America - Conversations on Matter & Methods" at University of Innsbruck (2-3 July), Mahshid Mayar and Philip Leonhardt are also organizing a critical arts installation, exhibiting students' experimentation with erasure techniques on four-page copies of the Declaration of Independence. On the occasion of the 250th anniversary of the United States, transforming the country's foundational document promises to be a thought-provoking endeavor for students and visitors of the art installation.

Sounds of Erasure - Podcast Series

As part of the DFG-funded Erasure Poetry Project, the ongoing podcast series Sounds of Erasure engages poets, activists, and scholars in conversations about erasure as a page-based poetic practice with broader political, historical, and sociocultural dimensions.

  • Two new episodes in the series -- a conversation with Crystal Simone Smith and another conversation with Tracy K. Smith -- are scheduled to go live in May 2026.

  • The series' latest episode, conducted in March 2026, features the award-winning poet, social critic, and labor activist Mark Nowak. Nowak talks about his forthcoming poetry collection . . . AGAIN (2026) and discusses erasure both as a documentary method and a form of sonic material.

Click here to listen to more interviews featuring award-winning poets, including Philip Metres, Niina Pollari, and Mai Der Vang.

Teaching

current semester: SS 2026

past semester: WS 2025/2026 / SS 2025

Publications [selection]

  • in preparation: Mayar, Mahshid. W( )oles and ( )holes: Politically Engaged Erasure Poetry in Twenty-First-Century United States [ Habilitationsprojekt ].
  • 2022: Mayar, Mahshid. Citizens and Rulers of the World: The American Child and the Cartographic Pedagogies of Empire. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press (2022).

Winner of Shelley Fisher Fishkin Prize for Original Research -- American Studies Association (ASA).

  • under contract: Mayar, Mahshid, and Mischa Honeck, eds. De Gruyter Companion to U.S. Empire. Berlin: de Gruyter (2026).
  • 2022: Mayar, Mahshid, and Marion Schulte, eds. Silence and Its Derivatives: Conversations Across Disciplines. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2022.
  • 2021: Mayar, Mahshid, and Stefan Schubert, eds. “American Video Games and the Politics of Popular Culture.” European Journal of American Studies 16.3 (2021).
  • 2020: Mayar, Mahshid, ed. “Spaces of Empire.” U.S. Studies Online, British Association for American Studies (2020).
  • 2018: Mayar, Mahshid, ed. “Encounters in the ‘Game-Over Era’: The Americas in Videogames.” fiar: Forum for Inter-American Research 11.2 (2018).
  • 2017: Mayar, Mahshid, and Yaatsil Guevara González, eds. “Done with Eurocentrism? Directions, Diversions, and Debates in History and Sociology.” InterDisciplines: Journal of History and Sociology 8.2 (2017).
  • Mayar, Mahshid. “Splintered Archives: Versions and Versioning through Erasure Arts and Poetry” (article in Journal of the Austrian Association for American Studies (JAAAS) – edited by Matthias Klestil).
  • Mayar, Mahshid. “Erasure as Seriality – A Study of the “Serial Attitude” in A Humument and Tree of Codes.” Serial Circulation: Print Cultures and Periodical Modernities, edited by Daniel Stein and Maxi Albrecht. Anglia: Journal of English Philology 1 (2025).
  • 2023: Mayar, Mahshid. “‘Playes Print the Letter.’ American Child(hoods) as Archival Present/ce.” Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth 16.3 (2023): 361-383.
  • 2023: Mayar, Mahshid. “Huck in the Balloon, Huck in the Divan -- The American Child and the Cartographic Scripts of Empire.”Journal of Transnational American Studies 14.1 (2023): 53-74.
  • 2023: Mayar, Mahshid. “Sand Opera: Imperial Scripts of Crisis and Intergeneric Fields of Erasure in Philip Metres’ Poetry of Erasure.”Capitalist Crisis Poetry: Neoliberalism and the 21st Century Lyric, edited by Stefan Benz, Marcel Hartwig, and Hannah Schoch. Amerikastudien/American Studies 68.2 (2023): 231-41.
  • 2022: Mayar, Mahshid. “Children, Childhood, and Empire.”Oxford Bibliographies in Childhood Studies. Ed. Heather Montgomery. New York: Oxford University Press (2022).
  • 2022: Mayar, Mahshid. “Silence as Masquerade: Punctuation, Prosody, and Performance in ‘A Primer for the Punctuation of Heart Disease’.” Silence and Its Derivatives: Conversations across Disciplines. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan (2022).
  • 2022: Mayar, Mahshid, and Marion Schulte. “Silences in History, Linguistics, and Literature: An Introduction,” introduction to Silence and Its Derivatives: Conversations across Disciplines. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan 2022).
  • 2021: Mayar, Mahshid. “Feasts of Indifference: Racialization, Affect, and Necropolitics in 1X War Games.” European Journal of American Studies 16.3 (2021).
  • 2021: Mayar, Mahshid, and Stefan Schubert. “Joystick in the Garden,” introduction to Special Issue “American Video Games and the Politics of Popular Culture.” European Journal of American Studies 16.3 (2021).
  • 2020: Mayar, Mahshid. “Spaces and Spatialities of Empire: An Introduction,” introduction to “Spaces of Empire” Essay Series, U.S. Studies Online, British Association for American Studies (2020).
  • 2020: Mayar, Mahshid. “What on earth! Slated Globes, School Geography and Imperial Pedagogy.”European Journal of American Studies 15.2 (2020): 1-19.
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