Spatial Imaginaries
Historical discourses of space, critical cartography, and the cultural production of place.
Dr. Steffen Wöll
Research Statement
Examining how literature and culture imagine, map, and transform space.
I am a postdoctoral researcher in American Studies. My work at Leipzig University explores cartography, mobility, borders, and imperial imaginaries across American literature and culture. My research interests also extend to digital humanities, visual culture, film, horror, and game studies.
Research Areas
Oceans and Empire
Archipelagic and island studies, mobility, borders, U.S. empire, and globalization.
Popular and Digital Culture
Intersections of popular and digital culture, with particular interests in horror and game studies.
Current Project
A Place Between Oceans: Imagining American Empire, 1880–1940
The project examines how transoceanic and archipelagic imaginaries shaped U.S. imperial expansion and literary culture at the turn of the twentieth century.
Selected Work
All publicationsThe West and the Word
Imagining, Formatting, and Ordering the American West in Nineteenth-Century Cultural Discourse.
Open accessUnmasking Maps, Unmaking Empire
Towards an Archipelagic Cartography.
Open accessImperial Spatializations and Archipelagic Counter-Geographies
A selected corpus of works, 1880–1940.
Explore the corpus Upcoming
Archipelagic Dissent: Counter-Geographies of America’s Oceanic Empire.
NASA Annual Conference: American Protest Cultures · Radboud University Nijmegen · 4–6 November 2026