Jenny Haase: New professor with a fresh look at women's literature!

Jenny Haase: New professor with a fresh look at women's literature!

On May 22, 2025, the University of Potsdam welcomed an important figure in Romance literature: Jenny Haase, who has been a professor at the institution since October 2024. Her expertise focuses on French and Spanish-language literatures and cultures and she follows in the footsteps of Ottmar Ette. With a broad range of research interests, Haase brings a breath of fresh air to the academic landscape.

Haase's research fields are diverse. It includes not only modern poetry and feminist narrative voices, but also post- and decolonial discourses as well as the dialogue between religion and secularization. She is particularly interested in contemporary Latin American ecocriticism, a topic that is becoming increasingly important. In her work for students, she will also discuss contemporary French-language novels as well as performance and video art from Latin America.

Academic backgrounds and awards

Jenny Haase has an impressive academic career. Before her time at the University of Potsdam, she taught at the Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg. Her habilitation thesis entitled “Vital Mysticism” illuminates mystical elements in the works of modern writers and received the renowned Hugo Friedrich and Erich Köhler Prize. In addition, her doctoral thesis on Patagonia was awarded the Elise Richter Prize of the German Romance Studies Association.

An impressive stop in her career was her stay at Stanford University, where she worked as a postdoctoral researcher. These experiences combine with her commitment to exploring social, political, economic and environmental crises, always keeping the Latin American perspective in mind.

Feminist literary criticism as a field of research

A central component of Haase's research are feminist narrative voices, which are strongly linked to feminist literary criticism. This discipline examines literary works from a feminist perspective, questioning traditionally anchored gender roles and the representation of women in literature. Originally emerging in the late 1960s as a response to the marginalization of female voices, feminist literary criticism has also continued to diversify to address intersectional issues such as gender, race, class, and sexuality.

Pioneers of this movement such as Simone de Beauvoir and Virginia Woolf made fundamental contributions that are still important today. Her critical engagement illuminates the absence of female voices and deals with the construction of gender roles in literary texts. In her teaching units and studies, Haase would like to show how important it is to integrate these topics into teaching and research.

For December 2025, Haase is planning a conference on posthumanist approaches from Latin American and indigenous perspectives, which will further deepen the interdisciplinary dialogue. This event is expected to be another milestone in her academic career.

With her broad profile and strong research perspective, Jenny Haase will undoubtedly make a valuable contribution to Romance literary studies at the University of Potsdam. Her commitment to feminist and postcolonial discourses in literature will not only enrich the course, but also inspire students and researchers alike.

For further information about your area of ​​expertise and research interests you can here learn more. Further details on feminist literary criticism can be found in Annegret Thiem's ​​work here and on the Moocit website here.