Dr. Sabrina Mittermeier teaches and researches U.S. history in a transnational context, especially the interrelations with Great Britain, Germany, China or Japan. Her focus here is on popular culture (esp. theme parks, film, and television) in the 20th and 21st centuries, and how history helps us understand it - as well as vice versa. Another research focus is the history of sexuality and specifically queer history and queer studies, and she hopes to contribute to making these fields permanent fixtures in the teaching of history at German universities.

Sabrina Mittermeier's A Cultural History of Disneyland Theme Parks - Middle-Class Kingdoms (Intellect/University of Chicago Press 2021) is the first monograph on the transnational cultural history of Disneyland theme parks. The book focuses on Disneylands in Anaheim, California (1955), Orlando, Florida (1971), Tokyo (1983), Paris (1992), Hong Kong (2005), and Shanghai (2016), situating them in the historical contexts at the time of their opening. It also sheds light on the influence of class on their (mis)success. She is also (co-)editor of Fan Phenomena: Disney (Intellect/U of Chicago P 2022), The Routledge Handbook to Star Trek (2022) (with Leimar Garcia-Siino and Stefan Rabitsch), Fighting for the Future: Essays on Star Trek: Discovery (Liverpool UP 2020) (with Mareike Spychala), and Time and Temporality in Theme Parks (Wehrhahn 2017) (with Filippo Carlà-Uhink, Florian Freitag, and Ariane Schwarz). Her work has further appeared in the Journal of Popular Culture, Queer Studies in Media and Popular Culture, and forthcoming in the European Journal of American Culture, as well as in various edited volumes.

Dr. Mittermeier completed her PhD in American Cultural History in February 2018 at the Ludwig-Maximilians University of Munich under Prof. Dr. Michael Hochgeschwender. During her dissertation, she was also a research assistant in the DFG-funded project "Here You Leave Today - Aesthetic Eigentimes in Theme Parks" at JGU Mainz, and then subsequently at the Chair of American Studies (Prof. Dr. Katja Sarkowsky) in Augsburg, and held teaching positions at the Obama Institute Mainz, LMU, and the University of Bamberg. In addition, Dr. Mittermeier was active on the board of the Forum Queeres Archiv München e.V. from November 2019 to April 2021.

Her postdoctoral research project deals with "Unmade Queer Television in the US and West Germany".

Education and Academic Stations
10/2009 - 09/2012Bachelor in North American Studies and Language, Literature, Culture at the Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich
10/2012 - 08/2014Master in American History, Culture, and Society at the Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich
10/2014 - 02/2018PhD in American Cultural History at Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich (Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Michael Hochgeschwender, external second supervisor: Prof. James T. Campbell, Stanford University)
11/2014 - 03/2017Research assistant at the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz within the DFG project "Here You Leave Today - Aesthetic Eigenzeiten in Themenparks".
03/2019 - 03/2020Research assistant at the Chair of American Studies at the University of Augsburg
10/2014 - 09/2020various teaching positions at the Amerika-Institut of the LMU Munich, at the Obama Institute of the University of Mainz, at the chairs of American Studies of the Universities of Bamberg and Augsburg
2020Research Assistant for the History of Great Britain and North America, University of Kassel

Monographs

  • A Cultural History of the Disneyland Theme Parks - Middle-Class Kingdoms. Intellect/University of Chicago Press, 2020.

 

Editorships of special issues of peer-reviewed journals and anthologies (selected).

  • Fan Phenomena: Disney. (Intellect/University of Chicago Press, 2022) (forthcoming).
  • "West-German Popular Culture and its Transnational Impact 1949-1990" Special Issue of the Journal of European Popular Culture. Vol 12.1. (2022) (with Bodie A. Ashton) (in preparation).
  • "North American Speculative Fiction and the Political" Special Issue of the European Journal of American Culture. Vol. 40.3 (2021) (with Ina Batzke) (in preparation).
  • The Routledge Handbook to Star Trek. Routledge, 2021 (with Leimar Garcia-Siino and Stefan Rabitsch). (in preparation)
  • Fighting for the Future: Essays on Star Trek: Discovery. Liverpool University Press, 2020 (with Mareike Spychala).
  • Here You Leave Today: Time and Temporality in Theme Parks. Wehrhahn, 2017. (with Florian Freitag, Filippo Carlà-Uhink, and Ariane Schwarz).

 

Articles in peer reviewed journals (selected).

  • "(Un)Conventional Voyages - Fan Cruise Tourism" The Journal of Popular Culture (Special Issue on Popular Culture, Fandom, and Tourism). Vol 52.6 (2019).
  • "Windows to the Past - Disney's America, the Culture Wars, and the Question of Edutainment" Polish Journal for American Studies. Vol 10. (2016), 127-146.

 

Chapters in anthologies (selected).

  • "Unlikely Heroes - Celebrity Activism in Times of Trump and Brexit." Resist! Protest Media and Popular Culture in the Brexit-Trump Era.ed. Giuliana Monteverde and Victoria McCollum. Rowman and Littlefield, 2020.
  • "Theme Parks - Where Media and Tourism Converge" The Routledge Companion to Media and Tourism. Eds. Maria Mansson et.al. London: Routledge, 2020.
  • "'A Society on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown' - The Death of Stalin, Historical Film, and Resistance to Trump's America." Resist and Persist: Essays on Social Revolution in 21st Century Narratives. ed. Leisa Clark and Amanda Firestone. Jefferson, NC: McFarland Publishers, 2020.
  • "Never Hide Who You Are: Queer Representation and Actorvism in Star Trek: Discovery" (with Mareike Spychala) Fighting for the Future: Essays on Star Trek: Discovery. Edited by Sabrina Mittermeier and Mareike Spychala. Liverpool University Press, 2020.
  • "Time Travelling to the American Revolution - Why Immersive Media Need American Studies" Playing the Field - Video Games and American Studies. Ed. Sascha Pöhlmann. Oldenbourg, De Gruyter, 2019.

Current Projects

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Completed Projects

Completed Projects: Read More