Lisa Brau-Weglinski M.A/M.Ed.

As a doctoral researcher on Project A04: “Successful Aging: Best Agers at the Intersection between Differentiating Age and Achievement” of the Collaborative Research Center (CRC) 1482, my research is concerned with the construction of age in the field of sports. In this context, I am particularly interested in various perspectives and representations of aging people in the realm of sports and competition. I want to trace how established readings of age are circumvented or reinforced in the context of sports competitions, such as the National Senior Games in the United States, the 55+ Games in Canada, and comparable competitions in Germany and wider Europe. In recent articles, I have looked at the role of age and how it is interwoven with Indigenous Studies and gender studies in Lisa Brooks’s Our Beloved Kin: Remapping a New History of King Philip’s War, as well as at its construction in the comic series and Amazon Prime show The Boys.

What shapes me and my research?

I focus particularly on the transnational scope of American studies and its interwovenness with Canadian studies. Accordingly, my master’s thesis dealt with the construction and reciprocal influence of Québécois, Anglo-Canadian, and US markers of identity in Margaret Atwood’s Surfacing and Jacques Poulin’s Volkswagen Blues. I am especially invested in the idea of looking at texts and categories contained within them that have in the past been left at the periphery of academic discourse, such as the category of age in texts from the realm of today’s “North American” (i.e., US and Canadian) indigenous studies.

What brought me to the CRC?

In 2018, I earned my binational B.Ed. in English, French, and education from Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz and my Double Licence in LLCE Anglais and Lettres Modernes from the University of Burgundy, Dijon. In 2022, I completed my M.Ed. in English, French, and education and my M.A. in American studies. I especially enjoyed the opportunity to study abroad at the University of Burgundy in Dijon, France, and at Université de Sherbrooke in Quebec, Canada. With my master’s thesis, I bridged the fields of transnational American studies, comparative Canadian studies, and études francophones. Since the fall of 2021, I have been working as a doctoral researcher at the Obama Institute for Transnational American Studies, a position through which I got the chance to become a part of the team on the CRC Project A04.

Foto: Stephanie Füssenich