Fields of interest

African-American Literature and Culture in transatlantic perspective
Slavery, history, and memory
Trauma theory
Identity, race and gender
Immigration and forced migration
Multi-ethnic literary and cultural studies
Internationalisation of higher education

Research

Since starting out as a scholar specialising in nineteenth-century American literature and New England Puritanism, I have developed a special interest in African American literature and culture, focusing particularly on literary and other forms of cultural expression that aim to work through the historical trauma of forced migration and human bondage.  My most recent research has focused on slavery monuments and public memory in the United States and the Netherlands.  My approach tends to be both historical and interdisciplinary. I am currently working on a book on the memorialisation of slavery in transatlantic perspective and on an editorial project of collecting, transcribing, and translating historical documents related to and letters and other writings by two West-African princes who were educated in the Netherlands in the mid-nineteenth century as part of a secret recruiting deal between the Ashanti ruler and the Dutch government. Moreover, under the auspices of the Society of Multi-Ethnic Studies: Europe and the Americas (MESEA), I have organised a major international conference on “Migration Matters: Immigration, Homelands, and Border Crossings” (Leiden, June 2008).

Curriculum Vitae

After receiving my BA in English Language and Literature at Utrecht University, I studied American literature for a year at Wellesley College, Hillary Clinton’s alma mater, on a Slater International Fellowship (1976-77). I received my first MA degree (cumlaude) from Utrecht, and then returned to the U.S. on a Fulbright-Hays grant to go to graduate school at Cornell University (1980-1985). At Cornell, I received my second MA degree in 1983 and my PhD degree in English in 1985, with a dissertation on the relationship between identity and writing in Herman Melville’s early work (Director: Michael Colacurcio; PhD committee members: Mary Jacobus, Mark Seltzer, and R. Laurence Moore). 
In 1986, I was appointed as Director of American Studies at Leiden University, where I continue to teach American studies and American literature. In 1990, I returned to Cornell for half a year on a research grant from the American Council of Learned Societies. During the spring semester of 1998, I taught two courses at the College of William and Mary (VA) as a visiting associate professor in American Studies. In the fall of 2007, I was a Fulbright Scholar-in-Residence at the University of La Verne (CA) for a semester, teaching and lecturing on slavery and memory in transatlantic perspective. 

Teaching activities

BA and MA Courses taught (at Cornell, Leiden, College of William and Mary, and University of La Verne):

From Bradford to Bush: Introduction to American Studies (survey American history and culture)
American Literature, 1620-1865
American Literature, 1865-1914
American Literature, 1917-present
The American Renaissance
American Realism
Introduction to Sources, Documentation, and research skills in American Studies
American Society and Culture
American Women Writers
American Society and Culture
American Women Writers
The New England Mind: American Culture to 1860
Slavery, Literature, Memory
The American South in Black and White: The Writing of a Region (MA)
Race, Gender, and Class in the Literature of the American South (MA)
Slavery and Memory in American Literature and Culture (MA)
Voices and Visions in Multicultural America (MA)
Gender, Race, and Ethnicity in American Women’s Writings (MA)
Gender an Identity in American and Caribbean Women Writers (MA)

Publications

Books:

Kardux, Joke, and Eduard van de Bilt. Newcomers in an Old City: The American Pilgrims in Leiden, 1609-1620. Leiden: Burgersdijk en Niermans. Third revised edition, 2007
Kardux, Johanna C., and Rosemarijn Hoefte, eds. and introd. Connecting Cultures: The Nether¬lands in Five Centuries of Transatlantic Exchange. Amsterdam: Free Univ. Press, 1994, 309 pp. Bilt, Eduard van de, and Joke Kardux, ed. Chicago: Hel en Wonderstad, special issue, Americana 4 (1990), 160 pp.
Kardux, Joke, ed. Zwart Zijn in de Verenigde Staten. Special issue, Americana 2 (1988): 180 pp.

Selected Articles:

Kardux, Johanna C. “Reparations for Slavery and Colonialism.” In Richard Juang and Noelle Morrissette, eds.  Africa and the Americas: Culture, Politics, and History. Santa Barbara: ABC-Clio, 2008.
Kardux, Johanna C. “Verscheurde emoties”: Het Nationaal Instituut Nederlands Slavernijverleden en Erfenis.” Geschiedenis Magazine 41.8 (Nov. -Dec. 2006), 48-49.
Horton, James Oliver, and Johanna C. Kardux. “Slavery and Public Memory in the United States and the Netherlands.” New York Journal of American History 66.2 (Fall-Winter 2005), 35-52.
Kardux, Johanna C. and Eduard F. van de Bilt. “Katrina and the Dutch Flood Disaster of 1953.” In John Brown Childs, ed. Hurricane Katrina: Response and Responsibilities. Santa Cruz: New Pacific Press, 2005, 100-107. Co-authored with Eduard van de Bilt. 2nd ed. Berkeley: North Atlantic/Random House, 2008, 100-107.
Horton, James Oliver, and Johanna C. Kardux. “Slavery and the Contest for National Heritage in the United States and the Netherlands.” American Studies International 42.2 & 3 (June-October 2004): 51-74.
Kardux, Johanna C. “Monuments of the Black Atlantic: Slavery Memorials in the United States and the Netherlands.” In Heike Raphael, ed. Blackening Europe: The African American Presence. Foreword by Paul Gilroy. New York: Routledge, 2003, 87-105.
Kardux, Johanna C.  “Family Values: Uncle Tom’s Cabin en de politiek van het huishouden.” In E.F. van de Bilt en H.W. van den Doel, eds. Klassiek Amerikaaans: Opstellen voor A. Lammers. Leidse Historische Studiën 7. Leiden, 2002, 150-168.
Kardux, Johanna C. “Tussen heden en verleden: ‘Double Consciousness’ in Toni Morrison’s Beloved.” In Theo D'haen en Peter Liebregts, eds. Tussen Twee Werelden: Het gevoel van ontheemding in de postkoloniale literatuur. Semaian, 21. Leiden, 2001, 196-226.
Kardux, Johanna C. and Eduard F. van de Bilt. “The Reagan Years to the Present.” In Mary Kupiec Cayton and Peter W. Williams, eds. The Encyclopedia of American Cultural and Intellectual History. Vol II. New York: Charles Scribner’s, 2001, pp. 195-203.  Co-authored with Eduard van de Bilt.
Kardux, Johanna C.  “Witnessing the Middle Passage: Trauma and Memory in the Narratives of Olaudah Equiano and Venture Smith and in Toni Morrison's Beloved.” In Maria Diedrich, Carl Pedersen, and Justine Tally, eds. Mapping African America: History, Narrative Formation, and the Production of Knowledge. Hamburg and Muenster: LIT Verlag, 1999, pp. 147-161.
Kardux, Johanna C.  “Herman Melville and the Mission of Empire.” In Theo D'haen, ed. (Un)Writing Empire. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1998, pp. 261-93.
Kardux, Joke.  “Moeders met een Missie: Amerikaanse Vrouwen, 1776-1920.” In Eduard van de Bilt and Joop Toebes, eds. Een Samenleving op de Rails: De Verenigde Staten tussen 1776-1917. Nijmegen: SUN, 1995, pp. 158-198.
Kardux, Joke. “Frederick Douglass: De Ex-Slaaf als Self-Made Man.” Spiegel Historiael 30 (November/December 1995), pp. 441-445.
Kardux, Joke. “Gloria Naylor.” Postwar Literatures in English, 25 (Sept. 1994), pp. 1-21.
Kardux, Joke. “Sylvia Plath.” Postwar Literatures in English, 18 (Dec. 1992), pp. 1-22.
Kardux, Johanna C. “The Politics of Genre, Gender, and Canon Formation: The Early American Bildungsroman and its Subversions.” In W.M. Verhoeven, ed. Rewriting the Dream: Reflections on the Changing American Literary Canon. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1992, pp. 177-201.
Kardux, Johanna C. “Growing Up Victorian: Herman Melville, Elizabeth Stod¬dard, and the Deconstruction of the American Bildungsroman.” In Steve Ickingrill and Stephen Mills, eds. Victorianism in the United States: Its Era and Its Legacy. Amsterdam: Free University Press, 1992, pp. 97-121.
Kardux, Joke. “James Fenimore Cooper and the Construction of Femininity in The Pioneers and The Last of the Mohicans.” Dutch Quarterly Review of Anglo-American Letters 20.3 (1990), pp. 215-23.
Kardux, Joke. “American Studies in The Netherlands: Center or Margin?” Americana: Journal of American Studies in The Netherlands 3 (1989), pp. 21-37.
Kardux, Joke. “American Slave Narratives: Anti-slavery Propaganda or Self-Expres¬sion?” Americana: Journal of American Studies in The Netherlands 2 (1988), pp. 32-49.