What makes up a public, what governs dominant discourses, and in which ways can counterpublics be created through narrative? This edited collection brings together essays on affect and narrative theory with a focus on the topics of gender and sexuality. It explores the power of narrative in literature, film, art, performance, and mass media, the construction of subjectivities of gender and sexuality, and the role of affect in times of crisis. By combining theoretical, literary, and analytical texts, the contributors offer methodological impulses and reflect on the possibilities and limitations of affect theory in cultural studies.

Silvia Schultermandl (she/her), born in 1977, is a professor and chair of American studies at Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster. She researches various themes in transnational studies, American literature and culture, as well as family and kinship studies. Jana Aresin (she/her), born in 1992, is a doctoral researcher in American studies at Friedrich-Alexander Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg. She researches the cultural and media history of the early Cold War (1945-1960) in comparative perspective, with a regional focus on the United States and Japan. In 2020-21 she was Elisabeth-List Junior Fellow at the Coordination Centre for Gender Studies and Equal Opportunity at Karl-Franzens-Universität Graz. Si Sophie Pages Whybrew (she/her, they/them), born in 1987, is a senior scientist for gender and diversity studies at Kunst-Universität Graz. They completed their dissertation on 'Affective Trans Worldmaking in Contemporary Science Fiction' at Karl-Franzens-Universität Graz. From 2020-21, they were an Elisabeth-List Junior Fellow at the Coordination Centre for Gender Studies in the research project 'Literary Negotiations of Affective and Gendered Belongings.' Dijana Simic (she/her), born in 1988, is a lecturer of Bosnian, Croatian, and Serbian literary and cultural studies in the Department of Slavic Studies at Karl-Franzens-Universität Graz. Currently, she is completing her PhD project on gender, sexuality, and intimate counterpublics in recent Bosnian-Herzegovinian prose. Her teaching and research focus on migration, gender, and memory studies in the former Yugoslav context.