Culture and Political Economy, Globalization, American and Southern Studies, Visual Culture
Severin Mueller is a PhD candidate in Cultural Studies, a current Doctoral Research Scholar, as well as a Spring 2024 Residential Research Fellow at George Mason University's Center for Humanities Research. Since joining the Cultural Studies PhD Program, he was a Presidential Scholar at George Mason University and website co-editor of the Cultural Studies program. Before pursuing his Ph.D. at George Mason University, he has received both his Bachelor of Arts degree in Film Studies and his Master of Arts degree in Media Dramaturgy at the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, Germany.
Severin studies the social history and political economy of Appalachia and the U.S. South. His primary research interest focuses on the convergence of cultural and material threads in the present moment of economic and political history. To this end, he is particularly interested in the role of public education in society.
Spring 2024 - Residential Research Fellowship, George Mason Center for Humanities Research
2023-24 - Doctoral Research Scholarship, GMU Office of the Provost
2023 - Summer Research Fellowship, GMU Office of the Provost
2019-22 - Presidential Scholarship, GMU Office of the Provost
COMM 101: Fundamentals of Communication
INTS 404: Ethics and Leadership
"Learning as Labor: Dialectics of Social Reproduction in the West Virginia Teachers’ Strike." 47th Annual Appalachian Studies Conference: Beloved Community: Pride in Identity, Culture, and Geography. Western Carolina University. Cullowhee, NC. March 2024.
"COVID-19 and the School: Reexamining the Production/Reproduction Debate", Presented at Cultural Studies Association 21st Annual Conference: Conclusions. Cultural Studies Association. Fairfax, VA, June 2023.
"'We Need Our Kids Back in School': The 2018 West Virginia Teachers Strike and the Crisis of Public Education in the Age of the Pandemic", Presented at Mason Graduate Interdisciplinary Conference 2022. George Mason University. Fairfax, VA, April 2022.
"From Exceptionalism to the State of Exception: Appalachia and the Turn to Financialization", Presented virtually at Annual Meeting of the Historians in the German Association for American Studies (DGfA/GAAS): Labor and Capital in U.S. History. Obama Institute for Transnational American Studies, University of Mainz. Mainz, Germany, February 2022.