Dr. Aleksandra Boss is a research assistant at the Department of English and American Studies at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. Among her research interests and areas of teaching are antebellum literature, literatures and cultures of self-improvement, as well as spiritual and religious currents in the US, chiefly Deism, Unitarianism, Transcendentalism, and New Thought. Her affiliation with the research project “Mobilizing the Self” has also significantly increased her appreciation of the mass and popular cultures of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.