Research Interests

In her research, Petra combines literary studies, “German” media theory, and philological analysis to reconstruct material histories of intellectual and cultural production, especially in 18th- and 19th-century Germany. Her other research interests include print culture, historical forms of knowledge organization, intellectual tools, the transnational history of journalism, and fake eyewitnessing.

Projects in Progress

• A new monograph, Formative Fakes: Manipulation and the Origins of Modern Journalism, 1842–1900, analyzes cases of “everyday fakery” in the German, British and North American press from the first professional foreign correspondents to the onset of press photography. It explores the constitutive role that faking played in shaping the journalistic profession. Written from the perspective of newsmakers and practitioners, it sheds new light on the prehistory of fake news, but it also shows that journalists sometimes faked stories and images with intentions that were far from nefarious.
• Predictive Reporting and the Manipulation of Time in Nineteenth-Century Visual News [journal article based on chapter of my second book].
• Co-edited volume (with Sean Franzel and Ilinca Iurascu), Taking Stock: Media Inventories of the German Nineteenth Century, under contract (scheduled for 2024).
• Das “Repertorium C. May” als Phantasma und Verfahren der Vielschreiberei. In Kolportage – Pulp – Moderne. Eds. David Brehm and Katharina Scheerer. Freiburg i.Br.: Rombach, scheduled for 2024.