Sara Polak is a University Lecturer in American Studies and Modern English Literature at the Leiden University Centre for the Arts in Society. She is PI of the ERC Project Worlding America: How Play Shaped the United States from New Media to Politics, 1503-2028.

More information about Sara Polak

Fields of interest

• American studies 
• Presidential image-making 
• Play and politics 
• Digital media studies 
• Comics and political cartooning 
• Disability studies  
• Memory studies 
• Modern English Literature 
• 19th- to 21st-century American literature 

Research

My long-term research focus is on the making of America. How is "the American world" played into existence? And what moves, ideas and desires are at play in American culture, politics and history?

To gauge this, I study, among other things, the cultural and media politics of image-making of US presidents (and other powerful people), and their use of media in a broad sense. I am currently PI of and ERC Starting Grant project "Worlding America: How Play Shaped the United States from New Media to Politics, 1503-2028". I am also completing a book about playful politics and Donald Trump’s use of media, as part of the NWO project Playing Politics: Media Platforms Making Worlds. 

My doctoral dissertation (with Peter Liebregts and Frans Willem Korsten) was on Franklin D. Roosevelt as a cultural icon in American memory. It included a Fulbright visiting fellowship at Yale University, with Jay Winter. My book, FDR in American Memory – Roosevelt and the Making of an Icon, appeared with Johns Hopkins University Press in 2021. 

In 2016-2017, I did a one-year NWO Rubicon postdoc at the Justus-Liebig Universität in Giessen, Germany, with Greta Olson, focused on the Ebola epidemic in US cultural memory on Twitter. This is both how I moved into social media research, and into studying Donald Trump, who was an avid Ebola tweeter, and during that year, became US president. This project led to two edited volumes, both to appear in Open Access in 2020/2021: Embodying Contagion: The Viropolitics of Horror and Desire in Contemporary Discourse (with Megen de Bruin-Molé and Sandra Becker, University of Wales Press), and Violence and Trolling on Social Media: History, Affect and Effects of Online Vitriol (with Daniel Trottier, Amsterdam University Press). 

Grants and honors

• NWO-XS (2025): Can AI “unlearn” racism? Sticky Affect around Muslim Women’s bodies in Generative AI and Nordic Noir Television Series
• ERC Starting Grant (2024): Worlding America: How Play Shaped the United States from New Media to Politics, 1503-2028
• NWO Open Access Book (2020): Grant for Embodying Contagion
• NWO Rubicon (2016): Scholarship for research at Justus-Liebig Universität Giessen, with Greta Olson.
• Fulbright Scholarship (2014): 6-month research fellowship at Yale University, with Jay Winter.
• NWO Promoties in de Geesteswetenschappen (2010): PhD Grant.

Curriculum vitae

2024-2029 PI of ERC Project "Worlding America: How Play Shaped the United States from New Media to Politics, 1503-2028"
2021-2025 Research Fellow “Playing Politics: Media Platforms Making Worlds” 
2020-2024   Program chair of the MA North American Studies; coordinator of the minor American Studies 
2015-present   University Lecturer in American Studies at Leiden University 
2010-2015 Lecturer in modern English Literature and PhD Researcher at Leiden University 
2014-2015 Six-month Fulbright Scholarship at Yale University 
2008-2010 Lecturer in American History at the University of Amsterdam 
2005-2007 Research Master in Literary Studies (cum laude) at the University of Amsterdam 
2005-2007 B.Sc. Psychology at the University of Amsterdam 
2000-2003 BA Hons. English Literature at Cambridge University (UK)

Key publications

• "Donald Trump and Truth Social: Media Platforms Making Exclusionary Worlds" in Diversity Issues in the USA, Greta Olson and Melanie Kreitler, eds (2024) https:⁠/⁠/www⁠.transcript-verlag.de/978-3-8376-7473-6/diversity-issues-in-the-usa/?number=978-3-8394-7473-0
• "Het complot als spel dat de speler bespeelt" Leidschrift 37 (2022), 49-63. https:⁠/⁠/hdl.handle.net/1887/3448700
• FDR in American Memory: Roosevelt and the Making of an Icon. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2021. 
• Embodying Contagion: The Viropolitics of Horror and Desire in Contemporary Discourse. Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2021. Open Access. [https://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/47586]. Co-editors: Megen de Bruin-Molé and Sandra Becker. 
• Violence and Trolling on Social Media: History, Affect and Effects of Online Vitriol. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2020. Open Access. [https://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/42883]. Co-editor: Daniel Trottier. 

Teaching activities

• Words as Weapons in the USA 
• Migration Matters: (Im)migration, Memory, and Identity in American Literature and Film 
• Slavery and Memory in the Black Atlantic 
• American Comics Against the Code: Autobiography and Journalism in Graphic Novels 
• Literature 5A: American Literature 1917-present 
• Thesis supervision in North American Studies, Literary Studies, English and International Studies 

Publications

Activities