Manuela Engstler earned her Bachelor of Arts in American Studies from Stuttgart University in 2014, and a Master of Arts and a PhD in American Studies from Saint Louis University in 2016 and 2023, respectively. She has taught in American Studies at Saint Louis University and worked as a research assistant for the same department, as well as the Department for Literatures Languages and Cultures. Engstler received a competitive graduate assistantship from the Walter J. Ong Center for Digital Humanities for the academic year 2020/2021, and another competitive graduate assistantship from the newly established Center for Research on Global Catholicism in the academic year 2021/2022. Her research interests are Transnational Studies, Civil Rights and Black Power, and Modern European History.

Outside of this academic work, Engstler founded the Graduate Public Humanities Group at Saint Louis University, which has been organizing public humanities events regarding the professionalization of graduate students in the public humanities field, as well as themes such as decolonizing institutions. The group is part of a larger public humanities project in conjunction with the faculty led Public Humanities Initiative, which is mapping the racial and cultural history of Saint Louis University to make it accessible to the public (sluhistorytour.org)

"Americans Abroad: Civil Rights and Freedom Struggles." During the 1960s and 1970s Americans were involved in transnational protest movements and the creation of countercultures in African and European countries. This course explores the histories of these movements, paying attention to how they worked together, inspired, and interacted with each other.  This interdisciplinary course combines traditional histories with first-hand accounts, photographs, film, pamphlets, and other political and cultural primary sources.

"Proseminar U.S.-American Women Writers": This seminar-style course includes a variety of writers such as Kate Chopin but also more contemporary authors, such as Toni Morrison and Jhumpa Lahiri. Through weekly readings and in-class discussions this course examines the works of contemporary U.S. women to explore the history of knowledge- and canon-formation, as well as the nexus of gender, nation, and other categories of identity and analysis, such as race and class.

"Proseminar Cultural Studies Key Documents and Key Concepts in American History": This course delves into a variety of texts and myths which permeate American culture. America is often associated with ideas of liberty, equality, or the self-made man, but also the right to bear arms and the tendency to promote itself as "a city upon a hill." This class examines the myths and concepts that seem to define the United States of America. By analyzing key documents such as the "Declaration of Independence" or Martin Luther King’s speech "I Have a Dream" as well as decisive moments in American history like the abolition of slavery, the Cold War, or Social Movements, it explores the (self-)definitions of the United States, examines underlying contradictions, and pays attention to the role disenfranchised groups play in these discourses.

"The Arrival of Friedrich Hecker and the Forty-Eighters in Missouri," in German Abolitionists: Fighting for a Free Missouri (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, scheduled 2023).