Education

2011
Dr. Phil., American Literary and Cultural Studies, University of Bonn, Summa Cum Laude.
Dissertation: “Exploding Books: Contemporary American Fiction, Maurice Blanchot, and the Writing of Terror(ism).”

2004
M.A. (Magister Artium), North American Studies, Modern History, and Economic Policy, University of Bonn.

Professional Experience

Since 10/2019

Visiting Fellow, Department of Culture, John F. Kennedy Institute for North American Studies, Free University of Berlin

2008 – 2019
Assistant Professor (“wiss. Mitarbeiter”), North American Studies Program, Department of English, American, and Celtic Studies, University of Bonn

2016 – 2018
Visiting Research Fellow, History Department, Barnard College/Columbia University

2013 – 2014
Visiting Fellow, Research Group “Cultures of Finance,” Dept. of Media, Culture, and Communication, New York University

2007 – 2008
Visiting Fellow, English Department, University of Wisconsin-Madison.

2004 – 2007
Project Manager, “Transatlantic Summer Academy,” International Office, University of Bonn. Conception, Fundraising and Organization of Interdisciplinary and International Summer Schools.

Administration and University Service

2014 – 2019
Member, Evaluation Board, Dept. of English, American, and Celtic Studies

2008 – 2019
Selection Committee, Direct Exchange Program with US and Canadian universities, University of Bonn

2008 – 2019
Student Advisor, M.A. North American Studies, University of Bonn

2012 – 2013
Founder and Coordinator of “Writers’ Bloc,” Student Group of Creative Writers, University of Bonn

2011 – 2013
Elected Member, Executive Board, Dept. of English, American, and Celtic Studies, University of Bonn

2012
Search Committee, Junior Professorship for Didactics of the English language and literature, University of Bonn

Courses Taught (Past)

University of Bonn

2018 - 2019

• Literature and Culture of the (New) Gilded Age
• Trans* Lives in North America

2015 – 2016

• The Uses of Nostalgia in Literature and Film
• Fictions of 9/11: Trauma and Testimony
• Critics, Practitioners, Icons: Celebrities of the Economic Sphere, from Karl Marx to Steve Jobs (co-taught)

2014 – 2015

• Film / Economy
• Debt in Economics and US Culture (co-taught)
• Green Utopias/Dystopias: Fictions for the Anthropocene

2013 – 2014

• Addictive Pleasures: David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest
• Fiction and the Internet

2012 – 2013

• Queering American Popular Culture
• Civil Religion: Myths Americans Live By

2011 – 2012

• Black Aesthetics
• “Black Power”: Transdisciplinary Perspectives on African American Cultures (co-taught)
• “In Peace I Chanted Peace”: War in US Poetry
• Close Readings of North American Pop Culture
• North American Literatures and Their Theories

2010 – 2011

• Rupture and Continuities: Transdisciplinary Perspectives on 9/11 (co-taught)
• Writing Terror(ism)

2009 – 2010

• “New York, New York!” Dreamscapes and Contested Territories (co-taught)

2008 – 2009

• Introduction to Film Studies
• Golden Promises? California Fiction
• California Dreaming: Transdisciplinary Perspectives on West Coast Cultures (co-taught)

2005 – 2006

• Fictions of Terror

Frequently taught courses since 2010:

• Research Colloquia North American Studies (B.A. + M.A. level)
• Introduction to Literary and Cultural Studies (B.A.)
• Survey Course North American Literatures and Cultures (B.A.)

Current Project

"Financialization and Nostalgia in US Culture"

 

Research Interests

Critical Finance Studies; Economic Criticism; Nostalgia; Discourses on 9/11, Terrorism, and Political Violence; Poetry and Poetics; Literary and Cultural Theory; Gender and Queer Studies

 

Fellowships, Grants, External Funding, Awards         

2019                      
Feodor Lynen Postdoctoral Return Fellowship (Alexander von Humboldt Foundation) for a one-year stay at the John F. Kennedy Institute, Free University of Berlin

2019                      
Argelander Conference Travel Grant by the University of Bonn to present at the annual convention of the American Comparative Literature Association (ACLA), Washington, DC

2016                   
Feodor Lynen Postdoctoral Research Fellowship (Alexander von Humboldt Foundation) for a two-year research stay at Barnard College, Columbia University, New York

2015                      
Conference Funding, German Research Council (DFG), German Association for American Studies (DGfA) and US Embassy in Germany, for “Financial Times: Economic Temporalities in U.S. Culture,” Goethe University Frankfurt, organized with Stefanie Mueller

2013
Conference Travel Grant by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) to present at the ASA Annual Convention, “Beyond the Logic of Debt, Toward an Ethics of Collective Dissent,” Washington, DC

2013                      
Short-listed (2^nd place) for “Junior Professor North American Literature and Culture,” University of Hamburg

2013                      
Fulbright American Studies Award

2011                      
Conference Funding, Thyssen Foundation and US Embassy, for “9/11: Ten Years After, Looking Ahead,” University of Bonn, organized with Sabine Sielke and Simone Knewitz

2010                      
Conference Travel Grant by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) to present at “Modernism and the Orient” in Hangzhou, China, and a workshop in Taipei, Taiwan

2005 – 2010           
Fellow, Early Career Research Network “The Futures of (European) American Studies,” funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG)

2005                      
“Ambassador’s Award” of the U.S. Embassy in Germany for the best M.A. Thesis in American Studies 2004/05

2000 – 2001           
German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) Fellowship,
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

 

Organization of Workshops, Conferences, and Summer Schools                      

2019                      
Focus on Transgender Studies, Lecture Series „Current Issues in American and Cultural Studies“, Universität Bonn

2015                     
“Knowledge Landscapes North America.” 62^nd Annual Conference of the German Association for American Studies (DGfA), University of Bonn (with Sabine Sielke, Elisabeth Schäfer-Wünsche, Simone Knewitz)

2015                      
“Financial Times: Economic Temporalities in U.S. Culture,” Goethe University Frankfurt (with Stefanie Mueller)

2011                      
“9/11: Ten Years After, Looking Ahead,” University of Bonn (with Sabine Sielke and Simone Knewitz)

2008                      
“American Studies in Germany,” Sixth Conference of the DFG Research Network “The Futures of (European) American Studies,” University of Heidelberg (with Simon Wendt)

2007                      
15th Transatlantic Summer Academy (TASA), “Beyond Clausewitz: Transformations of War”              

2006                      
14th Transatlantic Summer Academy (TASA), “The Changing Face of Terrorism”

2005                      
13th Transatlantic Summer Academy (TASA), “Weapons of Power and Tools of Management: Alliances in the Past and in the Present”

 

Conference Papers and Talks

Invited Talks

• Roundtable “Economic Humanities and the Aesthetics of Finance.” Conference “Intersections of Finance and Society,” City, University of London (December 2019)

• “Finance and Nostalgia: Temporality, Materiality, Affect.” University of Erlangen-Nürnberg (November 2017)

• “Financial Time and Temporal Flows in Wall Street Movies.” University of Potsdam (November 2017)

• “Wall Street Films, Nostalgia, and Gender.” New York University (December 2016)

• “‘Beautiful Credit!’ Risk and Nostalgia in Fictions of Finance.” University of Bayreuth (January 2016)

• “Reading the Material: An Introduction.” University of Vienna (January 2016)

• “Screening the Crises of Finance in Recent U.S. Films.” University of Paderborn (January 2015)

• “Finance, Fiction, and the Uses of Nostalgia.” University of Heidelberg (January 2015)

Conference Papers (Selection)

• “‘Everybody wants to own the end of the world’: Dreams of Immortality and the Biofinancial Order in Don DeLillo’s Cosmopolis and Zero K.” Conference “Posthuman Economies: Literary and Cultural Imaginations of the Postindustrial Human,” University of Basel (April 2019)

• “Neoliberalism, Nostalgia, and the Temporalities of Finance Fiction.” Session “Genre and Neoliberalism,” 2019 ACLA Annual Meeting, Washington DC (March 2019)

• “Retrotopian Futures in the Debt Age.” Conference “Futures of Finance and Society,” University of Edinburgh (December 2018)

• “Schuld/en: Renegotiating Debt and Guilt after the 2007/08 Financial Crisis.” Opening Conference “Productive Guilt – Theoretical Approaches” of the Research Group “‘Felix Culpa’? Guilt as Culturally Productive Force,” Center for Interdisciplinary Research, University of Bielefeld (November 2018)

• “Financialization and Nostalgia: An Intersectional Approach.” Session 245 “Theft and Reclamation in Financialized Late Capitalism,” 2018 MLA Annual Convention “#States of Insecurity,” New York City (January 2018)

• “‘Find Out What the Future Will Cost You’: Finance's Postapocalyptic Futures in Nathaniel Rich's Odds Against Tomorrow.” 64th Annual Conference, German Association for American Studies (DGfA), “Modernities and Modernization in North America,” University of Hannover (June 2017)

• “Affect and Volatility: A Case for Nostalgia?” Volatility Working Group and SenseLab Encounters, New School for Social Research, New York (March 2017)

• (with Elisabeth Schäfer-Wünsche) “Politics of Celebrity: The Case of Trump.” Lecture Series: On the Road to the White House. Invited Talk, University of Bonn (June 2016)

• “Nostalgic Bonds and the Aesthetics of Finance.” Seventh Critical Finance Studies Conference, University of Copenhagen (August 2015)

• “‘What goes around, it comes back around’: (Eco-)Systemic Interdependencies in David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest.” 61st Annual Conference, German Association for American Studies (DGfA), “America After Nature,” University of Würzburg (June 2014)

• “Credit Nostalgia: The Temporality and Materiality of Debt.” Annual Meeting, American Studies Association “Beyond the Logic of Debt, Toward and Ethics of Collective Dissent,” Washington, D.C. (November 2013)

• “Paul Auster’s Leviathan and the Author’s Anarchical Responsibility.” International Conference “Reconfiguring Authorship”, Ghent University, Belgium (November 2012)

• “Re-Orienting Impersonality: Modernism’s Others and Far Eastern Selves.“ International Conference “Modernism and the Orient,” Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China (March 2010)

• “‘Intellectual Diversity’ and the Politics of Academic Freedom.” 56th Annual Conference, German Association for American Studies (DGfA), University of Jena (June 2009)

Monograph

• The Writing of Terrorism: Contemporary American Fiction and Maurice Blanchot. Frankfurt: Lang, 2017.

 

Edited Volumes & Journal Issues

• with Stefanie Mueller. Financial Times. Special Issue of Finance and Society 4.1 (2018). <doi.org/10.2218/finsoc.v4i1>

• with Simone Knewitz and Sabine Sielke. Knowledge Landscapes North America. Heidelberg: Winter, 2016.

• with Simone Knewitz and Sabine Sielke. Beyond 9/11: Transdisciplinary Perspectives on Twenty-First Century U.S. American Culture. Frankfurt: Lang, 2013.

• with Birte Christ, Elisabeth Schäfer-Wünsche, and Michael Butter. American Studies / Shifting Gears.Heidelberg: Winter, 2010.

• with Sabine Sielke. Orient and Orientalisms in US-American Poetry and Poetics. Frankfurt: Lang, 2009.

 

Articles                 

• “Schuld/en: Renegotiating Guilt and Debt after the 2008 Financial Crisis.” KulturPoetik 20.1 (March 2020). In Preparation.

• “Deconstructing the Fictions of Finance Capitalism: Don DeLillo’s Cosmopolis and Nathaniel Rich’s Odds Against Tomorrow.” The American Novel in the 21st Century: Cultural Contexts, Literary Developments, Critical Analyses. Ed. Michael Basseler and Ansgar Nünning. Trier: WVT, 2019. 159-73.

• with Stefanie Mueller. “Financial Times: Competing Temporalities in the Age of Finance Capitalism.” Finance and Society 4.1 (2018): 1-14. <doi.org/10.2218/finsoc.v4i1.2735>

• with Gerald Nestler and Stefanie Mueller. “The Derivative Condition, an Aesthetics of Resolution and the Figure of the Renegade: A Conversation.” Financial Times. Ed. Christian Kloeckner and Stefanie Mueller. Spec. Issue of Finance and Society 4.1 (2018): 126-43. <doi.org/10.2218/finsoc.v4i1.2744>

• “Poetry and Fiction after 9/11.” Handbook of Transatlantic North American Studies. Ed. Julia Straub. Berlin: de Gruyter, 2016. 116-33.

• with Sabine Sielke and Simone Knewitz. Introduction. Knowledge Landscapes North America. Heidelberg: Winter, 2016. 7-19.

• “Risk and Nostalgia: Fictions of the Financial Crisis.” Amerikastudien/ American Studies 60.4 (2015): 463-78.

  Reprinted in: Nostalgie / Nostalgia: Imaginierte Zeit-Räume in globalen Medienkulturen / Time-Spaces in Global Media Cultures. Ed. Sabine Sielke. Frankfurt: Lang, 2017. 67-84.

• “‘Who do the saying’: Amiri Baraka’s Transnational Counter-Memory of Violence.” Recovery and Transgression: Memory in American Poetry. Ed. Kornelia Freitag. Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars, 2015. 233-47.

• “Contemporary Women’s Poetry: Adrienne Rich’s ‘Diving into the Wreck’ and Harryette Mullen’s ‘She Swam On from Sea to Shine.’” A Handbook of American Poetry: Contexts – Developments – Readings. Ed. Oliver Scheiding, Clemens Spahr, and René Dietrich. Trier: WVT, 2015. 397-412.

• “Systemic Insecurity, Spectacular Violence: Bret Easton Ellis’ Glamorama.” Insecurity and Global Terror(s). Ed. Nuno Marques, Igor Furão, and Susana Araújo. Spec. Issue of Estrema: Interdisciplinary Review for the Humanities 5 (Fall 2014). www.estrema.letras.ulisboa.pt/ojs/index.php/estrema/article/view/98

• “Double Games: Das Spiel der (Auto)Biografie in Paul Austers Leviathan.” Autobiographie: Eine interdisziplinäre Gattung zwischen klassischer Tradition und (post-)moderner Variation. Ed. Uwe Baumann and Karl August Neuhausen. Göttingen: V&R unipress / Bonn University Press, 2013. 433-49.

• “On Hallowed Ground: The Sacred Space of Ground Zero and the Consecration of Global Business.” Beyond 9/11: Transdiscipinary Perspectives on Twenty-First Century U.S. American Culture. Ed. Christian Kloeckner, Simone Knewitz and Sabine Sielke. Frankfurt: Lang, 2013. 245-62.

• with Christoph Faulhaber. “9/11 as ‘Unbild’: A Conversation.” Beyond 9/11: Transdiscipinary Perspectives on Twenty-First Century U.S. American Culture. Ed. Christian Kloeckner, Simone Knewitz, and Sabine Sielke. Frankfurt: Lang, 2013. 383-407.

• with Simone Knewitz und Sabine Sielke. Introduction. Beyond 9/11: Transdiscipinary Perspectives on Twenty-First Century U.S. American Culture. Ed. Christian Kloeckner, Simone Knewitz and Sabine Sielke. Frankfurt: Lang, 2013. 13-25.

• “Re-Orienting Impersonality: T. S. Eliot and the Self of the Far East.” Modernism and the Orient. Ed. Zhaoming Qian. New Orleans: U of New Orleans P, 2013. 163-84.

• “The Fundamentalism of a Globalized Hyperreal World: Bret Easton Ellis’ Glamorama.” Narratives of Fundamentalism. Ed. Birgit Däwes. Spec. issue of Literatur in Wissenschaft und Unterricht 45.1/2 (2012): 125-35.

• “Race, Poverty, Community: Should American Studies Believe in Obama?” American Studies / Shifting Gears. Ed. Birte Christ et al. Heidelberg: Winter, 2010. 419-42.

• with Birte Christ. “Introduction: What’s in Two Names? From ‘The Futures of (European) American Studies’ to American Studies/Shifting Gears.” American Studies / Shifting Gears. Ed. Birte Christ et al. Heidelberg: Winter, 2010. 1-19.

• with Sabine Sielke. “From ‘Drops – of India’ to ‘Floors / Descending’: Orient and Orientalisms in US-American Poetry and Poetics. Introduction.” Orient and Orientalisms in US-American Poetry and Poetics. Ed. Sabine Sielke and Christian Kloeckner. Frankfurt: Lang, 2009. 9-32. (mit Sabine Sielke)

• “David Horowitz, Intellectual Diversity, and the Politics of Academic Freedom.” Education and the USA. Ed. Laurenz Volkmann. Heidelberg: Winter, 2011. 19-37.

 

Reviews & Review Essays        

• North, Joseph. Literary Criticism: A Concise Political History. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2017. Rez. in Anglia: Journal of English Philology / Zeitschrift für Englische Philologie. In Preparation.

• Schillings, Sonja. Enemies of All Humankind: Fictions of Legitimate Violence. Hanover, NH: Dartmouth UP, 2017. In: Journal of American Studies 53.2 (2019): E32.

• La Berge, Leigh Claire. Scandals and Abstraction: Financial Fiction of the Long 1980s. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2015. Rez. in Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik 66.4 (2018): 487-89.

• “Mapping 9/11: A Review of Recent German Scholarship.” Archiv für das Studium der neueren Sprachen und Literaturen 250.2 (2013): 371-79.