Dr. Thomas Dikant
Department of Literature
Lecturer
Office hours
I no longer work at the FU, but it is still possible to contact me via email.
4/2017-3/2020
Visiting Assistant Professor, Literature Department at the John F. Kennedy Institute for North American Studies, Freie Universität Berlin
10/2015-3/2017
Postdoctoral Fellow Paid Direct, Department of English, University of Chicago
10/2013- 9/2015
Postdoctoral Fellow, Graduate School of North American Studies, John F. Kennedy Institute for North American Studies, Freie Universität Berlin
10/2012-9/2013
Lecturer, Institute for English and American Studies, Goethe University Frankfurt am Main
4/2009-9/2011
Lecturer, Literature Department at the John F. Kennedy Institute for North American Studies, Free University Berlin
Freie Universität Berlin
BA-Colloquium Literature/Culture, (Wintersemester 2023/24)
MA-Hauptseminar "Methods in Literary and Cultural Studies" (mit Prof. Winfried Siemerling) (Wintersemester 2019/20)
BA-Orientierungsmodul "Introduction Literary Studies I" (Wintersemester 2019/20)
MA-Hauptseminar "Narrative Theory" (Sommersemester 2019)
BA -Vertiefungsseminar "Life Writing: Exploring the Self" (Sommersemester 2019)
BA-Vertiefungsseminar "Nature Writing: Romanticism and Environmentalism" (Wintersemester 2018/19)
BA-Orientierungsmodul "Introduction Literary Studies I" (Wintersemester 2018/19)
MA-Hauptseminar "Law and Literature" (Sommersemester 2018)
BA-Vertiefungsseminar "Race and American Literature" (Sommersemester 2018)
MA-Hauptseminar "Postwar American Poetry" (Wintersemester 2017-18)
BA-Orientierungsmodul "Introduction to Literary Studies I" (Wintersemester 2017-18)
BA-Vertiefungsseminar "Detective Fiction" (Sommersemester 2017)
MA-Seminar "Revisiting the American Renaissance" (Sommersemester 2017)
BA-Aufbauseminar "Einführung in die Literaturwissenschaft" (Wintersemester 2013/14)
Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main
MA-Hauptseminar "War and Literature" (Sommersemester 2013)
MA-Hauptseminar "The Gilded Age and the Progressive Era" (Sommersemester 2013)
BA-Qualifikationsseminar "Whitman and Dickinson" (Sommersemester 2013)
BA-Proseminar "Einführung in die Literaturwissenschaft" (Sommersemester 2013)
MA-Hauptseminar "U.S. Literary Geographies, 1780-1860" (Wintersemester 2012/13)
MA-Hauptseminar "American Environmental History" (Wintersemester 2012/13)
BA-Qualifikationsseminar "Writing the Nation: The Literature of Revolutionary America" (Wintersemester 2012/13)
BA-Qualifikationsseminar "20th Century Poetry: Modernism to Postmodernism" (Wintersemester 2012/13)
BA-Proseminar "Einführung in die Literaturwissenschaft" (Wintersemester 2012/13)
Freie Universität Berlin
BA-Aufbauseminar "Darwin’s Novel: Literature and Evolution" (Sommersemester 2012)
BA-Aufbauseminar "American Poetry: The Age of Whitman and Dickinson" (Sommersemester 2011)
BA-Colloquium der Abteilung Literatur und Kultur (Sommersemester 2011)
BA-Vertiefungsseminar "Modes of Modernism: American Writing, 1910-1950" (Wintersemester 2010/1)
BA-Aufbaukurs "Introduction to Literary Studies" (Wintersemester 2010/1)
BA-Vertiefungsseminar "Fictions of the Future: Utopias and Dystopias" (Sommersemester 2010)
MA-Hauptseminar "American Topographies: Space and Place in Literature, 1820-1900" (Sommersemester 2010)
BA-Vertiefungsseminar "20th Century Poetry: Modernism to Postmodernism" (Wintersemester 2009/10)
BA-Vertiefungsseminar "Writing the Nation: The Literature of Revolutionary America" (Wintersemester 2009/10)
BA-Vertiefungsseminar "War and the American Novel" (Sommersemester 2009)
BA-Aufbauseminar "U.S. Literary Geographies: 1776-1865" (Sommersemester 2009)
Europa-Universität Viadrina
BA-Vertiefungsseminar "Krieg und amerikanische Literatur: Vom Bürgerkrieg bis zum ‚War on Terrorism’" (Sommersemester 2008)
"On Consequences: Law, Action, and the American Novel, 1870-1930" (funded by the DAAD, 2015-17)
Monograph
Landschaft und Territorium: Amerikanische Literatur, Expansion und die Krise der Nation, 1784-1866 (Landscape and Territory: American Literature, Expansion, and National Crisis, 1784-1866). Paderborn: Fink, 2014.
Reviewed (in English) in Amerikastudien / American Studies 61:1 (2016), Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik 64:2 (2016): 235-238.
Peer Reviewed Articles
“’Shedding a Little Ink’: Melville’s Victorian War Poetry.” Leviathan: A Journal of Melville Studies 21.3 (2019): 115-132.
“Settler Colonial Statistics: Jefferson, Biopolitics, and Notes on the State of Virginia” Early American Literature 54:1 (2019): 69-96.
“‘The Spectre of Uncertainty’: Chance in Bellamy’s Utopian Fictions.” Amerikastudien/American Studies 60:4 (2015): 417-434.
“Melville’s Battle-Pieces and the Environments of War.” ESQ: A Journal of the American Renaissance 60:4 (2014): 495-532.
Book Chapters
“Poetry at War: Herman Melville, Walt Whitman, and Stephen Crane.” In Handbook of American Poetry. Ed. Sabine Sielke. Berlin: De Gruyter (in preparation)
“‘Oracle of the Law’: Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.’s Legal Futurism.” In Law and Culture: Methods, Concepts, Approaches. Ed. Peter Schneck. Berlin: De Gruyter (accepted).
“Die Politik des Perfektionismus” (“The Politics of Perfectionism”). In Happy Days: Lebenswissen nach Cavell (Happy Days: Know-How of Life after Cavell), edited by Kathrin Thiele and Katrin Trüstedt. Paderborn: Fink, 2009: 187-191.
Online Publications
“Helen Levitt: 10 Photographs.” PhiN: Philologie im Netz 25 (2003): 1-30. http://www.fu-berlin.de/phin/phin25/p25t1.htm
Reviews
Beyond the Civil War Hospital: The Rhetoric of Healing and Democratization in Northern Reconstruction Writing, 1861–1882, by Kirsten Twelbeck. Anglia: Journal of English Philology (forthcoming)
Review of Enemies of All Humankind: Fictions of Legitimate Violence, by Sonja Schilling, ZAA/Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik (forthcoming)
Review of Surveyors of Customs: American Literature as Cultural Analysis, by Joel Pfister. Amerikastudien/American Studies 63.1 (2018)
Review of American Literary Geographies: Spatial Practice and Cultural Production 1500 - 1900, by Martin Brückner and Hsuan L. Hsu (eds.). Amerikastudien/American Studies 55:1 (2010): 165-167.
Translations
Martin Harries. “Das Ende einer Trope der Welt” (“The End of Trope for the World”). In Theatrum Mundi: Die Metapher des Welttheaters von Shakespeare bis Beckett ( ‘If Then the World a Theatre Present’: Revisions of the Theatrum Mundi Metaphor in Early Modern England), edited by Björn Quiring. Berlin: August Verlag, 2012: 61-87, from the English.
Andreas Höfele. “Porträts der Hydra: Das Theater und die vielköpfige Menge” (“Portraits of Hydra: Theatre and the Many-headed Multitude”). In Theatrum Mundi: Die Metapher des Welttheaters von Shakespeare bis Beckett ( ‘If Then the World a Theatre Present’: Revisions of the Theatrum Mundi Metaphor in Early Modern England), edited by Björn Quiring. Berlin: August Verlag, 2012: 191-217, from the English.