PhD students 3rd cohort

2014-2018 Bachelor of Arts in English language and literature, and history, at the University of Zurich

2016 ISEP exchange semester at Colorado Mesa University, Grand Junction, USA

2018-2020 Master of Arts in English language and literature, and modern history, at the University of Zurich, MA thesis supervised by Prof. Dr. Elisabeth Bronfen

2019 Exchange semester at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore

2019-2020 Research assistant at the University of Zurich for the Lehrkredit: Audiovisual Essays

2020-2021 Curator and web designer for the online exhibition “Black Matters” in collaboration with Prof. Dr. Ana Sobral

since 2021 PhD fellow in the DFG Graduate College “Modell Romantik” at Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena, Germany

Teaching

• “Interdisciplinary Perspectives: Music in American Literature.” MA-Seminar. University of Jena (summer semester 2024).
• Übersetzung und Autorschaft. Vladimir Nabokovs Zascita Luzina / The Defense. MA-Seminar. With Prof. Dr. Andrea Meyer-Fraatz, University of Jena (winter semester 2023/24).
• Categories and Conventions: Moby Dick and Its Reverberations. MA-Seminar. With Prof. Dr. Caroline Rosenthal, University of Jena (summer semester 2023).
• “Workshop: Wissenschaft und Kreatives Schreiben.” With Andrew Wildermuth, DFG-Graduiertenkolleg Modell Romantik, University of Jena (10 February 2022).

Invited Talks

• “Postcolonial Criticism: At a Glance.” In the BA-seminar Demystifying Literary Theory by Amanda Halter, University of Jena, 11 January 2024.
• “Music and Its Others: An Approach to Songs as Multimedial Poetry.” Invited by Dr. Mahshid Mayar, English department of the University of Mannheim, 21 November 2023.
• “Is It Alright if I Don’t Sing Tonight? Romance, Romanticism, and Climate Grief in Contemporary Popular Music.” Part of the international guest lecture series Contemporary Contexts and Debates: 21st Century Literatures and Cultures in English, National University “Yuri Kondratyuk Poltava Polytechnic” (Ukraine), 4 October 2023. Virtual.
• “Over the Garden Wall: Real Fairytales and Imaginary Presents.” In the MA-seminar Impossible Worlds: Various Versions of the Fantastic by Prof. Dr. Dirk Vanderbeke, University of Jena, 15 June 2022.

Memberships and honorary positions

• German Association for American Studies (DGFA)
• Association for Anglophone Postcolonial Studies (GAPS)
• British Association for Romantic Studies (BARS)
• Ecocriticism Research Collective, University of Jena
• Mentor for literature, philosophy, and creative writing at Swiss Youth in Science (Schweizer Jugend Forscht)
• Co-founder, treasurer, and musical director at Copper Tongues Theater

Romantic Authorships and White Male Genius in the Wake of Moby Dick

Contiguous to US-American postmodernism, we encounter a specific form of the ‘Great American Novel’: voluminous, encyclopedic, stylistically eclectic, philosophically ambitious, notoriously inaccessible, and written by a specific type of white, male, upper-middle-class, Ivy-league-educated author. Interestingly, both within the novels themselves as well as in their reception (particularly in the throes of New Criticism) Herman Melville’s Moby Dick (1851) serves as a conspicuous Romantic point of reference: both matrix and model through which a distinct tradition of American literary genius is mobilized, elaborated, and at times critically reflected on. My dissertation analyzes three examples of such ‘Great American Novels’ from the second half of the 20th century: Ada, or Ardor: A Family Chronicle (1969) by Vladimir Nabokov, Gravity’s Rainbow (1973) by Thomas Pynchon, and House of Leaves (2000) by Mark Z. Danielewski. I argue that what connects these texts are their paradigmatic allusions to and parallels with Moby Dick in terms of, among other things,

• their formal and stylistic leanings towards Friedrich Schlegel’s Progressive Universalpoesie,
• their mutual use of transcendentally white objects of desire,
• their prominent metafictional and poetological concerns, and
• their removing themselves geographically from the real United States in order to engage with the US symbolically.

Moreover, I venture that they evoke these paradigms specifically to draw attention to, challenge, and variously re-assert aesthetics of Romantic authorial genius. Unlike most previous scholarship on these novels, I therefore do not aim to disentangle their poetics and chase down the metaphorical white whales of their copious, multiplex philosophical, intertextual, political, and historical allusions. Rather, I am interested in the effect of that very copiousness and multiplicity, the narrative and receptional capital that can be gained from it, and the degree to which these novels confront that capital and its tradition self-reflexively. In a comparative reading of Moby Dick, Ada, Gravity’s Rainbow, and House of Leaves, I therefore aim to examine parallels and notable differences in how these novels engage with the aesthetics of white male genius in

• their performance of ingenious creativity, especially in stylized Romantic contexts,
• their dramatization of struggle, positing the author’s artistic pursuits as a form of Romantic heroism, and
• their staging of failure, which at once hints at the limits of genius, and recalls the central role of trauma in the construction of Romantic subjectivity.

Articles and Book Chapters

• “Playing in the Snow. Africanism and the Construction of Whiteness in The Shining.” Kubrick and Race, ed. Joy McEntee und Elisa Pezzotta, Liverpool University Press, estimated 2024 (in print).
• “A Dream of Evil Omen: US-Amerikanische Dörflichkeit als Konfliktraum bei Nathaniel Hawthorne.” Zeitschrift für Germanistik, themed issue “Rurale Romantik,” May 2024 (in print).
• “Because You Creatures Had a World. New Formalism, Imaginative Creation, and the Nothing in Michael Ende’s The Neverending Story.” Many Doors to Fantastica. The Neverending Story & the Education of the Imagination, ed. Sean C. Hadley, Joshua Herring, und Jeremy E. Scarbrough, McFarland Press (ms submitted).
• “A Matter not Yours. Gothic Metalepses and Determinist Horror in The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt – Hearts of Stone.” Games That Haunt Us: Gothic Game Space as a Living Nightmare, ed. Steph Farnsworth (ms submitted).
• “White Masculinity and the Performance of Authorial Failure in Mark Z. Danielewski’s House of Leaves.” SPELL, vol. 43, Winter Verlag Heidelberg, estimated winter 2023.

Smaller Contributions

• Book review: “Denstin Jenkins, and Justin Leroy (eds.) Histories of Racial Capitalism.” Amerikastudien/American Studies, vol. 68, no. 3, 2023, (DOI doi.org/10.33675/AMST/2023/3/13).
• Book review: “Anahid Nersessian. Keats’s Odes. A Lover’s Discourse.” gestern ROMANTIK heute. Forum für Wissenschaft und Kultur (2023).
• Blogpost: „Immer wieder Phantásien. Wechselperspektiven auf Michael Endes Die Unendliche Geschichte.” MODELL ROMANTiK. Variation, Reichweite, Aktualität (2022).
• “Bericht zur Exkursion nach Oberwiederstedt und Weißenfels.“ MODELL ROMANTiK. Variation, Reichweite, Aktualität (2022).
• Blogpost: “Durch das (digitale) Mikroskop: Romantik komponieren.” MODELL ROMANTiK. Variation, Reichweite, Aktualität (2022).
• Book review: “Anahid Nersessian. The Calamity Form.” gestern ROMANTIK heute. Forum für Wissenschaft und Kultur (2022).

Short Fiction and Poetry (Selection)

• “Carcosa.” Mystic Owl Magazine, vol. 3 (2023).
• “SHAT TER, V.” Amerikastudien/American Studies, vol. 68, no. 3, (DOI doi.org/10.33675/AMST/2023/2/10).
• “Mondsüchtig.” Ausbruch. Kurzgeschichten aus Biel und dem Seeland, ed. Bieler Tagblatt, Verlag Gassmann Media AG (2022). Audience Choice award of the Bieler Tagblatt.
• “Und danke für den Fisch.” Texte des Monats 2020. Klima- und andere Katastrophen, ed. Isabelle Vonlanthen, Literaturhaus Zürich (2021). Selected as text of the month September.
• “Xanadu.” The Foundationalist. Intercollegial Literary Journal, Yale University, vol. 3, no. 1 (2019).

• “That’s Fucking Dark: Eleanor Catton’s Birnam Wood as Ecogothic.” Undead Tropes: New Directions in Gothic Studies, org. Evangelia Kindinger and Greta Kaisen, Humboldt University Berlin, 12 January 2024.
• “Nope: Jordan Peele’s Versioning of the American Spectacle.” Mit Hannah Schoch. 50th AAAS Conference – Versions of America: Speculative Pasts, Presents, Futures. Universität Klagenfurt, 21 October 2023.
• “The Loveliest Lies of All: Death, Adolescence, and the Accommodation of Disruption in the Animated Miniseries Over the Garden Wall.” Disruptive Imaginations, TU Dresden, 16 August 2023.
• “True and Living Prophets of Destruction. Absolute Evil and the Construction of Authorial Purpose in Herman Melville and Cormac McCarthy.” GKAT Conference ‘Practicing Trust and Authority’, Heidelberg Center for American Studies, 13 May 2023.
• “A Dream of Evil Omen. US-Amerikanische Dörflichkeit als Konfliktraum bei Nathaniel Hawthorne.” Rurale Romantik, org. Claudia Stockinger, Humboldt University Berlin, 3 February 2023.
• “White Masculinity and the Performance of Authorial Failure in Mark Z. Danielewski’s House of Leaves.” Who Tells Your Story – SANAS 2022, Université de Fribourg, 19 November 2022.
• “Climate Grief and Romantic Nescience in Contemporary Popular Music.” New Romanticisms – BARS/NASSR 2022, Edge Hill University, 3 August 2022.
• “Playing in the Snow: Whiteness and Authorial Reflection in Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining.” Kubrick and Race, org. Joy McEntee, University of Adelaide, virtual, 13 September 2021.