Research Interests

• Anglophone Literature during and after “the postmodern experiment”
• Immaterial dimensions of the contemporary condition: ‘Emotional’ / ‘Cognitive’ / ‘Affective’ Capitalism
• History of rationalization
• Affect Studies & History of Emotions
• Critical Theory
• Psychoanalysis & Marxist Theory

Relevant Academic Experience

Education

The Aesthetics of Intimacy in Contemporary American Literature (Dissertation Project)

Dissertation in Literature

Mentoring team:
First supervisor: Prof. Dr. James Dorson
Second supervisor: Prof. Dr. Ulla Haselstein
Third supervisor: Prof. Dr. Sabine Schülting

My dissertation project focuses on a recent shift in American literature: Signified through an increased focus on (and trust in) inter-subjective communication, numerous literary texts by authors such as Jennifer Egan, Tao Lin, and David Foster Wallace engage with questions of subjecthood, interiority and (un)reliable communication. This regained interest in language’s connecting abilities, revealed in what I propose to call their texts’ “aesthetics of intimacy”, stands in clear contrast to the playful and ironic challenge of human subjectivity—and, indeed, of language’s representational capacity in general—in canonical works of postmodern literature. Furthermore, I argue, it resonates with today’s shifting communicative standards in private and professional contexts.

Scholars propose various labels to categorize these texts and debate whether they should be thought of in terms of, for example, posthumanism or a contemporary form of ‘revised’ humanism. Conversely, I suggest extending this discussion through a reading that highlights the texts’ embeddedness in the social, cultural and political forces of contemporary capitalism. Given the links between the communicative emphasis of the concerned texts and the demands of emotional self-management in a period shaped by neoliberal paradigms of perpetual self-rationalization, I argue that sincerity and similar affective constellations performed in and by these texts should not be accepted as ahistorical sentiments. Instead, I analyze them as forms of “emotional labor” (Hochschild) against the backdrop of the interdisciplinary turn to affect (e.g. Berlant, Ngai), reader-response criticism (Iser’s Rezeptionsästhetik respectively), the genealogy of emotional norms and practices (Stearns), and sociological insights into today’s processes of (affective) subjectification (Sennett, Illouz).

Publications

* peer-reviewed