Dr. Simon Schleusener

Education

12/2012 PhD (Dr. Phil.) in American Studies at Freie Universität Berlin. Dissertation title: “Kulturelle Komplexität: Gilles Deleuze und die Kulturtheorie der American Studies”. Advised by Prof. Dr. Winfried Fluck (Freie Universität Berlin) and Prof. Dr. Hanjo Berressem (Universität zu Köln). Grade: sum­ma cum laude.

11/2003 M.A. (“Magister Artium”) in North American Studies. Title of the thesis: “Whitman, Miller, Kerouac: Spielarten eines amerikanischen Vitalismus”. Grade: 1.0 (excellent).

04/1996 - 11/2003 Magister Studies of North American Studies, History, and German Literature at Freie Universität Berlin.

Academic Positions

10/2024 - Research Associate (“Wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter”) at the University of Bonn.

03/2018 - 02/2023 Postdoctoral Researcher at the Friedrich Schlegel Graduate School of Literary Studies (Freie Universität Berlin, Project: “Das philologische Laboratorium. Neue Modelle des Umgangs mit Kunst jenseits der Kritik”).  

01/2020 - 06/2020 Research Associate (“Wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter”) at the Collaborative Research Centre 1285: “Invectivity. Constellations and Dynamics of Disparagement”, Technische Universität Dresden (Project K: Theatre and Media Studies).

04/2017 - 09/2017 Lecturer at the Julius-Maxi­mili­ans-Universität Würzburg (American Studies Department).

10/2015 - 12/2016 Research Associate ("Angestellter im wissenschaftlichen Dienst") at the Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg, American Studies Department (hiatus from 04/2016 - 09/2016).

10/2013 - 09/2015 Postdoctoral Researcher at the Graduate School of North American Studies, Freie Universität Berlin.

10/2007 - 09/2013 Research Associate (“Wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter”) at the Culture Department of the John F. Kennedy Institute for North American Studies, Freie Universität Berlin. (Full-time position from October 2007 to September 2008 and from December 2008 to September 2009. 75% position from October 2009 to September 2013.)

Grants and Fellowships

06/2023 Travel grant by the Ernst Reuter Association (ERG) for participating in the Annual Conference of the European Network for Cinema and Media Studies (NECS) in Oslo (June 2023).

04/2017 Travel grant by the Ernst Reuter Association (ERG) for participating in the 12th biennial ASLE conference (“Rust/Resistance: Works of Recovery”) in Detroit, Michigan (June 2017).

04/2005 - 03/2007 Doctoral student fellowship (NaFöG).

Monographs

Kulturelle Komplexität: Gilles Deleuze und die Kulturtheorie der American Studies. Bielefeld: transcript (2015).

• Review by Bernd Herzogenrath (Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main) in: Amerikastudien/American Studies, 64.3 (2019): 461-63. https://amst.winter-verlag.de/article/amst/2019/3/11/display/html

Whitman, Miller, Kerouac: Spielarten eines amerikanischen Vitalismus. Berliner Beiträge zur Amerikanistik (Band 13). Berlin: John F. Kennedy-Institut für Nordamerikastudien, Freie Universität Berlin (2005).

Edited Volumes

Stichwörter für die kritische Praxis (ed. with Michel Chaouli, Jan Lietz, and Jutta Müller-Tamm). Zürich: Diaphanes (2023).

Deleuze and the Material Turn. Special Issue. Deleuze and Guattari Studies 15.4 (2021).

Poetic Critique: Encounters with Art and Literature (ed. with Michel Chaouli, Jan Lietz, and Jutta Müller-Tamm). Berlin: De Gruyter (2021).

Control Societies II: Philosophy, Politics, Economy (ed. with Florian Cord). Special Issue. Coils of the Serpent: Journal for the Study of Contemporary Power 6 (2020).

Control Societies I: Media, Culture, Technology (ed. with Florian Cord). Special Issue. Coils of the Serpent: Journal for the Study of Contemporary Power 5 (2020).

Journal Articles and Book Chapters

“Kraft”. Stichwörter für die kritische Praxis (ed. with Michel Chaouli, Jan Lietz, and Jutta Müller-Tamm). Zürich: Diaphanes (2023). 141-161.

“Einleitung” (with Michel Chaouli, Jan Lietz, and Jutta Müller-Tamm). M. Chaouli et al. (Eds.). Stichwörter für die kritische Praxis. Zürich: Diaphanes (2023). 7-10.

“Spielarten der Kritik. Der Text und sein Außen”. WestEnd. Neue Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung 20, Heft 2 (2023): 23-48.

“Trump als Symptom: Populistische Schockpolitik und die Krise der Demokratie”. Lars Koch, Tobias Nanz, Christina Rogers (Eds.). The Great Disruptor: Über Trump, die Medien und die Politik der Herabsetzung. Revised 2nd Edition. Stuttgart: J.B. Metzler (2023). 57-81

“Bilder der Herabsetzung: Ästhetik und Politik der Social Photography”. Elisabeth Heyne & Tanja Prokic (Eds.). Invective Gaze – Das digitale Bild und die Kultur der Beschämung. Bielefeld: transcript (2022). 57-92.

“A Politics of Things? Deleuze and the New Materialism”. Deleuze and Guattari Studies 15.4. Special Issue: Deleuze and the Material Turn (2021): 523-542.

“Introduction: Deleuze and Materialism”. Deleuze and Guattari Studies 15.4. Special Issue: Deleuze and the Material Turn (2021): 471-476.

“Globale Dissonanz: The Flight Attendant und das serielle Imaginäre” (with Tanja Prokić). Pop: Kultur und Kritik, Heft 19 (2021): 86-92.

“Surface, Distance, Depth: The Text and its Outside”. Michel Chaouli, Jan Lietz, Jutta Müller-Tamm, Simon Schleusener (Eds.). Poetic Critique: Encounters with Art and Literature. Berlin: De Gruyter (2021). 175-201.

“What Is Poetic Critique?” (with M. Chaouli, J. Lietz, and J. Müller-Tamm). Michel Chaouli et al. (Eds.). Poetic Critique: Encounters with Art and Literature. Berlin: De Gruyter (2021). 1-6.

“Again and Again and Again”. Amerikastudien / American Studies 66.1 (2021): 127-31.

“Deleuze and Neoliberalism”. Coils of the Serpent: Journal for the Study of Contemporary Power 6. Special Issue: Control Societies II: Philosophy, Politics, Economy (2020): 39-54.

“Looking Backward at the Present, 2020–1990: Deleuze’s ‘Postscript on Control Societies’” (with Florian Cord). Coils of the Serpent: Journal for the Study of Contemporary Power 6. Special Issue: Control Societies II: Philosophy, Politics, Economy (2020): 1-6.

“Navigating the Coils of the Serpent” (with Florian Cord). Coils of the Serpent: Journal for the Study of Contemporary Power 5. Special Issue: Control Societies I: Media, Culture, Technology (2020): 1-13.

“You’re Fired! Retrotopian Desire and Right-Wing Class Politics”. Gabriele Dietze and Julia Roth (Eds.). Right-Wing Populism and Gender: European Perspectives and Beyond. Bielefeld: transcript (2020). 185-206.

“Trump als Symptom: Populistische Schockpolitik und die Krise der Demokratie”. Lars Koch, Tobias Nanz, Christina Rogers (Eds.). The Great Disruptor: Über Trump, die Medien und die Politik der Herabsetzung. Stuttgart: J.B. Metzler (2020): 47-70.

“The Machine is the Garden – Concepts of Ecology and Nature in the Anthropocene”. The New Polis (10/2019). http://thenewpolis.com/2019/10/08/the-machine-is-the-garden-concepts-of-ecology-and-nature-in-the-anthropocene/

“The Surveillance Nexus: Digital Culture and the Society of Control”. REAL: Yearbook of Research in English and American Literature. Volume 34: Democratic Cultures and Populist Imaginaries (ed. by Donald E. Pease). Tübingen: Narr Verlag (2019): 175-201.

“Post-Truth Politics: The New Right and the Postmodern Legacy”. Ilka Brasch and Ruth Mayer (Eds.). Modernities and Modernization in North America. Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter (2018): 353-370.

“Political Disconnects: Donald Trump, the Cultural Left, and the Crisis of Neoliberalism”. Coils of the Serpent: Journal for the Study of Contemporary Power 2 (2018): 20-34.

“The Dialectics of Mobility: Capitalism and Apocalypse in Cormac McCarthy’s The Road”. European Journal of American Studies, 12.3 (2017). Special Issue: Cormac McCarthy Between Worlds: 1-14.

“‘What Affects are you Capable of?’ On Deleuze and Somaesthetics” (co-authored with Woj­ciech Małecki). Simone Bignall, Sean Bowden, and Paul Patton (Eds.). Deleuze and Prag­ma­tism. London and New York: Routledge (2015): 216-234.

“Neoliberal Affects: The Cultural Logic of Cool Capitalism”. REAL: Yearbook of Research in English and American Literature. Volume 30: Towards a Post-Exceptionalist American Studies (ed. by Winfried Fluck and Donald E. Pease). Tübingen: Narr Verlag (2014): 307-326.

“The Cinema of Insanity: Psychiatry, Popular Culture, and the Flexibilization of Normality”. Laura Bieger and Christian Lammert (Eds.). Revisiting the Sixties: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on America's Longest Decade. Frankfurt/M.: Campus (2013): 237-260.

“Sovereignty at Sea: Moby Dick and the Politics of Desire”. REAL: Yearbook of Research in English and American Literature. Vol. 27: States of Emergency – States of Crisis (ed. by Winfried Fluck, Katharina Motyl, Donald E. Pease, and Christoph Raetzsch). Tübingen: Narr Verlag (2011): 121-142.

“‘The Ward is a Factory’: Macht und Normalisierung in Ken Keseys One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”. Amerikastudien/American Studies, 51.4 (2006): 539-566.

“Deleuze und die American Studies”. Amerikastudien/American Studies, 49.2 (2004): 219-240.

Reviews

“Bernd Herzogenrath: An American Body|Politic – A Deleuzian Approach” (Review). Amerikastudien/American Studies, 57.3 (2012): 495-497.

“Paul Celan – Ilana Shmueli: Briefwechsel” (Review). Zeitschrift für Germanistik. Neue Folge, Heft 2 (2005): 453-454.

Interviews

“Tiefenzeit und Akzeleration. Gespräch mit dem Lyriker und Anthropozäntheoretiker Daniel Falb”. Johannes Pause & Tanja Prokic (Eds.). Zeiten der Natur. Konzeptionen der Tiefenzeit in der literarischen Moderne. (LiLi: Studien zu Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik, Band 5.) Stuttgart: Metzler (2023). 155-166.

Translations

Avanessian, Armen, and Anke Hennig. “Time-Complex Anxiety”. Coils of the Serpent: Journal for the Study of Contemporary Power 6. Special Issue: Control Societies II: Philosophy, Politics, Economy (2020): 129-137 [trans. from German with Florian Cord].

Raunig, Gerald. “Cipher and Dividuality”. Coils of the Serpent: Journal for the Study of Contemporary Power 5. Special Issue: Control Societies I: Media, Culture, Technology (2020): 175-181 [trans. from German with Florian Cord].

Rölli, Marc. “Power Regimes of Control – Remarks on their Neoliberal Context”. Coils of the Serpent: Journal for the Study of Contemporary Power 6. Special Issue: Control Societies II: Philosophy, Politics, Economy (2020): 33-38 [trans. from German with Florian Cord].

Vogl, Joseph. “The Financial Regime”. Coils of the Serpent: Journal for the Study of Contemporary Power 6. Special Issue: Control Societies II: Philosophy, Politics, Economy (2020): 55-60 [trans. from German with Florian Cord].

Recent Project

“The Neoliberal Condition: Literature, Popular Culture, and Theory in the Era of the New Capitalism”

Research Network

Member of the DFG-funded Research Network “Model Aesthetics: Between Literary and Economic Knowledge” (https://model-aesthetics.com/)

Research Interests

• History of American Literature
• Visual Culture, Popular Culture, Media Studies
• Cultural Theory and Theories of American Studies
• Economic Criticism and the Neoliberal Imagination
• Affect Theory and the New Materialism
• Ecology and the Anthropocene
• Climate Fiction and Critical Temperature Studies
• Populism and the New Right
• Concept and Practice of Critique

Conference and Workshop Organization

Literatur als kritische Praxis. Reading and Discussion with Kathrin Röggla and Frank Witzel at Friedrich Schlegel Graduate School of Literary Studies (FU Berlin), May 10, 2023.

Stimmen der Kritik #4. Reading and Discussion with with Joshua Groß, Charlotte Krafft, and Rudi Nuss, at Literarisches Colloquium Berlin (LCB), November 22, 2021.

Stimmen der Kritik #3. Reading and Discussion with, Karl Wolfgang Flender, Judith Schalansky, and Anja Utler, at Literarisches Colloquium Berlin (LCB), February 15, 2021.

Encryption – Algorithm – Circulation. Workshop with Tom McCarthy, at Friedrich Schlegel Graduate School of Literary Studies (FU Berlin), November 15, 2019 (with Jan Lietz).

Poetic Critique. International Conference at Indiana University Europe Gateway, Berlin, June 27-29, 2019 (with Michel Chaouli and Jan Lietz).

Rightwing POPulism: Remapping Popular Culture in the Age of Trump and the Alt-Right. Workshop at the 66th Annual Meeting of the DGFA/GAAS: U.S.-American Culture as Popular Culture. Hamburg, June 13-15, 2019 (with Simon Strick).

Stimmen der Kritik #1. Reading and Discussion with Hannes Bajohr, Daniel Falb, and Mara Genschel, at Literarisches Colloquium Berlin (LCB), December 17, 2018.

Kritik – Poetik – Kollaboration. Workshop with Armen Avanessian and Anke Hennig, at Friedrich Schlegel Graduate School of Literary Studies (FU Berlin), December 12, 2018 (with Jan Lietz).

Philologie und Kritik. International Workshop/Conference at Friedrich Schlegel Graduate School of Literary Studies (FU Berlin), June 21–22, 2018 (with Michel Chaouli and Jan Lietz).

Courses taught at the University of Bonn

“Representations of American Poverty” (WiSe 2024/25)

“The Neoliberal Self” (WiSe 2024/25)

Courses taught at Freie Universität Berlin

“Climate Imaginaries: Cultural Perspectives on Ecological Crisis” (WiSe 2024/25)

“Stichwörter für die kritische Praxis” (with M. Chaouli, J. Lietz, and J. Müller-Tamm, SoSe 2022)

“Transformationen der Kritik” (with Michel Chaouli, SoSe 2021)

“Der Streit um die Kritik” (with Michel Chaouli, SoSe 2019)

“Genealogie der Kritik” (with Michel Chaouli, SoSe 2018)

“Cultural Formations of American Capitalism” (WiSe 2016/17)

“Neoliberal Culture” (SoSe 2015)

“Social Photography” (SoSo 2013)

“BA-Colloquium Kultur/Literatur” (WiSe 2012/13)

“Europäische Amerikabilder” (SoSe 2012)

“Der amerikanische Western” (SoSe 2012)

“Literature and Culture of the Beat Generation” (with Tomasz Stompor, WiSe 2011/12)

“Kultur des amerikanischen Kapitalismus” (SoSe 2011)

“Temporale Fotografie” (SoSe 2011)

“Inszenierte Fotografie” (WiSe 2010/11)

“Amerikanische Mythen” (WiSe 2010/11)

“Kulturgeschichte der amerikanischen Fotografie” (WiSe 2009/10)

“Kulturelle Zoologie: Das Tier in der amerikanischen Kultur” (WiSe 2009/10)

“Ästhetik der Spontaneität: Kunst, Literatur und Populärkultur in der amerikanischen Nachkriegsära” (SoSe 2009)

“Mobilität in der amerikanischen Kultur” (SoSe 2009)

“Key Concepts of American Culture” (substitute for Johannes Völz, WiSe 2008/09)

“The Literature of Slavery and Abolition” (substitute for Johannes Völz, WiSe 2008/09)

“Posthumanismus im amerikanischen Film” (SoSe 2008)

“Wahnsinn und Normalität in der amerikanischen Kulturgeschichte des 19. und 20. Jahrhunderts” (SoSe 2008)

“Herman Melville und die Kulturtheorie der American Studies” (SoSe 2008)

“Herman Melville” (WiSe 2007/08)

“Der europäische Amerikadiskurs im 20. Jahrhundert” (WiSe 2007/08)

“Examensworkshop I: Literatur, Kultur, Sprache” (SoSe 2007)

“Culture of Spontaneity” (SoSe 2006)

“Ästhetik – Kultur – Macht: Ästhetische Theorie und amerikanische Kultur im 20. Jahrhundert” (SoSe 2005)

Courses taught at Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg

“What Was Postmodernism?” (SoSe 2017)

“The Animal in American Literature” (WiSe 2015/16)

“The Beat Generation” (WiSe 2015/16)

“American Literature and the Culture of Capitalism” (WiSe 2015/16)

Member of the DFG-funded Research Network “Model Aesthetics: Between Literary and Economic Knowledge” (https://model-aesthetics.com/)

Member of the GAAS (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Amerikastudien/German Association for American Studies)

Member of the European Network for Cinema and Media Studies (2023 –2024)

Member of the Association for the Study of Literature and Environment (2017–2018)

Reviewer for the following journals: Ecozon@: European Journal of Literature, Culture and Environment, the European Journal of American Studies (EJAS), Deleuze and Guattari Studies, Coils of the Serpent: Journal for the Study of Contemporary Power, Journal for Artistic Research (JAR)