COMPLETED PROJECTS
NARRATIVE ENCOUNTERS WITH ETHNIC AMERICAN LITERATURES (2018-2022)
Cognitive approaches to cultural texts are increasingly gaining currency in contemporary debates in literary and cultural studies; yet they have often been criticized for focusing too narrowly on the interaction between a text and a single, highly abstract reader, and for disregarding both actual readers and the larger historical, political, and cultural context in which a text is produced and consumed. The Narrative Encounters Project aimed at bridging some of the perceived gaps between cognitive narratology and more context and politically oriented approaches, thereby continuing and expanding the research work I have been engaged in over the past ten years. The project will used a cognitive approach to explore the narrative strategies employed in a range of ethnic American literary production—specifically by African American, Chicano/a, and Muslim American writers—with a special emphasis on empathy, affect, and emotion in the production and reception of such texts.
The Narrative Encounters Project was funded by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF).
TROUBLING FUTURES:
EMOTION, RISK AND ECOLOGY IN AMERICAN POPULAR CULTURE (2014-2015)
Research for this project was supported by a year-long Fellowship for Advanced Researchers from the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF). Host institution was the Department of English, University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).
THE “AFFECTIVE WORK” OF CLIMATE CHANGE DOCUMENTARIES:
AN EXPLORATIVE STUDY OF THE SOCIAL RELEVANCE OF FILMS WITH SUSTAINABILITY THEMES (2013-2014)
Research for this project was supported by an AAU Research Council Grant and was carried out in collaboration with Brigitte Hipfl from the Department of Media and Communication Studies, University of Klagenfurt, Austria.
IMAGINING ECOLOGICAL FUTURES (2010-2011)
Research for this project was supported by a year-long Carson Fellowship at the Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society (RCC) at the University of Munich, Germany.