Dr. Dominik Steinhilber

Assistant Professor (wiss. Mitarbeiter) of American Studies, Prof. Dr. Timo Müller

Room: H 233
Phone: +49 (0) 7531 88 3816
E-Mail: dominik.steinhilber@uni-konstanz.de

Office Hours: By appointment per e-mail: https://zoom.us/j/95642760294


Projects and Events 

  • Habilitation: "Dark Nature: Haunted Ecologies in American Romanticism" (working title)
  • Off the Road: The Environmental Aesthetics of Early Automobility Research project founded by an ERC Consolidator Grant; Affiliated Researcher; 2023-2027
  • Postcolonial Infrastructure Annual GAPS Conference, 18-20 May 2023; co-organizer
  • International David Foster Wallace Society; Head Coordinator Emerging Scholars Initiative

Curriculum Vitae

Academic Positions

since 04/2021

University of Konstanz: Assistant Professor, Department of American Studies 

03/2017 - 01/2021

University of Mannheim: Academic Staff Member, Department of American Literary and Cultural Studies  

05/2016 - 09/2017     

University of Stuttgart: Academic Staff Member, Department of American Literature and Culture       

Education

07/2022

University of Frankfurt, Germany

PhD, American Studies; summa cum laude

10/2009 - 04/2016

University of Stuttgart, Germany

1st State Exam German/English (equivalent to M.A.); with distinction (1.1)

01/2013 - 07/2013

University of Leicester, UK

Research and Teaching Interests

Comparative Literature        Literary Theory       Contemporary Literature

Literary History                          Ecocriticism                   (Post-)Critique

Romanticism                          (Post)modernism               The Uncanny

Publications

  • “Theorizing the Other.” David Foster Wallace in Context, ed. Clare Hayes-Brady, Cambridge University Press, 2023, 246-256.
  • “’Smoke the Weed’ for the Planet: Snoop Lion’s Green Reincarnation of Hip Hop.” Ecozon@: European Journal of Literature, Culture and Environment, vol 13, no. 1, 2022, 37-54.
  • Infinite Jest’s ‘trinity of You and I into We’: Wallace’s ‘click’ between Joyce’s literary consubstantiality and Wittgenstein’s family resemblance.” Reading David Foster Wallace Between Philosophy and Literature, ed. Allard den Dulk, Adriano Ardovino, Pia Masiero, Manchester University Press, 2022, 138-159.
  • “‘The office could be any office’ – Toward a New Sincerity in the Age of Trumpism.” American Literature in the Era of Trump: Alternative Realities, ed. Dolores Resano, Palgrave, 2022, 39-64.
  • “Modernist Aims with Postmodern Means: Joycean Parallax and the Doppler Effect in Wallace’s Infinite Jest.” The Journal of David Foster Wallace Studies, vol. 1, no. 3, 2020, 41-78.
  • “The Solipsism of the Quantified Self: Working Bodies in David Foster Wallace’s Body of Work.” Laboring Bodies and the Quantified Self, ed. Ulfried Reichardt, Regina Schober, transcript, 2020, 103-122.
  • “The Perils of Self-Consciousness: Heinrich von Kleist’s ‘Über das Marionettentheater’ in David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest.” Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction, vol. 58, no. 5, 2017, 548-557.

Conference Talks

  • ​​​​​­­“Gardening (against) the Anthropocene: Dark Eco-Poetics in Edgar Allan Poe’s Garden-Tales.” Naturing Cultures / Culturing Natures: Humans and the Environment in Cultural Practices, Sept 23, 2022, Nicolaus Copernicus University, Toruń, Poland.
  • “Wallace’s Multilingualism: Europe, America, and the Language of the Body in David Foster Wallace’s Work.” 25 Years of Infinite Jest: The (After)Lives and Influences of the Work of David Foster Wallace, October 29, 2021, VU Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Netherlands.
  • “Moral Fiction in a Post-Truth Age: Poststructuralism and the New Sincerity in American Literature and Right-Wing Politics.” Alternative Realities: New Challenges for American Literature in the Era of Trump, Dec 14, 2019, Clinton Institute, University College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland.
  • “’More than just ball hairs’ – Succeeding Postmodern Irony in Netflix’s American Vandal and David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest.” New Sincerity: Self-Expression in North American Culture, Jan 25, 2019, Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena, Jena, Germany.
  • “David Foster Wallace and the Solipsism of the Quantified Self: Digitally Deformed Bodies in Infinite Jest’s Entertainment Industry.” Laboring Bodies and the Quantified Self, Oct 6, 2018, University of Mannheim, Mannheim, Germany.
  • “Infinite Jest and the Ulyssean Tradition – Modernist Aims with Postmodernist Means.” 2018 David Foster Wallace Conference, June 8, 2018, Illinois State University, Normal, Illinois, USA.
  • “‘Structural Dissent’ – The Turn Away From a Half-Century of Turns in American Post-Boomer Fiction and Literary Studies.” American Cultures of Dissent, April 29, 2018, Deutsches Literaturinstitut Leipzig, Leipzig, Germany.
  • “A ‘Trinity of You and I into We’: Joycean Consubstantiality and the (Ghostly) Return of the Author in Infinite Jest.” David Foster Wallace Between Philosophy and Literature, April 19, 2018, Università degli Studi "G. d'Annunzio", Chieti – Pescara, Italy.
  • “Metempsychotic Max - James Joyce and Mad Max: Road Warrior.” Going Places, University of Stuttgart, Deutsch-Amerikanisches Zentrum/James-F.-Byrnes-Institute, April 25, 2017, University of Stuttgart, Germany.
  • “The Perils of Self-Consciousness: Kleist’s ‘Über das Marionettentheater’ in DFW’s Infinite Jest.” David Foster Wallace and the Fiction of the World, Northeast Modern Language Association 48th Annual Convention, March 26, 2017, Marriott Baltimore Waterfront, Baltimore, Maryland.
  •  “Documenting Truth, Documenting Lies, Documenting Reality? Errol Morris‘s The Thin Blue Line (1988) and the History of Documentary Film.” Realisms/Realities. University of Stuttgart, Deutsch-Amerikanisches Zentrum/James-F.-Byrnes-Institute, Fachgruppe Anglistik/Amerikanistik, Jan 25, 2017, University of Stuttgart, Germany.

Invited Talks

  • “Theorizing the Other.” David Foster Wallace in Context (roundtable), April 24, 2023, Museum of Literature in Ireland / University College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland. 
  • “Consciousness, Self and Others.” David Foster Wallace: Between Philosophy and Literature (roundtable), January 12, 2023, Università Ca’Foscari Venezia, Venice, Italy. 
  • “David Foster Wallace’s ‘Forever Overhead‘and the Language of the Body.“ English 102: Honors Freshman English 2, Andrea Laurencell-Sheridan, State University of New York, March 5, 2019. (invited talk).