About

I’m a PhD candidate in German studies at McGill University (Montreal, Canada) and a course lecturer at the University of Paderborn in Germany, where I am finishing my dissertation.

For my research I received a doctoral scholarship by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD). I am a visiting scholar at the Free University of Berlin and an associated member of the graduate research training group “Automatismen” at the University of Paderborn. In my dissertation I analyse the aesthetics of the Swiss author Christian Kracht, with an eye towards discourses about conservatism in his works and reception. By combining reader-response criticism and post-structuralism with the critical theory of the Frankfurt School and 20th century theories of conservatism, I approach Kracht’s oeuvre as a form of cultural and philosophical critique of the globalizing technological consumer society of the 20th and 21st century. Furthermore, I argue that Kracht’s texts are literary examples of a new German cultural conservatism, which is characterized, among other things, by semiological sophistication, irony, and a certain elitism.

My long-term objective is to continue working at an institution of higher education after the completion of my PhD, preferably as a professor at an American or Canadian research university or liberal arts college.

You can find out more about me in my online teaching portfolio at http://www.aaseelig.com and at LinkedIn.