Seminar für Englische Philologie

Dr. Florian Zappe

Research Interests

  • Literary History and Aesthetics (Focus on Modernism(s) and Postmodern Fiction)
  • Cultural History of European and American Cinema (Focus on Genre, Independent, and Experimental Film)
  • Philosophies of Atheism and Postmetaphysical Thought
  • Theory and History of the Avant-Garde
  • Theories of Popular Culture
  • Cultures of Surveillance
  • Visual Culture Studies

Being situated at the crossroads of cultural studies, aesthetics and philosophy, Florian Zappe’s research covers a broad range of subjects. Focussing on the intricate entanglements of artistic practice (across all media) and questions of power, subjectivity and identity he has worked, among other things, on the epiphanic qualities of experimental aesthetics in literary and visual culture, on the epistemological and ethical complexities inherent in surveillance culture, and on film as a medium of philosophical reflection. Currently, Zappe is working on a book on the cultural and intellectual history of atheism in America.


University Education and Degrees

  • Dr. phil.|PhD in American Studies, John F. Kennedy Institute for North American Studies, Freie Universität Berlin, 2012
  • Magister Artium (MA) in North American Studies, Comparative Literature, and Modern History, Freie Universität Berlin, 2007

Academic Employment

  • since 04|2014: Wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter|Assistant Professor of American Studies, Georg-August-Universität Göttingen
  • WiSe 2013/14: Lehrbeauftragter|Adjunct Lecturer in American Studies, Universität Hamburg
  • SoSe 2013 & 2014: Lehrbeauftragter|Adjunct Lecturer, "bologna.lab", Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin

Fellowships and Grants

From 2008-2011, Florian Zappe’s doctoral research has been funded with an Elsa-Neumann-Stipendium des Landes Berlin and he has been the recipient of several travel grants by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) and the Universitätsbund Göttingen. He was a participant in the Fulbright American Studies Institute at San Francisco State University in 2014 as well as a visiting scholar at the University of Warsaw (funded by an "Erasmus+" Mobility Grant) in 2016 and at Macquarie University, Sydney, in 2018. In 2019, he was a Fellow in Residence at the Kolleg Friedrich Nietzsche in Weimar.


Publications

Monographs

  • Das Zwischen schreiben—Transgression und avantgardistisches Erbe bei Kathy Acker. Bielefeld: transcript, 2013.
  • 'Control Machines' und 'Dispositive'—Eine foucaultsche Analyse der Machtstrukturen im Romanwerk von William S. Burroughs zwischen 1959 und 1968. Frankfurt am Main et al.: Peter Lang, 2008.

Edited Volumes and Special Issues

  • (with Pierre-Héli Monot). Special Issue "Contagion and Conviction: Rumor and Gossip in American Culture." European Journal of American Studies 15.4 (2020). https://doi.org/10.4000/ejas.16351
  • (with Julius Greve). The American Weird: Concept & Medium. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2020.
  • (with Andrew S. Gross). Surveillance | Society | Culture. Berlin et al.: Peter Lang, 2020.
  • (with Julius Greve). Spaces and Fictions of the Weird and the Fantastic: Ecologies, Geographies, Oddities. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019.

Articles and Book Chapters

  • "In the Shadow of the 'Indeterminate Speech-Act': The Populist Politics of Rumor in Fritz Lang’s Early Sound Films." European Journal of American Studies 15.4 (2020). Special Issue "Contagion and Conviction: Rumor and Gossip in American Culture." https://doi.org/10.4000/ejas.16481
  • "Contagion and Conviction: Rumor and Gossip in American Culture." (with Pierre-Héli Monot). European Journal of American Studies 15.4 (2020). Special Issue "Contagion and Conviction: Rumor and Gossip in American Culture." https://doi.org/10.4000/ejas.16356
  • "Weird Visual Mythopoeia: On Matthew Barney's Cremaster Cycle." The American Weird: Concept & Medium. Eds. Julius Greve and Florian Zappe. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2020. 187-200.
  • "Introduction: Conceptualizations, Mediations, and Remediations of the American Weird." (with Julius Greve). The American Weird: Concept & Medium. Eds. Julius Greve and Florian Zappe. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2020. 1-11.
  • "Gazing Back at the Monster—A Critical Posthumanist Intervention on Surveillance Culture, Sousveillance and the Lifelogged Self." Surveillance | Society | Culture. Eds. Florian Zappe and Andrew S. Gross. Berlin et al.: Peter Lang, 2020. 39-55.
  • "Introduction." (with Andrew S. Gross). Surveillance | Society | Culture. Eds. Florian Zappe and Andrew S. Gross. Berlin et al.: Peter Lang, 2020. 9-23.
  • "'And from this moment on, we know nothing'—Ellipsis, Epistemology and the Anti-Detective Novel." Narrating Surveillance―Überwachen Erzählen. Ed. Betiel Wasihun. Baden-Baden and Würzburg: Ergon, 2019. 211-224.
  • "Introduction: Ecologies and Geographies of the Weird and the Fantastic." (with Julius Greve). Spaces and Fictions of the Weird and the Fantastic: Ecologies, Geographies, Oddities. Eds. Julius Greve and Florian Zappe. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019. 1-12. 
  • "Conservative Exorcisms: On William F. Buckley Jr.’s Anti-Liberal Crusade and the Demon of Atheism." American Studies Journal 65 (2018).
  • "(Re)Framing the Disembodied Public Enemy: The 'War on Drugs' in Contemporary Narrative Screen Media." The Enemy in Contemporary Film. Eds. Martin Löschnigg and Marzena Sokołowska-Paryż. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2018. 105-118.
  • "The Other Exceptionalism—A Transnational Perspective on Atheism in America." Polish Journal of American Studies 12 (Spring 2018) (Special Issue "Transnational American Studies Here and Now." Eds. Agniezka Graff, Karolina Krasuska and Ludmiła Janion). 75-88.
  • "The Addict's Ethics of Failure—Resistance to Ambition in the Photographic Work of Larry Clark." The Failed Individual. Eds. Katharina Motyl and Regina Schober. Frankfurt am Main: Campus, 2017. 205-222.
  • "'When Order is Lost, Time Spits': The Abject Unpopular Art of Genesis (Breyer) P-Orridge." Unpopular Culture. Eds. Martin Lüthe and Sascha Pöhlmann. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2016. 129-145.
  • "'The Caligarian Works of a New Film Discovery'—Das Echo des performativen Expressionismus im amerikanischen Experimentalfilm der 1920er und 30er Jahre." Expressionismus 2 (2015). 47-55.
  • "In the Generic Interzone—On the Liminal Character of William S. Burroughs' 'Routines.'" Liminality and the Short Story: Boundary Crossings in American, Canadian and British Writing. Eds. Jochen Achilles and Ina Bergmann. London: Routledge, 2015. 63-74.
  • "Vom Dilettantismus des Killers—Inkompetentes Töten als Quelle des Lächerlichen in Chris Morris' Four Lions und Takashi Miikes Visitor Q." Mord und Totlach. Eds. Christian Hoffstadt, Melanie Möller, Sabine Müller. Bochum and Freiburg: Projektverlag, 2014. 67-78.

Reviews

  • Review of Frank Kelleter and Alexander Starre (Eds.): Projecting American Studies: Essays on Theory, Method and Practice, Anglia 138.2 (2020). 328-332.
  • Review of Nicole Falkenhayner: Media, Surveillance and Affect. Narrating Feeling States, surveillance-studies.org (Juli 2020).
  • Review of Anne-Marie Scholz: From Fidelity to History. Film Adaptations as Cultural Events in the Twentieth Century, Amerikastudien/American Studies 60.2/3.
  • "Panrevolutionärer Lärm." Review of S. Alexander Reed: Assimilate—A Critical History of Industrial Music, pop-zeitschrift.de (January 2015).
  • Review of Anne Becker: 9/11 als Bildereignis. Zur visuellen Bewältigung des Anschlags, surveillance-studies.org (August 2014).
  • Review of Kirstie Ball and Laureen Snider (Eds.): The Surveillance-Industrial Complex. A Political Economy of Surveillance,  surveillance-studies.org (October 2013).
  • "Adorno! Immer wieder Adorno!" Review essay on Dirk Braunstein, Sebastian Dittmann, and Isabelle Klasen (Eds.): Alles Falsch. Auf verlorenem Posten gegen die Kulturindustrie and Markus Metz, Georg Seeßlen: Blödmaschinen. Fabrikation der Stupidität, pop-zeitschrift.de (August 2013).
  • "Hollywood als Sackgasse." Review of Kevin Vennemann: Sunset Boulevard. Vom Filmen, Bauen und Sterben in Los Angeles, pop-zeitschrift.de (December 2012).

Talks, Conference Papers, and Panel Chairs

  • "Sousveillance, Sovereignty and the Self in the Digital Age", (Guest Lecture, December 3, 2020, Université de Fribourg)
  • "Towards a Nontheistic (Po)et(h)ics of Cosmopolitanism: Shelley―Whitman―Nietzsche", (Annual Convention of the Modern Language Association, January 9-12, 2020, Seattle)
  • "Diogenes? Prometheus? Luzifer?―Über die Bedeutung der Laterne für Nietzsches 'tollen Menschen'", (Guest Lecture, November 11, 2019, University of Potsdam) 
  • "Psychogeographical Re|visions of Tangier: Genet―Burroughs―Acker", (8th Annual Conference of the European Beat Studies Network "Moving Geographies: Literatures of Travel and Migration," October 09-12, 2019, ARTos Cultural and Research Foundation, Nikosia)
  • "Wohin ist Gott?―Über die metaphysische Krise des Religiösen bei Stephen Crane und Friedrich Nietzsche", (Guest Lecture, September 10, 2019, Kolleg Friedrich Nietzsche, Weimar)
  • "The Parahistory of American Cinema", (Guest Lecture, May 27, 2019, University of Warsaw)
  • "Killing 'God the Father': On the Nexus of Atheism and Feminism in Ernestine L. Rose’s and Emma Goldman’s Activist Philosophies", (64th Annual Conference of the British Association for American Studies, April 25-27, 2019, University of Sussex, Brighton)
  • "American Atheisms: On the 'Death of God' in 'God’s Own Country'", (Ringvorlesung "Quo Vadis USA?”, January 15, 2019, Universität Braunschweig)
  • "A secret double agent against the 'globalist' Interzone? Critical reflections on the 'alt-right' and their appropriation of Burroughsian politics", (7th Annual Conference of the European Beat Studies Network "The Beats and Politics", October 3-6, 2018, Vienna Poetry School and Künstlerhaus 1050, Vienna)
  • "Framing the Fiend: Constructions of the Enemy in the 'War on Drugs' Genre." (Guest Lecture, August 30, 2018, Macquarie University, Sydney)
  • "Veil of the Flesh" (Guest Lecture, August 28, 2018, Macquarie University, Sydney)
  • "'It's what's outside the frame that's scary': Visual Weirdness in the Work of Matthew Barney", (International Conference "The American Weird: Ecologies & Geographies", April 12-14, 2018, Georg-August-Universität Göttingen)
  • "The Parisian Spectre in Ferlinghetti’s Famously Nonfamous Novel Her", (6th Annual Conference of the European Beat Studies Network "Paris Interzone: The Transcultural Beat Generation (Collaboration, Publication, Translation)", September 20-22, 2017, The University of Chicago Center in Paris)
  • "'It all moves like a dance to unheard music'—Performative Expressionism and the First American Film Avant-Garde" & Chair of the Panel "Modern Women I" (Conference "Modernisms and Modernities East, West and South: Comparing Literary and Cultural Experiences", July 19-22, 2017, Fudan University, Shanghai)
  • "William F. Buckley, Jr. and the Question of Atheism", (International Conference "Cultures of US-American Conservatism", February 9-12, 2017, Georg-August-Universität Göttingen)
  • "Watching the Watchers Watch: Surveillance, Knowledge and the Epistemological Benefits of Art", (Internationale Vortragsreihe "Spaces of Surveillance―Überwachungsräume", January 16, 2017, Universität Flensburg)
  • "Surveillance Culture and the Lifelogged Self―A Critical Posthumanist Intervention", ("Surveillance, Form, Affect―An International, Multidisciplinary Conference", December 7-9, 2016, The Education University of Hong Kong)
  • "The Other Exceptionalism: A Transnational Perspective on the Question of Atheism in America" & Chair of the Panel "Pop Politics, Pop Economy, Pop Society: Representations of Social, Historical and Economic Issues in Popular Culture" (Annual Conference of the Polish Association of American Studies "Transnational American Studies", October 27-29, 2016, University of Warsaw)
  • "The Addict's Ethics of Failure—Reflections on the Photographic Work of Larry Clark", (Conference "The Failed Individual", November 12-14, 2015, Universität Mannheim)
  • Chair of the Panel "Mediality in Literature", (Conference "Literature and Media Theory: Mediality - Materiality - Cultural Technique", March 19-21, 2015, Georg-August-Universität Göttingen)
  • "Lifelogging, Sousveillance and the Position of the (Post)human Subject", (Workshop "Posthumanist Interfaces of the Networked Self", 61st Annual Conference of the German Association for American Studies (DGfA) "America after Nature: Democracy, Culture, Environment", June12-15, 2014, Universität Würzburg)
  • "The Failure of Regression—Reading Pier Paolo Pasolini with Kathy Acker", (Conference "Pier Paolo Pasolini between Regression and Failure", May 9-10, 2014, Université Paris-Sorbonne)
  • "Redeeming VICE(S)—On the development of VICE media as a 'managed' popcultural Phenomenon", (Popkongress 2014 "Managing Popular Culture—Zwischen Emergenz und Strategie" (6. Jahrestagung der AG Populäre Kultur und Medien der Gesellschaft für Medienwissenschaft (GfM)), January 30 - February 01, 2014, Karlshochschule International University, Karlsruhe)
  • "Staging the Abject—The 'Unpopular' Art of Genesis Breyer P-Orrdige", (Conference "Unpopular Culture", October 31 - November 03, 2013, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München)
  • "In the Generic Interzone—On the Liminal Character of William S. Burroughs' 'Routines'", (International Conference "Liminality and the Short Story", March 07-10, 2013, Universität Würzburg)
  • "'Who gives a shit about how your mother died or if you have a real father'—The Radical Subversion of Oedipal Familialism in the Novels of Kathy Acker", (11th Annual Students and Graduate Conference "Playing House—Shifting Paradigms of Family and Kinship", November 15-17, 2012, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin)

Conference & Workshop Organization

  • Workshop "Rumor, Gossip, and Reputation in the American Counter/Public Sphere", 65th Annual Conference of the German Association for American Studies (DGfA) "American Counter/Publics", May 24-27, 2018, John F. Kennedy Institute for North American Studies, Freie Universität Berlin (organized in cooperation with Pierre-Héli Monot).
  • International Conference "The American Weird: Ecologies & Geographies", April 12-14, 2018, Georg-August-Universität Göttingen (organized in cooperation with Julius Greve), Conference Homepage
  • International Conference "Surveillance | Society | Culture", February 26-28, 2016, Georg-August-Universität Göttingen (organized in cooperation with Andrew S. Gross), Conference Homepage

Memberships

  • German Association for American Studies (DGfA)
  • Deutsche Gesellschaft für Allgemeine und Vergleichende Literaturwissenschaft (DGAVL) / German Association for Comparative Literature
  • Modern Language Association (MLA)
  • European Beat Studies Network (EBSN)
  • Research Network "Surveillance Studies.org"
  • AG Populärkultur und Medien in der Gesellschaft für Medienwissenschaft (GfM)

Teaching

Current Courses

  • "Somebody's Watching Me"—Surveillance in Visual and Media Culture (PS, SoSe 2021)
  • From Page to Screen: Literary Works and their Cinematic Adaptations (PS, SoSe 2021)
  • Cultural History and Rhetoric: Foundational Texts of American Culture (SoSe 2021)

Past Courses at the University of Göttingen

  • Reading James Baldwin: Then and Now (PS, WiSe 2020/21)
  • The Beauty of the Machine?—Technology in Literature, Film, and Art (PS, WiSe 2020/21)
  • Experimental Film (PS, WiSe 2020/21)
  • Cultural History and Rhetoric: Foundational Texts of American Culture (Übung, WiSe 2020/21)
  • Representations of the Civil War in Fiction and Film (PS, SoSe 2020)
  • Unreadable Books?—Literary Experimentation in American Fiction (PS, SoSe 2020)
  • David Lynch—Multimedia Artist (PS, SoSe 2020)
  • Cultural History and Rhetoric: Foundational Texts of American Culture (Übung, SoSe 2020)
  • Smashing the Control Machines: William S. Burroughs Revisited (HS, WiSe 2019/20)
  • Cutting Out the Dull Bits: Alfred Hitchcock’s American Films (PS, WiSe 2019/20)
  • Cultural History and Rhetoric: American Avant-Garde(s) (Übung, WiSe 2019/20)
  • Introduction to the Study of American Literature and Culture (PS, WiSe 2019/20)
  • Writing from the Dark Heart of the South: Flannery O’Connor and Carson McCullers (PS, SoSe 2019)
  • Reading the City (PS, SoSe 2019)
  • Cultural History and Rhetoric: Radical Rhetoric(s): A Cultural History of Political Extremism in the United States (Übung, SoSe 2019)
  • Introduction to Film and Media Studies (PS, SoSe 2019)
  • Introduction to Film and Media Studies (WS 18/19)
  • Introduction to the Study of American Literature and Culture (WS 18/19)
  • Cultural History and Rhetoric: Skeptics in "God's own Country" —The History of Freethought in American Culture (WS 18/19)
  • Film Noir (PS, WS 18/19)
  • American Naturalism (HS, WS 18/19)
  • Punk, Porn, Postmodernism—The Literature of Kathy Acker (PS, SoSe 2018)
  • American Gothic Then and Now: Tropes, Traditions, Transformations (PS, SoSe 2018)
  • Metamovies: Films about Cinema (PS, SoSe 2018)
  • Cultural History and Rhetoric: American Exceptionalism (SoSe 2018)
  • "We've all got the disease" The Cinema of David Cronenberg (PS, WiSe 17/18)
  • Warhol's Worlds (PS, WiSe 17/18)
  • Introduction to Film and Media Studies (WS 17/18)
  • Introduction to the Study of American Literature and Culture (WS 17/18)
  • "...but I've seen the film"—Literary Works and their Cinematic Adaptations (PS, SoSe 17)
  • Cultural History and Rhetoric: The Roaring Twenties (SoSe 17)
  • Cinema's Sexualities: The Cultural Politics of Desire in American Film (PS, SoSe 17)
  • Pre-Code Hollywood: Cinema's Golden Age of Immorality (PS,WS 16/17)
  • Cultural History and Rhetoric: Counterculture(s) (WS 16/17)
  • Introduction to Film and Media Studies (WS 16/17)
  • Introduction to the Study of American Literature and Culture (WS 16/17)
  • Experimental Film (PS, SoSe 16)
  • Cultural History and Rhetoric: Skeptics in "God's own Country" —The History of Freethought in American Culture (SoSe16)
  • The American Short Story: From Poe to the Present (PS, SoSe 16)
  • Introduction to the Study of American Literature and Culture (WS 15/16)
  • Advanced Cultural History and Rhetoric: American Exceptionalism—A Cultural History of an Idea (WS 15/16)
  • Introduction to Film and Media Studies (WS 15/16)
  • Research and Professional Skills (SoSe 15)
  • Advanced Cultural History and Rhetoric: Radical Rhetoric(s): Political Extremism in America from the Revolution to the Present Day (SoSe 15)
  • Reading the City (PS, WS 14/15)
  • David Lynch—Multimedia Artist (PS, WS 14/15)
  • Advanced Cultural History and Rhetoric: American Avant-Garde(s) (WS 14/15)
  • The American Postmodern Novel (PS, SoSe 14)
  • Directed Reading Course: From the Early Republic to the Late Nineteenth Century (SoSe 14)

Past Courses at Other Academic Institutes

  • Punk, Porn, Postmodernism—The Literary World of Kathy Acker (WS 13/14; American Studies/English Department, Universität Hamburg)
  • 'Wir wollen immer artig sein...'—Subcultures in Berlin (SoSe 2013 & SoSe 2014; "bologna.lab", Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin)