Faculty Member, Literary and Cultural Studies
Erasmus University Rotterdam, Department of Philosophy
University of Reading, Film, Theatre, and Television
University of Warwick, Film and Television Studies
Assistant Professor Cultural Studies and Theory
About
I am assistant professor in Cultural Studies and Theory at the Radboud University Nijmegen. I teach across the BA and MA. Courses I convene and teach on include Cultural Theory, American Popular Culture, Diversity in European Culture, City Cultures, and History of Art. I obtained an AHRC funded PhD from The University of Reading, UK in 2011.
My research is three-pronged. At the moment, I am interested above all in developments in contemporary art. My main thesis is that the postmodern vernacular is no longer sufficient to understand what is going on, and a new idiom is required. Along with others, I have come to call this idiom metamodernism: a sensibility that oscillates between and ultimately beyond (meta-) a modern sincerity and enthusiasm and a postmodern irony. I have published numerous essays and articles on the topic in journals and magazines such as The Journal of Aesthetics and Culture, MONU, and Frieze, and am currently working on a book. As part of this research I have recently founded the Centre for New Aesthetics (www.newaesthetics.net) and co-edit the popular academic webzine Notes on metamodernism (www.metamodernism.com). Most of my work on metamodernism is written together with the Dutch cultural philosopher Robin van den Akker.
Secondly, I write about contemporary television aesthetics. Fusing close textual analysis with continental philosophy, I seek to come to an understanding of the aesthetics and cultural significance of recent programmes like The Wire, Mad Men, Arrested Development, Community, Parks and Rec, Curb Your Enthusiasm, The Sopranos, and Breaking Bad. I do much of my writing on contemporary TV together with the Norwegian television scholar Gry Cecilie Rustad and the British film and TV scholar James Whitfield.
Finally, there is a strand of my research that is concerned with the poetics of space in film and television, especially marginal spaces like suburbs and banlieues. I wrote my PhD Thesis on the representation of US suburbia in film and television, and am currently preparing a research proposal on the representation of European urban peripheries. I also recently co-organised a conference on transnational suburbs with the British literary scholar Martin Dines at Kingston University, London. We are currently working on an edited collection.
Selected Publications:
- 'As if', James Elkins & Harper Montgomery (eds), Beyond The Aesthetic and the Anti-Aesthetic (forth. 2013)
- with Robin van den Akker, 'The Return of Utopia in the Arts', Judith Wambacq & Irina Hron-Oberg (eds.), Thinking in Unity After Postmodernisms (forthc. 2013)
- with Gry Rustad, 'Watching Television with Jacques Ranciere: US Quality TV, Mad Men, and the late cut', Screen (forth. 2013)
- 'Quality TV and Independent Cinema', in John Berra (ed.), Directory of World Cinema Vol 2: American Independent (forthc. Bristol: Intellect/Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012)
- with James Whitfield, 'Arrested Developments', J. Jacobs & S. Peacock (eds), Global Television: Aesthetics and Style (forthc. Continuum 2012)
- with Gry Rustad, 'Temporality and Temps Mortality in Mad Men, The Wire and Arrested Development', Melissa Ames (ed.), Television and Temporality (forthc. University of Missisipi Press 2012)
- 'Metamodernism', TANK Magazine (March 2012)
- with Simon Critchley & Nina Power, 'Theoretically Speaking', Frieze (August/September 2011)
- with Robin van den Akker, 'Metamodern Architecture', MONU No 15 (2011)
- with Robin van den Akker, 'Metamodernism, history, and the story of Lampe', R. MagShamrain & S. Strumper-Krobb (eds.), After Postmodernism (2011), pp. 25-40.
- with Robin van den Akker. 'Metamodernisme', Twijfel Vol 1 (2011)
- with Robin van den Akker. ‘Notes on metamodernism’, Journal of Aesthetics and Culture Vol 2 (2010).
- ‘The Suburbs’, in John Berra (ed.), Directory of World Cinema: American Independent (Bristol: Intellect/Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010)
