Profile
Abstract
I teach and do research in American studies with a focus on the politics of texts and textuality. Specifically, I am interested in the cultural work of narrative (and non-narrative) symbolic forms.
After studying at Leipzig and Cornell University, I graduated in 2006 with a degree in American studies and Computer Science. My dissertation, completed in 2012 and published under the title "Presidential Unrealities: Epistemic Panic, Cultural Work, and the US Presidency," focused on the perception that the American presidency has become a source of 'unreality,' a term I used to describe what is now called 'post-fact' or 'post-truth.'
My second book (Habilitation), completed in 2020, discussed the role of an emerging 'Data Imaginary' for the evolution and contouring of literature in nineteenth-century US-American culture.
After serving as interim Professor for American studies at Regensburg University, I now work on a project on "postnarrative politics" funded by the VolkswagenStiftung.
My research interests are organized around the politics of textuality, i.e. the cultural work of narrative (and non-narrative) symbolic forms, particularly in the context of popular culture.
In my dissertation, I thus looked at how post-1960s US popular culture traces (and worries about) the emergence of what we have now come to call post-truth politics.
In my Habilitation, I discussed how ‘data’ emerged as a cultural object in the nineteenth century, in how a ‘Data Imaginary’ gained cultural salience, and in how far the concept of ‘literature,’ taking shape at the time, formed in relation to this Data Imaginary (and vice versa).
In my current project on Post-Narrative Politics (funded by VolkswagenStiftung), I work to theorize contemporary right-wing politics as based not in 'simple narratives' but as operating a post-narrative symbolic logic.
As part of these broader research interest, I have also coedited a number of collections, such as the 2012 Participating Audiences, Imagined Public Spheres, the 2015 Poetics of Politics: Textuality and Social Relevance in Contemporary American Literature and Culture, and the 2022 Beyond Narrative: Exploring Narrative Liminality and Its Cultural Work.
Methodologically, I am anchored in the Americanist tradition of literary studies as cultural studies, but I have also ventured into different inflections of the digital humanities.
- show detailsPopulism as Non-Narrative: Theorizing the Poetics of Post-Narrative PoliticsHerrmann, Sebastian M.Duration: 01/2021 – 12/2021Funded by: Stiftungen InlandInvolved organisational units of Leipzig University: Institut für Amerikanistik; Amerikanische Literaturwissenschaft
- show detailsSHRIMP_PODS: Geisteswissenschaftliche Lesen als nutzendenzentrierter Lernpfad durch den TextHerrmann, Sebastian M.Duration: 10/2021 – 04/2022Funded by: BMBF Bundesministerium für Bildung und ForschungInvolved organisational units of Leipzig University: Amerikanische Literaturwissenschaft; Institut für Amerikanistik
- show detailsHerrmann, S. M.Songs’ and ‘Inventories’: Democratic Literature, the 19th-Century Data Imaginary, and the Narrative Liminality of the Poetic CatalogIn: Herget , W. (Ed.)Revisiting Walt Whitman: On the Occasion of His 200th Birthday. Berlin: Peter Lang. 2019. pp. 163–186.
- show detailsHerrmann, S. M.Post-Truth = Post-Narrative?: Reading the Narrative Liminality of Transnational Right-Wing PopulismIn: Morgan, N.; Hornung, A.; Tatsumi, T. (Eds.)The Routledge Companion to Transnational American Studies. London: Routledge. 2019. pp. 288–296.
- show detailsHerrmann, S. M.Vor dem Post-Faktischen? The West Wing und die postmoderne‚ epistemische Verunsicherung‘ in der PolitikIn: Besand, A. (Ed.)Von Game of Thrones bis House of Cards: Politische Perspektiven in Fernsehserien. Wiesbaden: Springer VS. 2018. pp. 153–166.
- show detailsHerrmann, S. M.Wrestling with the Real: Politics, Journalism, History in Frost/Nixon, and the Complex Realism of KayfabeAmerikastudien. 2016. 61 (1). pp. 11–31.
- show detailsHerrmann, S. M.; Kanzler, K.; Schubert, S. (Eds.)Beyond Narrative: Exploring Narrative Liminality and Its Cultural WorkBielefeld: transcript. 2022.
I teach courses in American Literature and Culture across all programs at ASL. For the longest time I have focused on the BA and MA program. As of 2021, my focus is on the Lehramt modules. In my teaching, I am especially interested in the relationship between media, different forms of interactivity, scalable tutoring, and individual academic development. I particularly enjoy helping students discover the productivity and fascination of abstraction and theory and their relevance for their own life.
I am also strongly interested in new and experimental teaching formats that help students develop their own scholarly interests, positions, and voice. Starting in 2007, I co-developed and taught an MA project seminar that resulted in the graduate journal aspeers: emerging voices in american studies, the first and currently only graduate-level peer-reviewed journal for American studies in Europe (www.aspeers.de). The project has quickly become an integral part of ASL’s MA program and annually gives a group of MA-level student editors the opportunity to practice one complete editing cycle of the journal and publish the work of fellow MA-students from all over Europe. In 2015, I started working on SHRIMP, a long-running project that explores the didactic possibilities of social hypertext (www.social-hypertext.de).
Research fields
American studies, Digital transformation
Contact for media inquiries
Phone: +49 341 97-37337