Department of Germanic Studies

• theater and performance
• politics of aesthetics
• the comedic
• environmental humanities
• theater and the sciences
• transcultural theater

I am a scholar trained in literature, theater, film, and media studies with an expertise in theater theory, the politics of aesthetics, the comedic, theater and the sciences, transcultural theater, and questions of aesthetics for/of the (post-)Anthropocene. I explore these fields predominantly in the context of German-language theatre in the 20 ^th and 21 ^st century.

My monographs reflect my attempts to grasp and name the theatrical imaginary of our present, which goes beyond drama and representational theater and always seems to defy description. In my first book, Drama als Störung [Drama as Disruption] (transcript 2016), I do this on the example of a specific theatrical genre by Nobel-laureate Elfriede Jelinek, which she terms ‘secondary drama.’ My second monograph, Theatre of the Void: Plasticity, Hauntology, and Nuclear Blast (Cornell UP 2025)/ Theater der Leere. Heiner Müller, Elfriede Jelinek, Christoph Schlingensief, René Pollesch (Theater der Zeit 2024), widens this scope and proposes a new approach for understanding the theatrical forms that have dominated German-language theatre since the 1970s. In the book, I explore the concept of the void to describe a theatre that investigates the groundlessness of being as revealed in our techno-scientific age. I show that this ontology anchored not in essence and substance but in indeterminacy and mutability inspired playwrights and directors to make a theatrical groundlessness possible that generates its energy from the absence of determinate being.

Currently, I am working on projects that approach the question of theatrical form through different lenses. On the one hand, I turn to comedy and the comedic mode which I seek to discuss in two related book projects: one that theorizes the comedic in contemporary theater based on the notion of ‘habitual life’ (Giorgio Agamben), and another one that will offer an alternative history of Western theatre based on the comedic; one not grounded in Athenian democracy, but rather—drawing from theorist and philosopher Kōjin Karatani—inspired by isonomia or no-rule. On the other hand, I continue to work on questions of (post-)Anthropocene aesthetics. Here, I am currently co-writing a book with Berlin-based playwright and director Kevin Rittberger that re-invents Bertolt Brecht’s groundbreaking theoretical dialogue Messingkauf [Buying Brass] for our present.

Next to my monographs, I regularly publish edited volumes and articles dedicated to single directors and authors, to questions of aesthetics and politics, the Anthropocene, and theater in a globalized world. Current publications include: Schlingensief-Handbuch (Metzler 2025), an edited volume on Swiss director Milo Rau, which will appear with Fink in 2025, and Postdramatic Theater as Transcultural Theater (Narr 2018).

Inseparable from my research is my work with graduate and undergraduate students. I am dedicated to mentoring young scholars who share an interest in theater, performance, and dance, 20 ^th and 21 ^st century literature, film, and media or who want to delve into environmental humanities, theories of the Anthropocene, the politics of aesthetics, or related fields. So far, I have chaired and am chairing PhD thesis dedicated to questions of theater and migration, theater and the commons, theater and/as assembly, madness and drama, and theater and the ruinous landscapes of the Anthropocene. Moreover, I am mentoring students who work on German literature and drama since the 18 ^th century, on media, film, and music. If you are interested in working with me and joining IU as a student, please feel free to e-mail me with any questions.

I conceive academic work as a collective, collaborative practice. Informed by this belief, I foster national and international dialogue between experts in the field, between faculty and students, and between academics, theater practitioners, and authors. This becomes visible in different ways: I regularly organize conferences and workshops at IU Bloomington and beyond (see, e.g., Diffractive World-Making ); I bring guest artists and scholars to IU Bloomington for lectures and workshops (see, e.g., Berlin-based director Jürgen Kuttner’s visit); I collaborate and maintain in dialogue with directors and authors (see, e.g., my conversation with German director Thomas Oberender); I support and invite students to join conferences and workshops in the US and abroad and help them to create their own scholarly network, as well as I support their own publication projects beyond conventional academic outlets; I have introduced a weekly Colloquium that brings graduate students and faculty from different departments like German Studies, Comparative Literature, English, and the Media School together to create a space where projects in the field of theater and performance studies can be developed and workshopped.