Four-Year Postdoc Position on Contemporary US/Anglophone Science Fictions at the University of Basel 80%

Your position

The project as a whole is dedicated to exploring contemporary works in three popular literary genres that have emerged in the Anglophone world and deal with central social issues of today's knowledge societies on both sides of the Atlantic: eco-fictions, campus novels and science fictions. Their themes include climate change, species extinction, and environmental pollution (eco-fictions); anti-intellectualism and the role of universities in knowledge societies (campus novels); and artificial intelligence, genetic engineering and (digital) surveillance (science fictions). Since these are popular texts that deal with urgent questions of American and European societies in the 21st century, the genuinely literary question of the social function of contemporary literature arises. Three of the most convincing answers to the question of the cognitive and social functions of fiction come from Victor Shklovsky (enstrangement/defamiliarization), Wolfgang Iser (literary anthropology), and Jane Tompkins (cultural work). Science fiction studies is a growing field that has generated stimulating intellectual interventions by thinkers such as Darko Suvin (cognitive estrangement), Fredric Jameson (the utopian vocation), Tom Moylan (utopia, dystopia, anti-utopia), and others. In this line, the subproject on science fictions will offer perspectives on the social implications of both fiction and technological innovation.

Your profile

Applicants have a PhD in English, American Literature, or related fields, and a number of publications. Please submit a proposal for your own four-year research subproject on contemporary US/Anglophone science fiction. These may be restricted to literature, but may also involve other media such as movies and TV series. Other theoretical frameworks than those mentioned above and other thematic foci of the fictions under consideration are, of course, welcome. The successful applicant will be expected to either write their second book or eight essays in peer-reviewed journals or essay collections-or a combination of the two.