Thomas Keller, Dr.
- Senior Research and Teaching Assistant for English Literature
- Phone
- +41 (0)44 634 36 79
- Room number
- PET-6
Navigation auf uzh.ch
Navigation auf uzh.ch
I work as a senior teaching and research assistant in English literature at the English Department of the University of Zurich. I studied English Literature and Linguistics, Art History, and Modern History at the University of Zurich. I wrote my Lizenziatisarbeit (master’s thesis) on Death Disco: Dialectics in British Punk and Post-Punk and graduated in 2011. From 2008 to 2016, I worked as a research and teaching assistant at the Institute of Art History of the University of Zurich. In 2017, I completed my dissertation, entitled A Practicological Modernism: Wyndham Lewis and British Art Rock, on the cultural afterlife of the modernist aesthetics of Wyndham Lewis in late-twentieth-century British popular music culture. My research interests include intermediality and new media with a focus on visual arts, digital media, and popular music, transcultural and transhistorical iconographies in literature and the visual arts, the social and practical dimensions of art and literature, the historicities of critical theory, modernity and modernization from the 18th to the 21st century, and 20th century transgressive and countercultural British and American literature.
My regular consultation hours in the autumn semester 2018 are on Tuesdays, 12:00 - 1:45 p.m. If you want to come by during these hours, you are not required to give me prior notice, but I appreciate if you still do so. For consultation hours outside of this time slot please drop me an email.
In the autumn semester 2018, I am teaching the compulsory module on Methods and Theory: Reading Critical Theories on the MA level as well as the introductory compulsory module Textual Analysis on the BA level. Details are available in the UZH Course Catalogue and the respective campus courses on OLAT.
If you would like to take your BA Reading List Exam with me, please consult the following information sheets:
| Since August 2017 | Senior Research and Teaching Assistant in English Literature, English Department, University of Zurich. |
| June 2017 | PhD defense, grade: summa cum laude. |
| December 2016 - July 2017 | Teaching and research assistant to Prof. Dr. Elisabeth Bronfen, Chair for English and American Literature, English Department, University of Zurich. |
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July 2016 - November 2016 |
Doctoral research trip, London, United Kingdom Associated Graduate Research Student, Department of English and Drama, Queen Mary University, London; mentored by Prof. Margaret Reynolds. |
| Autumn Term 2016 - Spring Term 2017 | PhD candidate in English literature, individual doctoral program, English Department, University of Zurich. |
| Autumn Term 2012 - Spring Term 2016 | PhD candidate in the doctoral program Media History of Arts, Institute of Art History, University of Zurich. |
| 2012 - 2017 | PhD project A Practicological Modernism. Wyndham Lewis and British Art Rock. |
| 2011 - 2016 | Reserach and Teaching Assistant to Prof. Dr. Bettina Gockel, Chair for the History of the Fine Arts, Institute of Art History, University of Zurich |
| 2011 | Licentiate degree, University of Zurich (equiv. Master's degree). Degree awarded with the Licentiate Award of the University of Zurich (equiv. summa cum laude). |
| 2008 - 2011 | Undergraduate Assistant to Prof. Dr. Bettina Gockel, Chair for the History of the Fine Arts, Institute of Art History, University of Zurich. |
| 2008 - 2011 | Undergraduate tutor at the Institute of Art History and in the master's degree program Cultural Analysis, University of Zurich |
| 2005 - 2009 | Undergraduate tutor at the English Department, University of Zurich. Main focus: Literary and cultural theory. |
| 2004 - 2011 | Studies in English Literature and Linguistics, Art History, and Modern History at the University of Zurich. |
| Autumn Term 2011 | Licentiate Award of the University of Zurich for completion of the degree with the best possible grade (equiv. summa cum laude). |
| Spring Term 2010 | Semester Award of the University of Zurich for the term paper The Future Is a Thing of the Past – Kunst Kultur und Geschichte in 'Children of Men' (The Future Is a Thing of the Past – Art, Culture and History in 'Children of Men') |
PhD Thesis: A Practicological Modernism: Wyndham Lewis and British Art Rock (successfully defended in 2017, publication forthcoming).
Newspaper article: «David Bowie, 1949 – 2016» (Obituary of David Bowie), in: NZZ am Sonntag, 17th January 2016. p 61-62.
Essay: «Niederländische Remakes und Konsumkultur. Versuch einer Deutung» («Dutch Remakes and Consumer Culture. An Attempt at an Analysis.»). Article for the exhibition Old Masters Revisited: Katharina Lütscher & Julia Sheppard, Zurich, 2014.
Essay: «Unterwürfige Souveränität: Kleopatra in der Popmusik» («Subservient Sovereignty: Cleopatra in Popular Music»), in: Kleopatra. Die ewige Diva. Cat. Exhib. Kunst- und Ausstellungshalle der Bundesrepublik Deutschland Bonn, 28th June - 6 October 2013. Munich: Hirmer, 2013. p 124-131.
Bettina Gockel and Thomas Keller. Rev. of Visuelle Kulturen der USA. Zur Geschichte von Malerei, Fotografie, Film, Fernsehen und Neuen Medien in Amerika (Ed. Christoph Decker, Bielefeld: Transcript, 2010), in: Archiv für das Studium der neueren Sprachen und Literaturen 250 (2013): p. 439-442
Licentiate Thesis: Death Disco: Dialectics in British Punk and Post-Punk, University of Zurich, Spring Semester 2011.
| 2015 | Indexing of the artistic estate of Ernst and Yoshida Früh, Ernst and Yoshida Früh-Foundation, Zurich; in preparation for a future Swiss National Fund project (with MA Katharina Haack). |
| 2012 | Research work for the Bundeskunsthalle, Bonn, Germany: Exhibition «Cleopatra: The Eternal Diva» (June - October 2013). Focus of the research: The cultural afterlife of Cleopatra in popular culture of the 20th and 21st centuries. |
| Spring Term 2012 | Research work for the publication project «Elizabeth I: The First Political Diva», Prof. Dr. Elisabeth Bronfen and Dr. Barbara Straumann, English Seminar, University of Zurich. |
| 2012 - 2013 | Design and Supervision of the e-learning project «The Art of Describing» at the Chair for the History of the Fine Arts, Institute of Art History, University of Zurich. |
| Autumn 2008 - Spring 2012 | Curation of the newly established digital film archive of the Institute of Art History, University of Zurich. |
| 2007 | Development of multimedia teaching material «Film Sequences for Textual and Cultural Analysis» to be used in the introductory courses of English Literature at the English Seminar of the University of Zurich; in collaboration with Prof. Dr. Elisabeth Bronfen. |
| Autumn Term 2018 | MA Compulsory Module «Methods and Theory: Reading Critical Theories» Foundation Studies Module «Textual Analysis» |
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Spring Term 2018 |
BA Seminar «Theory and Its Discontents» Foundation Studies Module «Textual Analysis» |
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Autumn Term 2017
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BA Seminar «Punks» Foundation Studies Module «Textual Analysis» |
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Spring Term 2016
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Reading Course «Modernity | Modernism | The Modern» Field Trip «Dresden: From the Cabinet of Curiosities to the Modern Museum» (organization; co-teaching with Prof. Dr. Bettina Gockel and Dr. Miriam Volmert) |
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Spring Term 2015
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BA Seminar «The Musealization of the Pop Star» |
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Autumn Term 2014
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BA Seminar «Theories of Photography» (co-teaching with Prof. Dr. Bettina Gockel) |
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Spring Term 2014
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Reading course «Culture | Images | Theories» Field Trip «Chicago as a Global City: Transatlantic and Transpacific Perspectives in the Arts and Architecture of the Early Twentieth Century» (organization; co-teaching with Prof. Dr. Bettina Gockel, Prof. Dr. Hans B. Thomsen, Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Kersten and MA Sabine Bradel) |
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August 2013
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Course instructor at the Summer School 2013 of the German Academic Scholarship Foundation, Leysin, Switzerland. Course topic «Nature as Motif, Metaphor and Material. Regional and Global Aspects of American Art» (with Dr. des. Miriam Volmert and Prof. Dr. Elisabeth Bronfen; conceptual contributions by Prof. Dr. Bettina Gockel) |
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Spring Term 2013
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Proseminar «Wyndham Lewis — 'That Lonely Volcano of the Right...'» |
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Spring Term 2012
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Proseminar «Moving Pictures: Visual Transfers Between the Fine Arts and Film» Field Trip «London» (organization with Dr. des. Miriam Volmert; co-teaching with Prof. Dr. Bettina Gockel and Dr. des. Miriam Volmert) Lecture Series «Introduction to Art History» (overall organization and two individual lectures) |
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Autumn Term 2011
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Proseminar «From Gainsborough to Turner. English Painting and Drawing in the 18th and 19th Centuries« (co-teaching with Prof. Dr. Bettina Gockel) |
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Spring Term 2011
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Field Trip «'The Birth of a Nation.' Art and Architecture in the United Statews. 18th to Early 20th Century. Washington – Philadelphia – New York» (organization, co-teaching with Prof. Dr. Bettina Gockel) |
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Autumn Term 2010
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Seminar «Europe and America in the 18th Century: John Singleton Copley» (co-teaching with Prof. Dr. Bettina Gockel) |
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Spring Term 2010 |
Seminar «Theories of the Real» (co-teaching with Prof. Dr. Bettina Gockel)
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