Please tell me a little bit about your background
– My background and education, as it is reflected in my teaching and research, is perhaps best summarized by a chance encounter with a young girl at the Imperial War Museum in London of all places in the spring of 2018. Getting on the same elevator, she turned around, sized me up and said: "You look like a cowboy who goes to the moon." I was wearing a Star Trek shirt that day and, like every day, a western style hat—aka a "cowboy hat"—sat atop my head. Little did she know that both—American science fiction and the American West—were integral components of my journey as an American Studies scholar.
I was born and raised in Austria and hail from the same state as Arnold Schwarzenegger. Coming from a working class background—so, I’m "first gen" college—I had the good fortune of making a few, quite random albeit formative experiences at high school that set my on track to enroll in the English and American Studies program at the University of Klagenfurt. My introduction to American Studies came by way of a year-long methods class in cultural studies whose thematic focus was the bicentennial of the Lewis and Clark expedition. The course was held by Heinz Tschachler, who later became not only my PhD advisor but who has since also become a mentor and cherished friend.
One thing led to another; I spent my first semester abroad at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, landed an internship at the Austrian Embassy in Washington, DC, and, more generally, I sized every opportunity that allowed me to spend time stateside, especially out West.
My PhD centered on a historical mapping of the transatlantic double consciousness that informs the worldbuilding of Star Trek. My immediate postdoctoral work led me to the University of Graz where I began to develop what would evolve into my second monograph project—a cultural history of cowboy hats. The project landed me a 6-month Fulbright visiting scholarship which I spent at the Center for the Study of the American West at West Texas A&M in 2019. Staving off employment precarity, which was exacerbated by the Covid pandemic, I was fortunate to spend a little time on an EU-funded visiting professorship at the University of Warsaw’s American Studies Center.
Ultimately, all these trails led me to ILOS and UiO.
What will be the focus of your work at ILOS?
– I aim to continue and expand on my approach of "doing" American Studies at the intersections of culture studies, cultural history, and popular culture (esp. audio-visual media, i.e. television, film, and video games). Given that my research interests will center on the American West for the foreseeable future, it would be my pleasure to bring a critical focus on this quintessentially American geo-cultural region, its histories, and the many different images/meanings it has spawned to ILOS on a somewhat regular basis.
More generally though, there are a number of topic areas that I’ve taught in the past which I’d like to bring to the table of ILOS; these include but are not limited to the American Revolution and the Early Republic, the history and latent effects of transatlantic slavery, American political culture and presidential history, country music, the American entrepreneurial spirit, and American imperialism.
And finally, how do you like to spend your free time?
– When I’m not engaged in university-related things, I try to spend as much time as possible outdoors. Expanded hikes that allow me to observe wildlife, especially birds, are likely my favorite pastime. I like to play video and board games. And, I’m also a devout albeit critical fan of American and Australian country music as well as bluegrass.