Ph.D.Damien Schlarb

Research Areas

• Nineteenth-Century American Literature
• Postsecularism / Literature & Religion
• Early American Studies
• Digital Game Studies
• New Media Studies
• Transnational American Studies
• Technology and Cultural Studies
• Political Economy (history/culture)
  
  I am a scholar of American literature and culture. I earned my PhD at Georgia State University in Atlanta, GA, (U.S.A.), where I have lived, worked, and taught on the university level for almost ten years before coming to JGU, Mainz. Because of my transnational educational background and experience, my purpose in both my teaching and my research consists in fostering linguistic and cultural literacies. I seek to mediate between different cultural contexts and reservoirs of knowledge, be they German and American, or literature and digital games, to create new knowledge. My work centers on how media become meaningful by both being self-reflexive and affording human (self-)reflection.
  
  My nineteenth-century literary research focuses on the American Renaissance, Herman Melville, the long eighteenth century, and discourses of religion, skepticism, and biblical criticism in America. My first book, Melville’s Wisdom: Religion, Skepticism, and Literature in Nineteenth-Century America, has appeared with Oxford University Press in 2021. My other literary interests include the American short story, Afrofuturism, and, most recently, the work of sci-fi writer N.K. Jemisin.
  
  My current research project (Habilitation), situated in American humanist Culture Studies, focuses on the concept of work in and through digital games (video games or computer games). I explore how recent mass-market and independently produced ("indie") games such as Horizon Zero Dawn (2017), Red Dead Redemption 2 (2018), or the Stanley Parable (2011) produce, co-produce, and reflect American culture and how these production processes link up with broader cultural phenomena involving technology. My interest lies, among others, with the cultural categories of gender, race (esp. Blackness), space, work, and the political economy.
  
  At JGU, I teach courses in American Literature (from the 16th to the 21st century) and Culture Studies (digital games, technology, and the political economy). I have also taught American Literature and Composition at Georgia State University (Atlanta, GA) for almost 10 years. In my teaching, I emphasize a close connection between thinking and writing, helping students who speak English as a second language (ESL) harness their potential and become profficient and confident in their communicative abilities.