Heinrich Wilke, M.A., Research and Teaching Assistant
Campus Neues Palais 10
Building 1, room 0.12
14469 Potsdam
consulting hours
Office hours are held digitally. Please contact me via email to make an appointment and to find the best way to communicate.
About
I studied English and Philosophy (and, with markedly less success, Ancient Greek) at the University of Tübingen and the University of Connecticut, graduating with a teaching degree (Staatsexamen) and an M.A. in English Literatures and Cultures. Having become, towards the end of my studies, increasingly interested in ecology, capitalist economy, and the colonial Caribbean, I embarked on a dissertation project focussing on these three subject-matters in October 2016. I worked on this project as a fellow of the DFG-funded Research Training Group, Minor Cosmopolitanisms, at Potsdam University and York University, Toronto. In my dissertation, I interpret colonial Caribbean monoculture in contemporary writings (c. 1640-1800) from an eco-Marxist perspective. I concluded my dissertation project in October 2020 (summa cum laude). At some point along the way, I finally decided to come to scholarly terms with a long-standing passion of mine: horror in its various forms and media. This passion has since become one of the foci of my research and teaching.
Research and Teaching Interests
- History and Literature of the Caribbean
- Marxism
- Ecology and Economy and/in Literature
- Gothic, Horror, and the Weird
Publications
“Character and Perspective in Cosmic Horror: Lovecraft and Kiernan.” Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik: A Quarterly of Language, Literature and Culture 69.2.(2021): 173-90.
“Kapitalistische Naturzerstörung und Ausbeutung: Lektionen aus der englischsprachigen Karibik des späten 17. Jahrhunderts.” Ökonomisierte Welten: Im Spannungsfeld von Balance und Disbalance: Literatur-, kultur- und medienwissenschaftliche Betrachtungen ökonomisch bedingter Ausbalancierungsprozesse. Eds. Lukas Müsel and Matthias Röck. Bern: Peter Lang, 2021. 177-99.
“Silences.” Minor Cosmopolitan: Thinking Art, Politics, and the Universe Together Otherwise. Ed. Zairong Xiang. Zurich/Chicago: Diaphanes/University of Chicago Press, 2020.
Conference Papers
“Refashioning the Plantation: Toussaint Louverture’s Labour Policies as Worldmaking.” Potsdam University, African American Worldmaking in the Long Nineteenth Century, 11-12 October 2019.
“Conservative Fear: The Terror of Uncontrolled Immigration in H.P. Lovecraft’s ‘The Horror at Red Hook’”. Goethe University Frankfurt, Postcolonial Narrations: Moving Centers and Traveling Cultures, 10-12 October 2018.
Co-Organized Conferences
Minor Cosmopolitan Weekend (HKW Berlin, 6-8 December 2018)
Minor Cosmopolitan Justice and Aesthetics (Macquarie University, Sydney, 12-15 February 2018)
Courses Taught
- Introduction to Cultural Studies
- H.P. Lovecraft
- Mary Oliver’s and W.S. Merwin’s Nature Poetry
- The Caribbean, c. 1640-1700
- Marxism and Literary Studies
- Early Gothic Novels by Women Writers
- Caribbean Nonfiction
- Thomas Ligotti
- Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam Trilogy
- Shakespeare’s Tragedies
- Folk Horror and the Rural Weird
- Edwidge Danticat
Scholarships and Awards
Successful Completion of the Qualification Programme, “International Teachings Professional”, at Potsdam Graduate School (August 2018-August 2019)
Baden-Württemberg – Connecticut Exchange (academic year 2012/13)
Scholarship by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) to study at a North American university (academic year 2012/13)