Contact Email: sontje.schulenburgspam prevention@student.uni-tuebingen.de

 sontje.schulenburgspam prevention@uni-tuebingen.de               

Academic Pathway 

Since 09/24: Deputy member of the faculty council (doctoral students)

10/23- 06/25: Board member of the Doctoral Students Council of the Faculty of Humanities 

Since 01/22: Research fellow at the Heidelberger Academy of Sciences and Humanities; Project: Goethe Dictionary 

Since 04/21: Ph.D. in English Literatures and Cultures. Dissertation title: "Posthuman Thought in Contemporary Weird Fiction" (Department of English Literatures and Cultures, University of Tübingen, Supervisors Prof. Dr. Ingrid Hotz-Davies & Prof. Dr. Christoph Reinfandt)

 9/17 – 02/21: M.A. Internationale Literaturen, Eberhard Karl University, Tübingen Summer semester

 Summer Semester 2020: Lecture Tutorial: Introduction to Cultural Studies 

9/13- 11/16: B.A. Komparatistik and British Studies, Johannes Gutenberg University, Mainz 

PhD Project: Posthuman Thought in Contemporary Weird Fiction

This dissertation explores the connection between posthuman theory and a distinct type of speculative fiction, known as ‘Weird Fiction’. Inextricable linked to H.P. Lovecraft and dominated by male writers and theorists, the project’s main aim is to render visible an exclusively female tradition of weird writing, hopeful that this endeavour will not only reveal new aspects of weird fiction but also its importance as literature of crisis. Understanding weird fiction as distinctly somatic, responsive and affective in its construction, my project further traces not only the entanglement of reader and text but also sets out to show how these fictions create a type of “weird knowledge” – knowledge which is created within the intersection of text and reader and is strongly posthuman in its nature. 

Fields of Academic Interest and Research

 ➢ (Critical) Posthumanism 

➢ Weird and Speculative Fiction 

➢ Queer and Gender Studies 

➢ Affect Theory

➢ Korean Literature and Culture 

➢ Autobiographical Writing

Recent Courses 

Summer semester 2024: Weird Fiction 

Conferences

• “ ‘And there was in this world so much to see’. Posthuman Manifestations in Novels by Kathe Koja.” Posthuman Fictions: Rethinking ‘the Human’ in Contemporary Culture, University of Genua, September 19-20, 2024.
• “ ‘See the Great Unseen’: Early Weird Writing by Female American Authors." NeMLA 56th Annual Convention, Philadelphia, March 6-9, 2025.
• " ‘Can you hear that?’ Subsea Sounds and Non-Human Manifestation in Julia Armfield's Our Wives under the Sea". Unquiet Shores: coastal acoustics and the terpsichorean ocean, Edinburgh Napier University, June 18-20, 2025.
• “‘Being human is the problem, the whole huge problem in a nutshell’- Deconstructing Corporeal and Conceptual Boundaries through Multispecies Relationships in 21st Century Alien Narratives”, Current Research in Speculative Fiction 15th Annual Convention, University of Liverpool, July 3-4, 2025.
• “Overshadowed by M.R. James: The Supernatural Fiction of Eleanor Scott.” Romancing the Gothic: ‘A Warning to the Curious', Online Conference, August 23-24, 2025. 

• “'I'm just an animal. What could I possibly know– Non-Human Beings and Interspecies Relationships in the Works of Jeff VanderMeer.” 16. Jahrestagung der Gesellschaft für Fantastikforschung, Universität Gießen, August 28-30, 2025.