Katharina Luther is a PhD student and research fellow at the Univeristy of Tuebingen’s Department of English Literatures and Cultures, section for American Sturdies. She double-majored in English and History and minored in Political Science both during her undergraduate and graduate studies at the University of Tuebingen (Germany) and Hobart and William Smith Colleges (USA).
Her dissertation Knowing & Doing & Becoming: A Natureculture Poetics of Matter Poetry coins a new genre of contemporary poetry as “matter poetry” and establishes Donna Haraway’s concept of “naturecultures” (2003) as an entire philosophy in its own right, highlighting in how far Haraway’s natureculture philosophy has been a key constituent for a Feminist New Materialism. In short: using Haraway’s natureculture philosophy, eco-criticism, affect studies, and quantum-physics, her dissertation turns our ideas of nature and culture as well as language and matter on its head.
In 2019, Luther received the Prof. Dr. Friedrich Schubel-Foundation Prize for the advancement of young researchers for her dissertation project. Luther’s research interests focus on the New Materialism(s), Contemporary Poetry and Literature, the cultural semantics of the Early Modern period, Philosophy of Science, Environmental Humanities, and the Nonhuman at large. She co-edited a volume on Kinship and Collective Action in Literature and Culture (Narr, 2020).
During the fall term 2019, Luther taught as a guest lecturer at the English Department and Honors program at the University of Maryland, College Park, USA; during that time, she was also a scholar in residence at the Honors College of the University of Maryland, College Park, USA.
