Profile Prof. Dr. Philipp Schweighauser
Philipp Schweighauser is Professor of North American and General Literature. He received his MA in English and German Philology and his PhD in Anglophone Literary Studies, both from the University of Basel. After a one-year research stay at the University of California, Irvine (2000-2001), a postdoc position at the University of Berne (2003-2007), and an Assistant Professorship at the University of Göttingen (2007-2009), he returned to the University of Basel in 2009. He was a visiting scholar at Harvard University and Boston University. From 2012 to 2020, Schweighauser served as the President of the Swiss Association for North American Studies. He teaches the Massive Open Online Course Literature in the Digital Age: From Close Reading to Distant Reading.
He has worked on a wide variety of issues in American Studies, but his main foci are 18th to 21st c. American literature and culture; literary history, literary, cultural, and media theory; literature and science; literature and anthropology; life writing; sound studies; Native American Studies, and aesthetics.
He is the author of ...
Boasian Verse: The Poetic and Ethnographic Work of Edward Sapir, Ruth Benedict, and Margaret Mead (Routledge, 2023)
Beautiful Deceptions: European Aesthetics, the Early American Novel, and Illusionist Art (U of Virginia P, 2016)
The Noises of American Literature, 1890–1985: Toward a History of Literary Acoustics (UP Florida, 2006)
... and the co-editor of ...
Beckett and Media (Manchester UP, 2022)
Boasian Aesthetics: American Poetry, Visual Culture, and Cultural Anthropology (Amerikastudien/American Studies, 2018)
Literatur und Politische Philosophie: Subjektivität, Fremdheit, Demokratie (Wilhelm Fink, 2018)
Literature, Ethics, Morality: American Studies Perspectives (Gunter Narr, 2015)
Aesthetics in the 21st Century (Punctum Books, 2014)
Haunted Narratives: Life Writing in an Age of Trauma (U of Toronto P, 2013)
Terrorism, Media, and the Ethics of Fiction: Transatlantic Perspectives on Don DeLillo (Continuum, 2010)
Teaching Nineteenth-Century American Poetry (MLA, 2007)
He is/was the principal investigator of ...
Anglo Genres for Atlantic Futures: Contemporary Eco-Fictions, Campus Novels, and Science Fictions (Claudine und Hans-Heiner Zaeslin-Bustany Foundation, 2025-2029)
Beckett's Media System: A Comparative Study in Multimediality (Swiss National Science Foundation, 2015–2019), which reevaluates Samuel Beckett as a media artist
Of Cultural, Poetic, and Medial Alterity (Swiss National Science Foundation, 2014–2017), which explores the poetry, films, and photographs of Margaret Mead, Ruth Benedict, and Edward Sapir
Schweighauser is currently working on a monograph on 21st c. Native American literature (Tommy Orange, Morgan Talty, Tommy Pico, and others).
See here for Schweighauser's full CV. Consultation hours are by appointment.
Habilitationen Completed
| Title | Author | Completion date |
| Transcendental Poetics and the Futures of American Romanticism | Askin, Ridvan | 2023 |
Habilitationen Ongoing
| Title | Author | Status |
| Horizon Collapse: The Anxieties of Aspiration in Contemporary American Science Fiction | O’Krent, Michael | ongoing |
Ph.D. Theses Ongoing
| Title | Author | Supervisor (first/second) | Status |
| The Writer’s Responsibility in the Works of David Foster Wallace | Alistar, Cristian | Bucharest, committee member | ongoing |
| The Subject of Climate Change: Political, Poetic, and Psychological Dimensions in Contemporary Eco-Fiction | Ambrosetti, Letizia Iris Federica | Basel, first reader | ongoing |
| Structural Entanglements: Urban Experience and Narrative Structure | Imboden, Tamara Dima | Schweighauser, Philipp / Frank, Michael C. (Zürich) | ongoing |
| Race, Class, Power, and Academia 101: A Study on Contemporary Campus Novels | Jimenez, Isabel | Schweighauser, Philipp / NN | ongoing |
| Memory, Place, and the Postsouthern in Contemporary US Southern Literature | Kraft, Corin | Schweighauser, Philipp / Lauer, Gerhard | ongoing |
| Approches de la connaissance chez une sélection de scientifiques-poètes modernes et contemporains | Lezon, Catherine | Marchal, Hugues (Basel) / Schweighauser, Philipp | ongoing |
| Radiophonie, Störung und Erkenntnis: Zur Epistemologie der Radiokunst | Mauruschat, Ania | Schweighauser, Philipp / Mersch, Dieter (ZHdK) | ongoing |
| A Brief History of Decay in American Literature | Ortiz, Daniel | Schweighauser, Philipp / Mahan, David (Yale) | ongoing |
Writing the Resounding Body: Technologies of the Aural in Samuel Beckett (SNF project Beckett's Media System: A Comparative Study in Multimediality) | Rapcsák, Balázs | Schweighauser, Philipp / Krajewski, Markus / Nixon, Mark (Reading) | ongoing |
| Fantasy, Fiction, Fact, and Fascism: A Comparative Literary Analysis of the Contemporary U.S. American and Russian Radical Right’s Speculative Fiction Texts | Sabbioni, Sof | Schweighauser, Philipp / Noordenbos, Boris (Amsterdam) | ongoing |
| Ancestral Heart Beats – Hip Hop’s Sonic Fictions from Black Atlantic | Vögele, Pius J. | Rizzo, Lorena / Schweighauser, Philipp | ongoing |
| Autobiographical Narratives of Upward Mobility across Anglophone Genres | Zhou, Lina | Schweighauser, Philipp / N.N. | ongoing |
Ph.D. Theses Completed
| Title | Author | Supervisor (first/second) | Completion date |
| The Relative Autonomy of Nature and Humans in Postmodern American Postwar Prose | Aerni, Anouk | Schweighauser, Philipp / Weik von Mossner, Alexa (Klagenfurt) | 2025 |
| Speculative Subjects Surviving Somehow: Speculative Survival Narrative and Neoliberal Intelligence Politics in the 21st Century | Albrecht, Maxi | Kelleter, Frank (FU Berlin) / Schweighauser, Philipp | 2021 |
| Der Agon der Literatur | Kottoros, Philippe | Simon, Ralf / Schweighauser, Philipp | 2018 |
| Representations of the Other in Selected Works of Joseph Conrad | Osei-Bonsu, Victoria | Schweighauser, Philipp / Steffen, Therese | 2018 |
Writing Anthropologists, Sounding Primitives: The Poetry and Scholarship of Edward Sapir, Margaret Mead, and Ruth Benedict (SNF project Of Cultural, Poetic, and Medial Alterity...) | Reichel, A. Elisabeth | Schweighauser, Philipp / Rippl, Gabriele (Bern) | 2018 |
| Pynchon's Sonic Fiction | Hänggi, Christian | Schweighauser, Philipp / Pöhlmann, Sascha | 2017 |
| "A picture held us captive": On Aisthesis and Interiority in Ludwig Wittgenstein, Fyodor M. Dostoevsky, and W. G. Sebald | Lobo, Tea | Herlth, Jens (Fribourg) / Schweighauser, Philipp | 2017 |
| Locating Gender in Space: Emily Dickinson's Conception of Gender | Caci, Ursula | Gygax, Franziska / Schweighauser, Philipp | 2016 |
| Mapping a Sense of Humour – Fictional Geography and the Narrative Imperative in Terry Pratchett’s Discworld Novels | Lüthi, Daniel | Habermann, Ina / Schweighauser, Philipp | 2016 |
| History, Critique, Utopia: Experimental Writing in the Context of Contemporary Anglophone Literature | Hägler, Andreas | Schweighauser, Philipp / Habermann, Ina | 2015 |
| Narrative and Becoming: Differential Narratology | Askin, Ridvan | Schweighauser, Philipp / Habermann, Ina / Hochbruck, Wolfgang (Freiburg) | 2014 |
| Common Nonsense: Community and Skepticism in Shakespearean Comedy | Gottlieb, Derek | Habermann, Ina / Schweighauser, Philipp | 2014 |
| Continuity in Comic Books and Comic Book Continuity - Serialized US-American Comic Books of the 1980s | Hoppeler, Stephanie | Rippl, Gabriele (Berne) / Schweighauser, Philipp | 2014 |
| Literary Acoustics: The Aural in the Fictions of Toni Morrison | Iatsenko, Anna | Madsen, Deborah (Geneva) / Schweighauser, Philipp | 2014 |
| Der Wandel des Kolumbussymbols in den USA: Vom Nationalhelden zur ethnischen Identifikationsfigur, 1892-1929 | Loock, Kathleen | Kelleter, Frank (Göttingen) / Schweighauser, Philipp | 2013 |
| The Mirror, the Cup, and the Crystal: Iconic Implications of Disappearance and Representation in the American Tradition of Riddle Poetry | Bertoli, Mariacristina Natalia | Austenfeld, Thomas (Fribourg) / Schweighauser, Philipp | 2012 |
| Nomadic Truths: Exploring the Fantastic beyond Postmodernism | Huber, Irmtraud | Richter , Virginia (Berne) / Schweighauser, Philipp | 2012 |
| Eclipsing Melancholia: American Cultural Trauma Templates Before and After 9/11 | Rickli, Christina | Claviez, Thomas (Berne) / Schweighauser, Philipp | 2012 |
| Writing Metamedia: Contemporary American Literature and the Matter of the Book, 1998-2010 | Starre, Alexander | Kelleter, Frank (Göttingen ) / Schweighauser, Philipp | 2012 |
M.A. Theses
| Title | Author | Supervisor (first/second) | Completion date |
| Songs of Paradise: Music as a Map to The Door of No Return in Toni Morrison’s Middle Novels | Moorthy, Rachael | Schweighauser, Philipp / Shields, Andrew | 2025 |
| Revolutionary Women: The Influence of Women’s Writings on the American Revolution and the Role of Women in American Society during the Revolutionary Era | Mayer, Patsy Marika | Schweighauser, Philipp / | 2024 |
| Birding and Wording: Observations in Postromantic British Bird Poetry | Affentranger, Melina | Schweighauser, Philipp / | 2023 |
| Dogs in the Deluge: Canine Companionship in Young Adult Fiction Novels about Hurricane Katrina | Felber, Nicolas Ivan | Schweighauser, Philipp / | 2023 |
| ’People who die bad don’t stay in the ground’ – Hauntology and Ghosts in Beloved, Sing, Unburied, Sing and The Others | Löw, Melanie | Schweighauser, Philipp / | 2023 |
| ‘I am a Forest now. An Uprising Forest’: Transformations of the Female Body in Atwood’s The Edible Woman, Han’s The Vegetarian, Garland’s Annihilation, and Langseth’s Love & Anarchy | Gut, Joana | Schweighauser, Philipp / | 2022 |
| ‘My visit to England did much for me every way’: Transnationalism and the Slave Narratives Three Years in Europe by William Wells Brown, Life and Times of Frederick Douglass by Frederick Douglass, and William and Ellen Craft’s Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom | Kindlimann, Patricia | Schweighauser, Philipp / | 2021 |
| All My Literary Relations: Bakhtinian Dialogism and Heteroglossia in Contemporary ‘Minor Literatures’ of Selected North American Aboriginal Authors | Jannetta, Francesco E. A. | Schweighauser, Philipp / Shields, Andrew | 2020 |
| Mapping the Spaces of Black Women in Nnedi Okorafor’s Binti Trilogy and Who Fears Death | Lötscher, Florence | Schweighauser, Philipp / Askin, Ridvan | 2020 |
| "And yet the writing is of interest": Translation and Analysis of Arthur Conan Doyle’s "The Naval Treaty” | Nanchen, Magalie | Shields, Andrew / Schweighauser, Philipp | 2019 |
| Broadening Afropolitanism: ‘Afropolitanism at the Margins’ in Selasi’s Ghana Must Go, Bulawayo’s We Need New Names and Adichie’s Americanah | Bieri, Tina | Schlote, Christiane / Schweighauser, Philipp | 2018 |
| “Fortified Morally by the Luxurious Surroundings”: The Interrelation Between Individualist and Consumerist E(s)th(et)ics in Patricia Highsmith’s Ripliad | Cadalbert, Livia | Schweighauser, Philipp / Habermann, Ina | 2018 |
| Unheard Voices – Female Traumas and Ways of Healing in Transitional South Africa. The Representation of Female Trauma Manifestations as an Underlying Critique of the TRC. A Literary Analysis of Three Post-Apartheid Novels | Licina, Jasmina | Schweighauser, Philipp / Schlote, Christiane | 2018 |
| Chasing the Green Light: (Self-)Deception and Disillusionment in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Novels | Mondia, Michele | Schweighauser, Philipp / Habermann, Ina | 2018 |
| Distance, Negation, Negotiation: The Aesthetic Politics in Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things and Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior | Ackermann, Rahel | Schweighauser, Philipp / Askin, Ridvan | 2017 |
| 'And the rain won’t make any difference?' An Ecocritical Reading of Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell To Arms | Aerni, Anouk | Schweighauser, Philipp / Askin, Ridvan | 2017 |
| Revealing Reporters' Roles: Investigative Journalists in Nigerian Novels | Gallana, Syrina | Schlote, Christiane / Schweighauser, Philipp | 2017 |
| Snow White’s Stepmother and Other Mother Figures in Four Postmodern Revisions of the Tale by Donald Barthelme, Angela Carter, Robert Coover and Anne Sexton | Gloor, Nathalie Caroline | Schweighauser, Philipp / Habermann, Ina | 2016 |
| Women’s Lives in War Periods: Their Emergence on a Personal, Professional and Public Level | Lanfranchi, Silva | Steffen, Therese / Schweighauser, Philipp | 2016 |
| Female Role Models in Contemporary Young Adult Literature: A Comparative Study of Twilight and The Hunger Games | Meng, Dorothee | Schweighauser, Philipp / Gygax, Franziska | 2016 |
| Cyborgs in Science Fiction Literature | Di Meo, Laura | Habermann, Ina / Schweighauser, Philipp | 2016 |
| Intermediality in Graphic Narrative Adaptations of American Crime Fiction Texts | Bosshart, Lea | Schweighauser, Philipp / Gygax, Franziska | 2016 |
| Where is Paradise? Images of Africa Developed by African Authors – A Comparison between Achebe's Things Fall Apart and Okri's The Famished Road | Dogan, Ezgi | Steffen, Therese / Schweighauser, Philipp | 2016 |
| "I have no stories of my own" – The Importance of Stories and Storytelling in Neil Gaiman’s Sandman | Schüpbach, Johanna | Habermann, Ina / Schweighauser, Philipp | 2016 |
| Literary Translation of War and Paradise by Suzy Yaraei | Bucherer, Ruth | Shields, Andrew / Schweighauser, Philipp | 2016 |
| "I Ate Some of Their Brains and Tried to Cook a Little": Serial Killing and Aesthetics in Thomas Harris' The Silence of the Lambs and Bret Easton Ellis' American Psycho | Grüninger, Selin | Steffen, Therese / Schweighauser, Philipp | 2016 |
| A Gendered Literature – The Forgotten Male Voices in Canadian Literature | Haas, Heidi | Schweighauser, Philipp / Steffen, Therese | 2016 |
| Slaves to Memory: Place and Identity in the Collective Memory of Twentieth Century U.S. Southern Literature: William Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom!, Steve Yarbrough’s The Oxygen Man and Thulani Davis’ 1959 | Kraft, Corin | Gygax, Franziska / Schweighauser, Philipp | 2015 |
| The Suburban Landscape: Architecture, Family and Gender Roles in Richard Yates’ Revolutionary Road, Sloan Wilson’s The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit and No Down Paymentdirected by Martin Ritt | Wyss, Stephanie Helena | Steffen, Therese / Schweighauser, Philipp | 2015 |
| The Flaneur in New York - A Long Stroll through the Centuries from his Beginnings in Paris to New York | Rüst, Axel | Schweighauser, Philipp / Steffen, Therese | 2015 |
| From the Self-Made Man to the "emperor of little boys": Masculinities as a Homosocial Enactment in Paul Auster’s The Locked Room, Moon Palace, and Man in the Dark | Lufuma Oppowa, Samira Melina | Steffen, Therese / Schweighauser, Philipp | 2015 |
| "But the Dead Returning Lightly Dance": Embodied Concepts of War and War Experience in First World War Poetry | Bischof, Roman | Habermann, Ina / Schweighauser, Philipp | 2015 |
| Babel's Impossible Languages: A Reading of Paul Auster's City of Glass and Jack Spicer's Detective Novel The Tower of Babel through Jacques Derrida and Michel Serres | Grzonka, Adrian | Schweighauser, Philipp / Habermann, Ina | 2014 |
| Comics: Begriffsdiskussion und Überlegungen zur Theorie einer unendlichen Geschichte | Jäger, Johannes | Holl, Ute / Schweighauser, Philipp | 2014 |
| Jewish Theology after Google: Post-Rabbinic and Post-Denominational Judaisms in a Digitized World | Pieck, Gabriele | Schweighauser, Philipp / Petry, Erik | 2014 |
| 'We had no ties with the place': Spatial Identity in Paula Morris's Rangatira | Rindlisbacher, Jasmin | Habermann, Ina / Schweighauser, Philipp | 2014 |
| Nineteenth-Century Sensational Fiction in the United States | Battilana, Chantal | Schweighauser, Philipp / Habermann, Ina | 2012 |
| Later Robert Coover: Comic Metafiction and Hypertext Structures | Hottinger, Philipp | Schweighauser, Philipp / Brönnimann, Werner | 2012 |
| Reappropriating Place and Reconstructing Space in Powwow Highway and Selected North American Indian Literature and Film between 1970-2010 | Rutz, Sadhana | Schweighauser, Philipp / Steffen, Therese | 2012 |
| The Treatment of Native American Female Identity in Leslie Marmon Silko's Ceremony and Louise Erdrich's Love Medicine | Van den Bergh, Katrien | Schweighauser, Philipp / Habermann, Ina | 2012 |
| Some Are Born Wicked, Some Have Wickedness Thrust Upon Them: Subversive Re-creation of Fairy Tale Characters in the Modern Fantasy of Pratchett and Maguire | Walder, Laura | Habermann, Ina / Schweighauser, Philipp | 2011 |
| Gendered Landscapes: Feminized and Masculinized Depictions of Nature in 19th Century American Travel Literature | Carlos, Peter | Schweighauser, Philipp / Habermann, Ina | 2010 |
| The Transformation of Dada in William Carlos Williams's Kora in Hell: The Contention with Romantic Tradition in Modern American Verse | Gabcke, Wieland | Kelleter, Frank (Göttingen) / Schweighauser, Philipp | 2010 |
| Identitätskonstruktionen an der Grenze: Gloria Anzaldúas Borderlands/La Frontera | Fischer, Rebecca | Schweighauser, Philipp / Kelleter, Frank (Göttingen) | 2009 |
| Concepts of Deception in Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn | Lüpke, Bastian | Kelleter, Frank (Göttingen) / Schweighauser, Philipp | 2009 |
| Representations of Masculinities in Twentieth-century American Drama: Economics, the American Dream, and the Staging of Masculinity | Springer, Christian | Schweighauser, Philipp / Kelleter, Frank (Göttingen) | 2009 |
| Interkulturalität und Intermedialität in der Chicano-Literatur, 1978-1990 | Achtert, Christina | Schweighauser, Philipp / Kelleter, Frank (Göttingen) | 2008 |
| Intermedialität und Medienkritik im New Journalism Tom Wolfes | Bartram, Sigrid | Kelleter, Frank (Göttingen) / Schweighauser, Philipp | 2008 |
| The Character of the Con Man in the Films of David Mamet | Bühring, Dennis | Kelleter, Frank (Göttingen) / Schweighauser, Philipp | 2008 |
| Stereotyping the Italians: The Mafia Mystique in post-World War II American Literary and Popular Culture | Ernst, Christin | Schweighauser, Philipp / Kelleter, Frank (Göttingen) | 2008 |
| Förderung des Empathievermögens mit literarischen Texten im Fremdsprachenunterricht anhand des Romans Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close | Gerlach, Janine | Surkamp, Carola (Göttingen) / Schweighauser, Philipp | 2008 |
| Presidential Persuasion from the Party Pulpit: Nomination Acceptance Speeches, 1952-2004 | von der Heyde, Sven | Kelleter, Frank (Göttingen) / Schweighauser, Philipp | 2008 |
| Postmoderner Humor im Gonzo Journalism von Terry Southern und Hunter S. Thompson | Holdack-Janssen, Eva | Kelleter, Frank (Göttingen) / Schweighauser, Philipp | 2008 |
| The Historiographic Functions of Character in Selected Plays by Suzan-Lori Parks | Möller, Swantje | Kelleter, Frank (Göttingen) / Schweighauser, Philipp | 2008 |
| Wilderness and Woods: The Construction of Nature in Colonial American Captivity Narratives, 1675-1713 | Starre, Alexander | Kelleter, Frank (Göttingen) / Schweighauser, Philipp | 2007 |
Completed Lizentiatsarbeit
| Title | Author | Supervisor (first/second) | Completion date |
| Later Robert Coover: Comic Metafiction and Hypertext Structures | Hottinger, Philipp | Schweighauser, Philipp / Brönnimann, Werner | 2012 |
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