Alexander Rüter is a doctoral researcher at MESH. He works in the field of American studies, focussing especially on Asian American as well as transpacific literatures and cultures along with their various intersections with philosophy, geopolitics, and the environmental humanities.
His doctoral project aims to develop a pluralistic ontology of the transpacific from the works of the Japanese American writer Karen Tei Yamashita and to, as its second step, use that framework in an analysis of contemporary literary and theoretical treatments of the transpacific. Following Bruno Latour, the project is focussed especially on the possible and necessary institutions for an ecologising of the various modes in which exchange and circulation exists within and across the transpacific region.
Alexander holds a master’s degree in North American Studies (2023) from the University of Cologne in Cologne, Germany as well as a master’s degree in Comparative Literature (2020) from the University of Rochester in Rochester, New York. During his studies in the U.S., he focused especially on East Asian literary and cultural studies with a particular interest in the late 19th and the 20th century, later combining these interests with the field of American Studies in Cologne. He formerly held an a.r.t.e.s. pre-Doc scholarship holder and is the current coordinator of the DFG-funded RTG2550 reloc.
Contact: arueter1[at]smail.uni-koeln.de
Publications
- with Maria Wiegel. “Reading (with) Bateman: Mapping Potentiality of/in Reading.” Current Objectives of Postgraduate American Studies, vol. 23, no. 2, 2, Apr. 2023, pp. 30–42, https://doi.org/10.5283/copas.370.
- “Politics That Matter in Nas’s Illmatic.” Ecozon@ European Journal of Literature, Culture and Environment, vol. 13, no. 1, Apr. 2022, pp. 8–20. https://doi.org/10.37536/ECOZONA.2022.13.1.4423.
Teaching
- Chinese American Fiction (Summer 2024)
- American Crime: Fiction and Film (Winter 2024/2025)