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Faculty of Modern and Medieval Languages and Linguistics

 

Dr Thomas Crew

Tom Crew

College: St Edmund's

Email: tc502@cantab.ac.uk

Supervisor: Dr Martin Ruehl

*Latest Position: BA Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Warwick 

 

Research

Thomas Crew’s doctoral research focuses on German dystopian literature. Until now, such literature has been subsumed under the much broader and poorly defined utopian genre. As a result, German dystopianism has not yet been identified as a coherent cultural phenomenon. A primary aim of the project is therefore to establish the field of dystopian research in the German context. The study centres on four works, which are representative of the genre: Bernhard Kellermann’s novel Der Tunnel (1913), Georg Kaiser’s Gas plays (1917–1920), and two works by Ernst Jünger: Der Arbeiter (1932) and Gläserne Bienen (1957). Close attention is also paid to various contemporary thinkers, from the industrialist Walther Rathenau and the anarchist Gustav Landauer to the conservative philosophers Friedrich Georg Jünger and Martin Heidegger. Dr Crew’s next major research project investigates critical conceptions of progress during the age of Classical Modernity, 1880–1939. 

 

Scholarships/Prizes

Hanseatic Scholarship, 2020-21.

Vice Chancellor’s and St Edmund’s Luzio Scholarship, 2017-20.

London Arts and Humanities Partnership (LAHP) Masters Studentship, 2015-16.

 

Teaching

Lecturer for the modules on Heidegger and Adorno, GE2: German History and Thought since 1750.

 

Conference Papers

  • '"The world is a machine, man an automaton": Friedrich Georg Jünger's Perfection of Technology', given at Automation & Automatism/s, King's College London, January 2023.

  • 'Prophecy and Apocalypse at the Fin de Siècle: Alfred Kubin's The Other Side', given at Nightmare/s in the Long Nineteenth Century, King's College, Cambridge, May 2022. 

  • ‘The Age of Mechanization and the Failure of Utopia: Georg Kaiser’s Gas Trilogy’, given at the Lead Panel of the Association for German Studies conference, Swansea University, September 2021.

  • ‘Visions of Dystopia in German Literature’, chair of panel at the Association for German Studies annual conference, Swansea University, September 2021.

 

Academic Publications

  • '"Civilization is Sterilization": Utopia, Biopolitics and the Total Society in Horkheimer and Adorno's Dialectic of Enlightenment and Aldous Huxley's Brave New World', in: R. Marling and M. Pajevic (eds), Care, Control and Covid-19: Health and Biopolitics in Philosophy and Literature, Berlin: De Gruyter 2023, pp. 59-90. 
  • '"Nie hatte ein Mensch etwas Ähnliches gesehen oder erträumt!": Bernhard Kellermanns Der Tunnel und das Spektakel Amerikas', in: K. Dahlmanns and A. Jachimowicz (eds), Geliebtes, verfluchtes Amerika. Zu Antiamerikanismus und Amerikabegeisterung im deutschen Sprachraum 1888-1933, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 2022, pp. 27-39.
  • ‘“How to become what you are”: Self-Becoming and Individuation in Nietzsche’s Ecce Homo and Hesse’s Demian and Steppenwolf’, Journal of European Studies 51, 1 (March 2021), pp. 3-23.
  • ‘Ernst Jüngers Gläserne Bienen und der Übergang zur Perfektion’, Berliner Debatte Initial 31, 1 (April 2020), pp. 72-84.
  • ‘“Der Tag hängt tot zwischen Himmel und Erde”: On the theme of Ambivalence in Ernst Barlach’s “Der tote Tag”, German Life and Letters 72, 2 (April 2019), pp. 168-186.

 

Other Publications