Detailed Page Wilken

In 2015 I received my Bachelor of Arts (Japanese Studies/English) at Heinrich-Heine-University. Apart from studying English literature, my B.A. study allowed me to take classes at the University of the Ryukyus in Okinawa, Japan.

My M.A. studies in Comparative Studies in English and American Language, Literature and Culture, which I finished in 2018, provided me with the opportunity to deepen and expand my knowledge about narratological, psychoanalytical and philosophical approaches to literature.

• Horror and Weird Fiction
• Gothic and Romanticism
• Literature, Culture and Society of the Victorian Period
• Epistemology and Ontology
• Children’s Literature

My research is devoted to the gothic and supernatural horror and weird fiction of the 18^th, 19^th and 20^th century. I am particularly interested in the psychological and ontological origins as well as repercussions of the genre on the readers. Supernatural horror, I argue, tests and stretches the capabilities of language to depict and portray reality. In my Ph.D. thesis, I am influenced by speculative realism and especially object-oriented ontology while conducting an inquiry into the works of Lovecraft, Poe and others. The objects of horror are multi-faceted and tantamount, often even superior and always indifferent to the human characters that interact with them. They experience gaps between the respective underlying qualities that constitute an object, whether material or immaterial.

Since 2019 I teach courses on the gothic, horror and weird fiction, which aim to examine the history of these literary phenomena as well as introduce a selection of narratological, psychoanalyst and philosophical approaches to them.