Detailseite Dr. Wilken

I earned my BA in Japanese Studies from Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf (2011–2015), including a year abroad at the University of the Ryūkyūs in Okinawa, Japan (2013–2014). Following this, I obtained an MA in Comparative Studies (2015–2018) from HHU, where I also organized the student conference, before completing my PhD in Anglophone Studies in 2024.

Throughout my academic career, I have taught cross-listed courses on academic and creative writing, as well as German as a foreign language. In addition to my academic work, I also contribute journalistic articles on the cultural and historical aspects of video games.

Since 2023, I have served as a Research Associate at the University of Koblenz, where I am also an active member of the interdisciplinary 'Traveling Bodies' network. Additionally, I am a member of the 'Hauntology and Spectrality Research Network' at York St. John University and hold lifetime membership in the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society. I have also appeared on podcasts, sharing insights into literature and speculative fiction.

My research explores the intersections of literature, philosophy, and culture, with a focus on the ways speculative and weird fiction challenge anthropocentric paradigms and reimagine human and nonhuman relationships. My work is deeply interdisciplinary, drawing from fields such as psychoanalysis, hauntology, ecocriticism, and cultural studies, and often situates literary texts within broader philosophical and ecological contexts.

My monograph, Reading Lovecraft in the Anthropocene: A New Dark Age (Routledge, 2025), examines how H.P. Lovecraft’s fiction speaks to contemporary ecological and existential crises, using frameworks such as speculative realism, object-oriented ontology, and the concept of the posthuman. This project situates Lovecraft not only as a pivotal figure in weird fiction but also as a writer whose themes align naturally with current concerns about the Anthropocene and the limits of human knowledge and agency.

Beyond Lovecraft, my research extends to authors like Robert Aickman, Ray Bradbury, and Charles Dickens, exploring themes of the uncanny, memory, and identity. My recent work has utilized my additional degrees in Japanese Studies and Comparative Studies and delved into the adaptation of speculative and gothic themes in animation and children’s literature, with a particular emphasis on the films of Hayao Miyazaki. I have published on topics such as water and identity in Miyazaki’s films, joy and transience in Isao Takahata’s The Tale of the Princess Kaguya, and archetypal narratives in Ray Bradbury’s fiction.

I am particularly committed to examining how literature reflects and critiques humanity’s relationship with the natural world. My interest in ecocriticism and hauntology informs much of my work, allowing me to analyze literature as both a cultural artifact and a philosophical inquiry into the human condition.

My current projects include:

An exploration of hauntology in Shakespeare’s ghosts and gothic elements in Dickens’ novels.

A seminar and article series on Arcadia and Apocalypse in Children’s Literature, examining thematic contrasts in children’s texts from the 20th and 21st centuries.

I’m co-editing an anthology on Robert Aickman’s strange stories, focusing on their psychological, spatial, and ecological dimensions.

My research intends to bridge gaps between academic disciplines, connecting literature with broader cultural and scientific discourses, and to foster new approaches to understanding speculative and weird fiction’s role in shaping contemporary thought.

I teach BA and MA courses related to various topics across the 18^th to 21^st century. With both a generalist and interdisciplinary outlook, my main objective is to contextualize literature and the role it assumes in our lives from various interdisciplinary angles. I have been nominated for the university’s “Lehrpreis” (teaching award) for three consecutive years from 2023 to 2025. I supervise BA and MA theses as well as PhD projects.

Seminars taught (excerpt):

Frankenstein: The First 206 Years

How Dead is a Doornail? Dickens and Christmas

Detective Fiction

Postmodernism and the End of Time

Apocalypse Now

How Modern Are We?

Death in Victorian Literature

Mars is Heaven: An Enquiry into Science-Fiction

The Dark Side of Children’s Literature

Weird Fiction

The Defective Real: Realism in Victorian Novels

Gothic Fiction

Sentimentalism in Literature

Spirits That I’ve Cited: Horror Fiction from Victorianism to the Present Day

Arcadia and Apocalypse in Children’s Literature

MONOGRAPH

Reading Lovecraft in the Anthropocene: A New Dark Age. Routledge, 2025.

JOURNAL ARTICLES

‘”More than Death.” Traversing the Ravine with Archetypal Children in Ray Bradbury’s Illinois Stories’ The New Ray Bradbury Review, (8), edited by Phil Nichols, 2024. 81–97. DOI: 10.18060/28542

‘The Fleeting Nature of Joy in Isao Takahata’s Princess Kaguya’ Animation Studies 2.0, edited by Carmen Hannibal and Anastasiia Gushchina, 2024.

https://blog.animationstudies.org/?p=6908

‘The River on that Day – Water and Identity in the Films of Hayao Miyazaki’ Journal of Children in Popular Culture, Volume 14, Issue 1, Fall 2024. https://img1.wsimg.com/blobby/go/6a58c084-8445-4b4d-b5fb-2bc65b9a6026/downloads/d17df7b8-6c5a-4ea1-b3b5-f1e7726cfd3d/6%20Wilken%20The%20River%20on%20that%20Day.pdf?ver=1735408176064

‘”I Should Go Home.” The Cinematic, the Quotidian, and the Nostalgic in Yu Suzuki’s Shenmue’ Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies, edited by Angela Ndalianis and Helen Stuckey, Special Issue: ‘Video Games and Hollywood in the 1990s’, Sage Journals, 2025. 

JOURNAL ISSUES EDITED

‘Living the End of History,’ Special Issue, edited by Friederike Danebrock, Martin Bartelmus, Christian Wilken, Open Philosophy, De Gruyter, open access, Fall 2025.

PEER-REVIEWED BOOK CHAPTERS

‘Illustrated Men and Mischievous Skeletons: The Object-Realm in Ray Bradbury’s Fiction’, in Ray Bradbury: A Companion, edited by Kevin Wetmore, Peter Lang Publishing, 2025. 

‘Hubris as a Vocation. Frankenstein and the Century of Biology’, in Umbrüche in Europa, edited by Michaela Bill-Mrziglod and Sarah Schäfer-Althaus (forthcoming).

‘A World Without Children’s Voices: Cultural Apocalypse in Alfonso Cuarón’s Children of Men’, in Critical Explorations in Science-Fiction and Fantasy, edited by Ceng Tan and Mikail Boz, McFarland (forthcoming).

‘Witching the Wilderness: Puritan Fear, Liminal Spaces, and the Dark Ecologies of Robert Eggers’ The Witch (2015)’, in Reinventing The Witch: Witchcraft and Sorcery in 21st Century Fiction and Film, edited by Nazan Yıldız Çiçekçi and Cenk Tan, McFarland (forthcoming).

‘The Phenomenology of Holes in Silent Hill 2’, in Handbook of Body Horror, edited by Subashish Bhattacharjee and Anik Sarkar (forthcoming).

CONFERENCE ACTIVITY

 ‘Reading Lovecraft in the Anthropocene’, Fantastic Climates, Gesellschaft für

Fantastikforschung, Kassel, Germany, Conference, Sep 2024

‘Is Goth Dead? Towards an Anthropocene Goth’, Bela Lugosi’s Dead at 45 – A Celebration

of Goth Culture, Virtual Conference, Aug 2024

 ‘The Five-Headed Monster: Houdini, Lovecraft, and the Enigma of Antediluvian Egypt’,

The Egypt Obsession: Past, Present & Future, The International Society for the Study

of Egyptomania,Virtual Conference, Oct 2023