Burak Sezer

• Environmental Humanities, Ecocriticism
• Science & Speculative Fiction, especially Mathematics, Cyberpunk and AI 
• Old Weird/New Weird
• Protest Literatures
• Animal, Plant, and Fungal Studies
• Blue Humanities
• American (Dark) Romanticism
• Postmodernism and Historiographic Metafiction 
• Video Game Studies
• Vegan Studies
• Hip Hop and Rap Cultures

Summer 2026

"Beautiful and Monstrous Mathematics in American Literature and Culture", Hauptseminar, TU Dortmund

"Abyssal Fiction: The Aesthetics of the Deep in Literature and Video Games",  Proseminar, TU Dortmund

Winter 2025/26

"The Gazer and the Chaser: Poe and Hawthorne", Hauptseminar, TU Dortmund

"Punk Fiction: Cyberpunk, Biopunk, Solarpunk", Proseminar, TU Dortmund

Summer 2025

"Can the Nonhuman Speak? Alien Semiotics in American Media", Hauptseminar, TU Dortmund

"Video Game Literacy", Proseminar, TU Dortmund

Winter 2024/25

"Protest Literatures: From Slave Narratives to Indigenous Resistance Writing", Hauptseminar, TU Dortmund

"The Old Weird and the New Weird", Proseminar, TU Dortmund

Summer 2024

"Migration Literatures - Human and Nonhuman Perspectives", Hauptseminar, TU Dortmund

"Climate Fiction", Proseminar, TU Dortmund

Winter 2023/24

"Civil Disobedience: Slavery, Economy, Ecology", Hauptseminar, University of Konstanz

"Ecoterrorism in American Literature and Culture", Mittelseminar, University of Cologne

Summer 2023

"Androgyny in Science Fiction", Mittelseminar, University of Cologne

Winter 2022/23

"Animals in American Literature and Culture", Proseminar, University of Cologne

since Summer 2024 

Postdoc at the Chair of American LIterature and Culture, TU Dortmund University

2022 - 2024

Lecturer at the Chair of American Literature and Culture, University of Cologne

Summer 2018

Research Associate at the Chair of Educational Anthropology, University of Cologne

2015-2017

Teaching Assistant at the Chair for American Literature and Culture, University of Cologne

2018-2021 | PhD: After Maths: Thomas Pynchon's Poetics of Mathematics, a.r.t.e.s. Integrated Track Scholarship, University of Cologne, Degree: Doctorate

2010-2017 | State Examination (Staatsexamen) in English, Mathematics, and Educational Sciences, University of Cologne, Degree: 1. Staatsexamen 

2014-2015 | Graduate Studies in Comparative Literature, University of Rochester, NY, USA., Degree: Master of Arts

Jul 2025

"Poeincaré: Poe's Imagination of the Topological", International Poe and Hawthorne Conference, University Paris Cité/Sorbonne University

Jun 2025

"Archival Filibusterism: From Lies in Legacy Media to Bullshittery on Social Media", DGfA, University of Siegen

Apr 2025

"Veganism and Solidarity", Vegan Intersections, University of Geneva

Aug 2024

“Ecotopological Loops: A Mathematical Theory of Narration”, Mathematics and Literature, Korea Institute for Advanced Study (KIAS)

Jun 2024

“Calendar Anomalies in Pynchon”, International Pynchon Week, University of Belgrade

May 2024

“Planetary Accidents: Uncanny Animal Encounters in T. C. Boyle’s Novels”, GAPS, University of Zurich

“Nevermore, Poo-tee-weet, Who-Cooks-For-You?” Uncanny Bird Sonics in American Literature", DGfA, Oldenburg University

Feb 2024

“Roped Resilience: The Aesthetics of Multispecies Bonding in Yann Martel’s Life of Pi and Amitav Ghosh’s The Hungry Tide”, The 'Ordinary Magic' of Resilience, University of Stuttgart

Aug 2023

“Controlling the Climate at Gunpoint: Solar Geoengineering in Neal Stephenson’s Termination Shock”, Disruptive Imaginations, Dresden University

Jun 2023

“‘Porkmaking by Machinery, Porkmaking by Mathematics:’ The Animal-Industrial Complex in Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle and Bertolt Brecht’s Saint Joan of the Stockyards”, Machine Modernisms, University of Bamberg 

May 2023

“Multispecies Infrastructures: Animal Corridors in Yann Martel’s Life of Pi and Barbara Kingsolver’s Flight Behavior”, GAPS,  University of Konstanz

Nov 2022

“Underwater. Immersive Ecologies in Subnautica”, Playing the Field III: Video Game Ecologies and American Studies, Ludwig-Maximilian-University Munich

Oct 2022

“'...to take root among the stars': Afrofuturist Spacegoing in Samuel Delany and Octavia Butler”, Participating in Postcolonial Wor(l)ds, Heinrich-Heine-University Düsseldorf

Jun 2022

“Into the Crypts of Crypto: Pynchon’s Cryptographic Imagination”, International Pynchon Week 2022, University of British Columbia

Oct 2021

“Ideological Calendars: The Essential Difference Between '9/11' and '11 September'”, Digital Americas, University of Vienna

Sep 2019

“Cryptography and Randomness in Thomas Pynchon’s Bleeding Edge”, Trust and Truth, Cambridge University

Jun 2019

“From Rainbows to Stonebows: Ossifying Mathematics in Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow”, International Pynchon Week 2019, Sapienza University of Rome

Dec 2018

“'Avoid the Discomfort:' Sloth in Pynchon’s Work”, Challenging Comfort as an Idea(l) in Contemporary Literature and Culture, Campus Landau, University of Koblenz-Landau

Nov 2018

“Thomas Pynchon’s Mason & Dixon – Moving West Geometrically”, American Im/Mobilities, Austrian Association for American Studies, University of Vienna

Dec 2016

“The Contact Galaxy: Edgar Allan Poe’s Interface of Mathematics and Poetry in 'Eureka'”, Speculative Fictions, University of Cologne

Mar 2015

“Vivian Sobchack and the Melange of Science Fiction and Horror in Film”, The Biggest Comebacks: Tenacious Resurgences of Cultural Topoi, University at Buffalo

Jan 2014

“Uncanny Spaces in Mark Z. Danielewski’s House of Leaves and H. P. Lovecraft’s 'The Dreams in the Witch-House'”, Connect the Dots!, University of Bayreuth

• (co-written with Judith Rauscher and Nora Castle) “Gritwork: Globalised Infrastructure and Rogue Geoengineering in Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Ministry for the Future and Neal Stephenson’s Termination Shock” 
  In: European Journal of English Studies vol. 28, no. 2-3, 2025, 454-488, doi.org10.1080/13825577.2025.2485953

• “Roped Solidarity: The Aesthetics of Human-Animal Bonding in Melville’s Moby-Dick and Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea”
  In: Kübra Aksay, Sophie-Constanze Bantle, Ece Ergin, Özde Gezici, Kelly Schmidt, Kit Schuster, Kristina Seefeldt (Eds.), COPAS: Current Objectives of Postgraduate American Studies, vol. 25, no. 2, 2025, 24-43, https://doi.org/10.5283/copas.395
   
• “A Contract with a Leviathan: Abyssal Ecologies in Subnautica.” In: Nathalie Aghoro (Ed.), Playing the Field IV: Video Games and Ecology. Bielefeld: transcript. 2025, 25-70, doi.org/10.1515/9783111379715-004
   
• “The Empowering Paradox of ‘1=2.’ Mark Z. Danielewski’s Arithmopoetics”
  In: Sascha Pöhlmann (Ed.), Orbit: A Journal of American Literature 10 (2): 8, pp. 1-51, 2022, https://doi.org/10.16995/orbit.8226

• “On the Temptations of Comfort: The Poetics of Slothfulness in Pynchon”
  In: Dorothee Birke/Stella Butter (Eds.), Comfort in Contemporary Culture Bielefeld: transcript. 2020, pp. 43-63 https://doi.org/10.14361/9783839449028-003

• “Going West, Slow and Fast: Speed and Surveying in Thomas Pynchon’s Mason & Dixon”
  In: Alexandra Ganser, Leopold Lippert, Helena Oberzaucher, and Eva Schörgenhuber (Eds.), JAAAS: Journal of Austrian Association for American Studies 3, no. 1 (2021): 99-119, https://doi.org/10.47060/jaaas.v3i1.58

• “Schuld”
  In: Markus Dederich/Jörg Zirfas (Eds.), Glossar der Vulnerabilität, Springer VS, 2022, 369-380, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-30778-3

• “Katastrophe”
  In: Markus Dederich/Jörg Zirfas (Eds.), Glossar der Vulnerabilität, Springer VS, 2022, 225-235, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-30778-3

• “Endlichkeit”
  In: Markus Dederich/Jörg Zirfas (Eds.), Glossar der Vulnerabilität, Springer VS, 2022,  105-118, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-30778-3

Book Reviews: 

• Thom van Dooren, The World in a Shell: Snail Stories in Times of Extinction, (Boston: MIT, 2022), in Amerikastudien / American Studies, 99-102, https://doi.org/10.33675/AMST/2024/1/11

Since 2021 | DGfA/GAAS: Deutsche Gesellschaft für Amerikastudien / German Association for American Studies

Since 2022 | GAPS: Gesellschaft für Anglophone Postkoloniale Studien /  Association for Anglophone Postcolonial Studies

Since 2022 | SFRA: Science Fiction Research Association

Since 2024 | Energy & Literature: DFG-Network on Energy and Literature