Prof. Roberto SIMANOWSKI

Dr. Simanowski’s research bridges literary, cultural and media studies. Trained as a scholar of literature and history with a doctoral thesis on popculture around 1800 (1998), he researched and edited two books on nationalism in German literature and the literary salon in Europe (1999). Since then his interest has moved to the field of aesthetics, culture, and politics of digital media. In his Interfictions (2002) he outlines the criteria of a digital hermeneutics for multilinear, multimedial and interactive text, a concept which he expands in Digital Art and Meaning (2010) as he discusses the status of interpretation in a „culture of presence.” In his monograph on digital media in the event society (Erlebnisgesellschaft) (2008) he addresses the aesthetic and cultural ramifications of digital technology. In Data Love (2014) he explores the seduction and betrayal of digital technologies, in Facebook-Society (2016) he discusses, with psychological, narrative and politcal slants, the modes of communication and cultural techniques inherent to social networks. Digital Humanities and Digital Media (2016) is a collection of conversations with scholars in the field of digital studies on the political, cultural, and aesthetic implications of digital technologies. Prof. Simanowski’s methodology combines discourse analysis and case studies with the aim of assessing meta-theoretical discussions and thematic readings. He has recently finished a collection of essays about new media and is currently writing a monograph on new media literacy and the Digital Humanities.

• Dichtung Digital: A Journal of art and culture in digital media