Alison Sperling received her PhD from the University of Wisconsin in Milwaukee on "Weird Modernisms". She continued her research not only in the USA, but also in Europe, where she worked as a Research Fellow in Berlin and the Netherlands. In addition, she was already a guest at the TU Dresden in 2021/22. Since 2023 she has been an Assistant Professor at Florida State University and at the same time a freelance artist in Berlin. In July and August of 2023, she will now visit the TU Dresden again as a Junior Fellow at the Chair of Literature of North America with a focus on Future Studies of JProf. Moritz Ingwersen. In keeping with her research, she will also be participating with her own event at "Disruptive Imaginations", the joint annual conference of the German Society for Fantasy Research and the American Science Fiction Research Association, organized by the professorship: "CONTACTICS" at the Technische Sammlungen Dresden will be about science fiction in performance. She tells more about her research in the interview.

Name: Alison Sperling
Position/Chair: Junior Fellow at the chair of North American Literature with a Focus on Future Studies 
Institute: Institute of English and American Studies
Faculty: Faculty of Linguistics, Literature and Cultural Studies

What are your main interests as a researcher? Which topics do you focus on?Science fiction and weird fiction, ecocriticism and the Anthropocene, Toxicity Studies, contemporary art, Feminist and Queer theory, Critical Race Theory, American literature

What was your most interesting research topic so far?
That’s really difficult – I love my work and research and so all of my projects have been wonderful to work on. While I have a number of past and current projects that address the intersection of literature, environment, and gender studies that have really excited me, my core research project is my current manuscript on the Weird, tentatively titled Weird Modernisms. This project has been long in the works and explores the history of Weird fiction alongside the New Weird’s more contemporary re-emergence alongside feminist and queer science studies and Black studies in particular.

What does your current research focus on?
My research focuses on literary and artistic expressions of aesthetic and affective categories structuring experiences of climate change, toxicity, and the broader Anthropocene. I work on the science-fictional across media but largely in modernist and contemporary literature and visual and performance art and with a focus on queer and feminist methodologies and emancipatory politics

Which item do you absolutely need at your workplace?
Snacks!

Which book did you recently read? / Which movie/series did you watch recently
Everything for Everyone: An Oral History of the New York Commune 2052-2072

More information about you can be found:
on Instagram: @alisperling