In my PhD project “Literature in Solidarity: Unemployment and Class Feelings in Contemporary Fiction”, I analyze changing conceptions of unemployment in contemporary society with a special focus on affective experience. How does it feel to be unemployed today? What role does unemployment have in our cultural imaginary? How does the experience of unemployment change in precarious times where unemployment is more readily looming and ever-present? And, more broadly speaking, how do feelings such as shame, anxiety and nostalgia work in relation to class and social stratification. Drawing on theories from the recent affective turn in cultural studies and the social sciences, the project seeks to answer two overall questions: 1. How can we conceptualize the contemporary experience of unemployment combining class studies and affect theory? 2. How can literature be said to produce solidarity and the grounds for new affective communities?

British and American Literature after 1900. Affect Theory. Working-Class Fiction. New Social Movements. Avant-Garde Studies