Mikkel Krause Frantzen

Current research

I hold a PhD from the Department of Arts and Cultural Studies at the University of Copenhagen, where I am currently a postdoc. I am the author of Going Nowhere, Slow – The Aesthetics and Politics of Depression (Zero Books, 2019), as well as two books in Danish: Lars Skinnebach – en monografi (Arena, 2013) and En fremtid uden fremtid (Informations Forlag, 2018). My work has appeared in Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction, Journal of Austrian Studies, Studies in American Fiction, boundary2, LA Review of Books, SubStance (forthcoming) and Third Text (forthcoming). I have translated William Burroughs’ The Cat Inside (2014) and Judith Butler’s Frames of War (2015) into Danish, and I work, in addition, as a literary critic at the Danish newspaper Politiken.

My research has a twofold focus. On the one hand, I am interested in the relation between the psychopathologies of the present and the political economy as it is expressed on a literary, cultural and everyday level. My PhD dissertation, handed in and defended in 2017, thus dealt with the psychopathology of depression in relation to contemporary aesthetic artefacts, and the last couple of years I have worked on a research project on the poetics and politics of grief, in particular grief at the intersection of capitalism and climate change. This project (2018-2020) is funded by the Carlsberg Foundation, and embedded in the research project “The Culture of Grief” at Aalborg University. On the other hand, I am interested in the relation between finance and fiction, or economy and literature. At the moment, I am part of the research project “Finance Fiction” at the University of Copenhagen, and my personal project focuses on the finance fictions of the 1970s and the beginning of the contemporary era of financialization.

Currently, I am working on two book projects:

1) A book – in Danish – on what I call the hyberabject, to be published by the Laboratory for Aesthetics and Ecology. This book confronts the question of the current climate crisis, while analyzing various cultural artefacts (the silent documentary film "At Sea" by Peter Hutton, the Southern Reach-trilogy by Jeff VanderMeer, as well as the poetry of Juliana Spahr and the Danish poet Theis Ørntoft, who has by the way coined the term), and also engaging rather critically with Timothy Morton’s concept of the hyperobject.

2) A book – in English – on the finance fictions and the financial thriller of the 1970s, which revolves around the year 1973 and deals with books by Paul Erdman, Arthur Hailey, Michael M. Thomas, William Gaddis and others.

Teaching

»Finance Fiction«, Department of Arts and Cultural Studies, Comparative literature, University of Copenhagen, 2020

»Den moderne litteraturs historie 2«, Department of Arts and Cultural Studies, Comparative literature, University of Copenhagen, 2020

»Den politiske roman i dag«, Department of Arts and Cultural Studies, Comparative literature and Modern Culture, University of Copenhagen, 2017

»Optimisme eller pessimisme«, Department of Arts and Cultural Studies, Comparative literature and Modern Culture, University of Copenhagen, 2017

»Den moderne litteraturs historie 2«, Department of Arts and Cultural Studies, Comparative literature, University of Copenhagen, 2017

»Going nowhere, slow - scenes of depression in contemporary literature and culture«, Department of Arts and Cultural Studies, Comparative literature and Modern Culture, University of Copenhagen, 2015

»Værkkursus: William Faulkners As I Lay Dying«,Department of Arts and Cultural Studies, Comparative literature, University of Copenhagen, 2014

»Nyere Litteraturhistorie II«, Department of Arts and Cultural Studies, Comparative literature, University of Copenhagen, 2013

»Nekroæstetik og nekropolitik«, Department of Arts and Cultural Studies, Comparative literature and Modern Culture, University of Copenhagen, 2013

»Æstetik«, Department of Arts and Cultural Studies, Art History, University of Copenhagen, 2009 & 2010

CV

2019-2021: Postdoc, Deparment of Arts and Cultural Studies, University of Copenhagen

2018-2019: Postdoc, Department of Psychology and Communication, University of Aalborg

2014-1017: PhD Fellow, Deparment of Arts and Cultural Studies, University of Copenhagen

2009-2012: MA Comparative Literature (cand.mag i litteraturvidenskab), Deparment of Arts and Cultural Studies, University of Copenhagen

Spring 2011: Exchange student, New School for Social Research, Liberal Studies, New York, USA

2005-2009: B.A. Comparative Literature, Deparment of Arts and Cultural Studies, University of Copenhagen, University of Copenhagen

Fall 2007: Exchange student, Freie Universität, Berlin, Germany