Dominik Zechner

Dominik studied media studies and philosophy in Vienna and New York before joining the Ph.D. program at NYU German in the fall of 2013. In his dissertational research, he explores the problem of finitude in the work of Franz Kafka and the intellectual context of the early 20th century.

Dominik has edited a special issue of Modern Language Notes on the problem of prizes and prize acceptance speeches, and has published essays on Jacques Derrida, Franz Kafka, and Friedrich Kittler. He has been a visiting student and attended summer and winter schools at the Universities of Basel, Bern, and Zürich, at LMU Munich and FU Berlin, at the IKKM in Weimar as well as the European Graduate School in Saas-Fee. Together with Werner Hamacher, Dominik organized the conference The Pains of Language at Deutsches Haus at NYU in April 2016.

Currently, he is working on a collected volume on Walter Benjamin’s early work on educational critique and the politics of pedagogy. He was also awarded the Young Scholars Prize of the International Walter Benjamin Society for his research on Benjamin’s early writings. Furthermore, he is the recipient of NYU’s Outstanding Teaching Award and the Otto Mainzer Fellowship. And for the 2018-19 academic year, Dominik has been awarded the Mellon Dissertation Fellowship in the Humanities. He is the organizer of multiple GSA and ACLA panels and seminars, and has presented his research on numerous occasions, in the U.S. and abroad.

Select Publications

“Kittler and Heidegger: The Trouble with Ent-fernung,” The Technological Introject: Friedrich Kittler between Implementation and the Incalculable, eds. Jeffrey Champlin and Antje Pfannkuchen (New York: Fordham, 2018), 123-36.

 “The Prize-Bearers: A Brief Introduction,” MLN 131.5, The Bestowal: What is a Prize? December 2016, 1155-63.

 “Thomas Bernhard, Prizefighter,” MLN 131.5, The Bestowal: What is a Prize? December 2016, 1218-35.

“Aporias of Survival: Kafka’s Alien Incursion,” Experimental Practices 1: Narrating Life – Experiments with Human and Animal Bodies in Literature, Science and Art, ed. Stefan Herbrechter and Elisabeth Friis (Leiden and Boston: Brill/Rodopi, 2015), 191-210.

Recent Presentations

 “Language Pains; Sprachschmerzen,” The Cultural Language(s) of Pain: European Literary Perspectives, Conference, Institute for Modern Languages Research, University of London, November 2018.

“The Phantom Erection: Freud’s Dora and the Trauma of Non-impotence,” #masshysteria. Hysteria, Politics, and Performance Strategies, Conference, Department of French and Francophone Studies, Center for European and Russian Studies, & Center for Performance Studies, University of California, Los Angeles, November 2018.

“The Survival of Shame,” Research Colloquium in the Graduate Program Language and Literature, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, Munich, May 2018.

“Necro-sis,” Sisterliness, Graduate Conference, Department of German, New York University, April 2018.

“Survival, Quote Unquote,” ACLA Seminar on Forms of Survival (Conveners: Arne Höcker/CU Boulder and Dominik Zechner), UCLA, March 2018.

“Kafka and the Crisis of Finitude,” Reed College, February 2018.

“Precarious Futures: Kafka and the Prose of Survival,” University of California, Berkeley, January 2018.

“The Scopes of Poetry: Hölderlin Takes Measure,” MLA Convention 2018, New York City, January 2018.

Awards

  • 2018 Mellon Dissertation Fellowship in the Humanities
  • 2018 Young Scholars Prize of the Walter Benjamin Society
  • 2016 Outstanding Teaching Award
  • 2016 Otto Mainzer Fellowship