Dr. Cord-Christian Casper

Cord-Christian Casper is a postdoctoral researcher in literary studies at the Institute of English Philology at LMU Munich. His research explores the intersections of ecocriticism, New Materialism, visual culture and anarchism in literature and culture. He is the author of Against Anarchy: Political Alterity in Early Modernism (De Gruyter, 2020), based on his doctoral dissertation completed at Kiel University in 2018. He previously worked as a research assistant at JLU Giessen and the Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities Essen. He holds degrees from Cambridge University and Kiel University.

Project at CAS

As a Junior Researcher in residence at the Center for Advanced Studies (CAS), he will advance his work on “Temporal Commons in Nature Writing,” focusing especially on Early Modern Commons and their contestation of the “Tragedy of the Commons.” This project investigates the depiction of the commons in Nature Writing, examining how this genre encapsulates a diverse range of shared resources – be they natural, physical, social, intellectual, or cultural. During the residency, his research will focus on how 17th century essays and manifestos challenges dominant narratives of environmental degradation and offer alternative visions of ecological coexistence.