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Paper at the international conference “Petrocultures: Situating Energy” at TU Dresden, Germany
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Conference paper at the 2026 NARS conference “Romantic Circulations,” University of Oslo
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Artists and creative souls, this is for you!
Copper Tongues Theatre presents: Open Mic Nights, Season 2026/27
What: Try out your new material amidst like-minded folks and in front of an audience. Whether your art is a theatrial piece, spoken word, song, music, dance or live performance - come and try out whatever you're working on (performances should not last longer than 15 mins)
Where: Dynamo, Wasserwerkstrasse 21, 8006 Zürich
When: the first Open Mic of the season will take place on 25 September 2026
Time: at 19:30.
Who: Creatives who want a fun and supportive try out space for new material.
Andrin Albrecht is a writer, composer, and postdoctoral researcher in English literature based in Zurich, Switzerland.
About me
In an age of hyper-specialization, I have chosen to prioritize versatility, adaptability, and expertise in a wide range of subjects. Having grown up in Switzerland, I hold a Ph.D. in Anglophone Literature from Friedrich Schiller University Jena (D), where I teach on a graduate level. I have composed widely for theater and bands, and I have won a number of awards for short stories and poetry written in both English and German. I enjoy moderating panels for cultural events, and am particularly interested in the intersection of popular culture and politics—an interest I have been able to hone working in the Public Diplomacy section of the US Embassy to Berlin in 2024. Consult the subsequent sections to learn more about my activities in these fields, my publications, and upcoming projects.
Fields of interest
Romanticism, fantasy and speculative fiction, Artificial Intelligence, popular culture, literature and politics, ecocriticism (esp. water), creative writing, composition, pedagogy, among others
Research
I studied history, English literature and linguistics at the University of Zurich, Colorado Mesa University (USA), and Nanyang Technological University (Singapore), and subsequently received my doctorate summa cum laude from Friedrich Schiller University Jena (D). As part of the DFG research training group “The Romantic Model,” I wrote a dissertation entitled Tyrannous Eyes: Performances of Romantic Genius in the Wake of Moby-Dick, in which I developed a performative theory of Romantic genius and its entwinement with Whiteness, masculinity, and difficulty, in novels by Herman Melville, Vladimir Nabokov, Thomas Pynchon, and Mark Z. Danielewski.
I have developed undergraduate and graduate seminars on, among other things, cultural concepts of Artificial Intelligence, water and the Blue Humanities, music and literature, the history of California, and “the Red Humanities.” For guest lectures and conference talks, I have traveled to over a dozen countries, and am particularly drawn to transnational, interdisciplinary, and multimedial topics that do more than just pay lip service to the exploratory ideals of academia. I have published peer-reviewed articles in a variety of international journals, and am currently exploring postdoctoral options in American, British, and/or comparative literature.
ORCID-ID: https://orcid.org/0009-0009-8298-9230
“A Matter not Yours: Gothic Metalepses and Determinist Horror in The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt – Hearts of Stone.” Games That Haunt Us: Gothic Game Space as a Living Nightmare, edited by Stephanie Farnsworth, Bloomsbury, 2026, pp. 43-57.
With Caroline Rosenthal, Alexandra Toland, and Claire Waffel. eLearning with Water. Digitale Bibliothek Thüringen, 2025. https://doi.org/10.22032/dbt.68115.
“White Whales, White Pools: An Aquatic Crossmapping of Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick and Emma Cline’s The Guest.” Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik, vol. 73, no. 2, 2025, pp. 151-164. https://doi.org/10.1515/zaa-2025-2017.
“A Dream of Evil Omen: US-Amerikanische Dörflichkeit als Konfliktraum bei Nathaniel Hawthorne.” Zeitschrift für Germanistik, vol. 34, no. 3, 2024, pp. 610-626. https://doi.org/10.3726/92175_610.
Publications (selection)
“The Red Humanities.” MA seminar, FSU Jena, 2026/27.
“Fiction/Non-Fiction: The Vietnam War.” MA seminar, FSU Jena, 2026.
“Multimediality: Writing California.” MA seminar, FSU Jena, 2025.
“Learning with Water: Between Land-Based Learning and E-Portfolio.” With Caroline Rosenthal, Alexandra Toland, and Claire Waffel. MA seminar, FSU Jena and Bauhaus University Weimar, 2025. Funded by E-Teach Thüringen.
“Language and Literature: Do Androids Dream of Us? Artificial Intelligence in Literature and Beyond.” MA seminar, FSU Jena, 2024/25.
“Interdisciplinary Perspectives: Music in American Literature.” MA seminar, FSU Jena, 2024.
“Übersetzung und Autorschaft: Vladimir Nabokovs Zascita Luzina / The Defense.” With Andrea Meyer-Fraatz. BA/MA seminar, FSU Jena, 2023/24.
Teaching (selection)
“Towards a Red Humanities.” Invited by the Eighteenth Century Ecologies Network, University of York, 9 July 2026.
“Thomas Blue Bear? Walter Moers and the German Pynchonesque.” International Pynchon Week 2026, TU Dortmund, 15 June 2026.
“Imaginaria: Phantastische Welten in Gegenwartliteratur und Musik.” Invited by apl. Prof. Sandra Kerschbaumer, Jena Center for the Study of Romanticism, 19 May 2026.
“Ludic Romanticism, or, the Five-Color Archive of Magic: The Gathering.” Archives Unbound: Time and Memory in Romantic Visual Culture, Kunsthistorisches Institut Florenz, 3 February 2026.
“For in This Sea What Dreams May Come: Exploring the Aqueous Romantic Unconscious.” BARS Early Career Researcher & Postgraduate Conference 2025, Cambridge University, 4 September 2025.
“Silicon Valley Romantics: Concepts of Creative Genius and Their Legacy in AI Entrepreneurship.” EC2U Young Researchers’ Meeting: Artificial Intelligence & Languages, Cultures and Education, Turku University, 3 April 2025.
“Is It Alright if I Don’t Sing Tonight? Romantik, Popmusik und die Sinnfrage der Kunst im Anthropozän.” Lecture series Nachhaltigkeit/Sustainability, Friedrich Schiller University Jena, 17 April 2025.
“True and Living Prophets of Destruction. Absolute Evil and the Construction of Authorial Purpose in Herman Melville and Cormac McCarthy.” GKAT Conference ‘Practicing Trust and Authority’, Heidelberg Center for American Studies, 13 May 2023.
Talks and Presentations (selection)
Music
I grew up playing electric guitar and, during my teenage years, furthermore developed an interest in piano, bass guitar, and the saxophone. However, my core interest has always lain in composing rather than playing music. I studied classical and modern composition at Conservatory Winterthur (CH) and have since honed my skills particularly in the genres of soundtrack, rock, pop, and modern orchestral music.
For several years, I was composer and musical director for the Zurich-based English theater group The Blueprint Masquerades and, together with other former members, co-founded the polylingual theater production company Copper Tongues Theater in 2023. I have recorded EPs and toured internationally as a guitarist and lyricist for the alternative rock band BACH, have contributed soundtracks for two productions by THEAGOVIA, and, in my downtime, also enjoy contributing character themes and musical cues to DnD campaigns and short film productions.
Soundtrack
Orchestral
Rock and pop
Creative writing
My first and truest passion. I wrote my first stories in kindergarten and self-published a novel entitled Das Auge der Macht at thirteen. In the days since, I have studied creative writing in Colorado and Singapore, have published several dozen short stories and poems in both English and German, and have won a variety of awards, among them Text des Monats September 2020 by Literaturhaus Zürich, Targa Centro UNESCO di Trieste, Daniil Pashkoff Prize (3rd place), and the Audience Choice Award of Bieler Tagblatt.
I have taught creative and academic writing at Friedrich Schiller University Jena, have moderated readings by bestselling authors such as Ayana Mathis, Maren Kames, Steve Mentz, and Ted Chiang, and am open to requests for German, Swiss German, English, or bilingual events. At present, I am moreover searching for agents and/or expressions of interest for three full-length novel manuscripts: an all-age fairytale with a dark undercurrent (English), a postmodern fantasy quest in a world gradually falling apart (English), and a re-telling of the Iliad as a modern-day feud between warring crime families (German).
“Carcosa.” Mystic Owl Magazine, vol. 3, 2023, https://mysticowlmag.com/carcosa/.
“SHAT TER, V.” Amerikastudien/American Studies, vol. 68, no. 3, p. 205. https://doi.org/10.33675/AMST/2023/2/10.
“The Iron Maiden.” Phantasmical Contraptions & More Errors, edited by Jessica Augustsson, JayHenge Publishing, 2022, pp. 211-222.
“Sunken Things.” A Bayonet of Light: Selected Texts from the Danil Pashkoff Prize 2022, edited by Stephanie Lammers, Writers INK e.V., 2022, pp. 54-59.
“Gloria.” Not One of Us, vol. 68, 2021, pp. 14-17.
“Xanadu.” The Foundationalist: Intercollegiate Literary Journal, vol. 3, 2019, https://www.academia.edu/39291401/Xanadu.
Publications in English (selection)
Publications in German (selection)
“Mondsüchtig.” Ausbruch: Kurzgeschichten aus Biel und dem Seeland, edited by Bieler Tagblatt, Verlag Gassmann Media AG, 2022, pp. 253-260. https://web.bielertagblatt.ch/nachrichten/fokus/mondsuechtig.
“Und danke für den Fisch.” Texte des Monats 2020: Klima- und andere Katastrophen, edited by Isabel Vonlanthen, Literaturhaus Zürich, 2021, pp. 78-90. https://literaturhaus.ch/schreibwettbwerb-t/und-danke-fuer-den-fisch-von-andrin-albrecht.
“Le Pavot Rouge.” schüchtern hingeschaut IV, edited by Dienststelle Kinder Jugend Familie der Stadt St. Gallen, Schweizerbroschur, 2020, pp. 6-19.