Dr. Christian Krug

My teaching and research focusses on popular culture and its historicity, with a focus on the ‘structures of feeling’, the libidinal investments, the desires and fantasies underlying the cultural practices of social groups at specific moments in time – and how these are profoundly ideological. I am also interested in ‘icons’ of popular culture and their ideological functions, ranging from Shakespeare to James Bond (The Cultures of James Bond was published in 2011).

This interest in popular culture and questions of ideology culminates in the role sentimentality plays in British culture, which I both teach (e.g. Hauptseminar “Britons: Forging and Sentimentalizing the Nation”) and research.  I am part of the Global Sentimentality Network, which brings together scholars from around the world and from different disciplines in order to compare the workings of the sentimental across cultures, social formations, and historical periods, and the associated DFG Research Training Group.

In the past, I have done work on popular theatre (especially of the 19th century) and on the “Interactivity of Digital Texts” (at the University of Münster).

Recent Activities

As part of a  lecture series, organised by Sandra Dinter (“Distinktion, Ausgrenzung und Mobilität – Interdisziplinäre Perspektiven auf soziale Ungleichheit”), Doris Feldman and I talked about class, masculinity and sentimentality in representations of the British working class in film, 1960-2000. The essay was published in August 2022.

I have worked on Basil Dearden’s Violent Playground (1957). Three essays on the film – on “Masculinity and Sentimental Politics”, on representations of class (with Doris Feldmann, see above) and on the role of melodrama (for the Global Sentimentality Project’s lexicon on Global Melodrama) – have all been published in 2022.