Dr. Christian Krug

Research and Teaching Areas

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, Sam Mendes, Skyfall in 2024). 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).

My 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.

Current Projects

I am currently writing an essay on John Ruskin’s The Stones of Venice and popular film.

I have just finished an essay on former royals, and Shakespeare’s Richard II, as sentimental icons, for the third volume in the Global Sentimentality series (2025).

My monograph on Sam Mendes’ Skyfall  was published on 1 September 2024 (München: edition text+kritik, ISBN 978-3-96707-999-9).

An essay on “Westworld and Humans: The Sentimental Disposition of Popular Posthumanism” has just been published in Journal of Posthumanism, vol. 4, no. 2, Sept. 2024 (Dossier: Posthuman Encounters – Desires, Fears, and the Uncanny), pp. 71-78, doi:10.33182/joph.v4i2.3339. [open access]

Past Activities

I have done some work on Basil Dearden’s social problem film Violent Playground (1957). Three essays on the film – on “Masculinity and Sentimental Politics”, on questions of class, masculinity and sentimentality in representations of the British working class in film, 1960-2000 (with Doris Feldmann) and on the role of melodrama (for the Global Sentimentality Project’s Lexicon of Global Melodrama [open access]) – have all been published in 2022 and 2023.