In 1990 he started teaching in Freiburg. From 1994 to 1995 he was a Fulbright visiting professor at the
University of Massachusetts Amherst, USA. Since 2001 he has been a professor of English and American studies at the
University of Trier. Together with Professor Wolfgang Klooß he founded the
Trier Center for American Studies (TCAS) in 2004, of which he is also the director. He was a visiting professor at
Clark University in Worcester, Mass., USA, in autumn 2002 and a Fulbright visiting professor at
Portland State University, Portland, Oregon, USA in 2006-2007 and the summer of 2012. His main areas of research are modern and postmodern American literature, (urban literature, Beat generation) rhetoric and media studies (American political discourse), gender studies, as well as African-American literature and culture. In recent years his focus has been on postwar America (writing articles and giving lectures on
Allen Ginsberg,
James Dean and
Jack Kerouac, to name a few). In 2005 he contributed to the exhibition Coolhunters (ZKM Karlsruhe); in 2007 he co-edited the interdisciplinary essay collection Rebels Without a Cause (Peter Lang Publishing Group), to encourage a revaluation of the period. In the summer of 2009 he was co-curator of the exhibition Motorcycle: Beschleunigung und Rebellion? at the European Academy of Fine Arts in Trier. ==Publications==