Sebastian Truskolaski

Dr Sebastian Truskolaski joined the University of Manchester in 2021. His PhD was awarded in 2016 by Goldsmiths, University of London, where he was affiliated with the Department of Visual Cultures and the Centre for Philosophy and Critical Thought.

Before coming to Manchester, Sebastian taught German and Comparative Literature at Trinity College Dublin and King's College London, and was awarded a fellowship from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation for his research at the Leibniz-Zentrum für Literatur- und Kulturforschung in Berlin.

Sebastian's research interests include:

• Points of contact between modern and contemporary art, literature, and philosophy;
• Modern European thought from Kant to Derrida;
• Aesthetic theory from Romanticism to the Frankfurt School;
• Theories (and practices) of translation from Luther to Benjamin.

His first monograph, Adorno and the Ban on Images, appeared with Bloomsbury in 2021. Together with Paula Schwebel, he translated the correspondence between Theodor W. Adorno and Gershom Scholem (Polity, 2021), which was recently nominated for the Helen & Kurt Wolff Translator's Prize, and has been favourably reviewed in the New York Review of Books and the Jewish Review of Books, amongst others. Together with Jan Sieber, he guest-edited a special issue of the journal Anthropology & Materialism on the philosophy of Water Benjamin (2017). Together with Sam Dolbear and Esther Leslie, he edited and  translated The Storyteller – a collection of Walter Benjamin's experimental prose writings (Verso, 2016) – which was positively reviewed in The Guardian, Financial Times, and Times Literary Supplement, amongst others. Moreover, Sebastian is on the editorial board of the journal, New Benjamin Studies (Brill).

He is presently working on a new project on Friedrich Hölderlin and the concept of community, especially as it emerges from readings of the poet by Franz Rosenzweig, Gustav Landauer, and Walter Benjamin

Sebastian teaches on a wide range of undergraduate and postgraduate units across German and related disciplines the School of Arts, Languages and Cultures.

Sebastian welcomes proposals from prospective PhD students working on topics relating to:

• Points of contact between modern and contemporary art, literature, and philosophy (esp. in the German-speaking lands, Poland, and North America, and especially in the period from 1750 to the present);
• Modern European thought from Kant to Derrida (esp. German Critical Theory, its forerunners, and its afterlives);
• Aesthetic theory from Romanticism to the Frankfurt School;
• Theories (and practices) of translation from Luther to Benjamin.

• GERM20901: Spectres of Fascism - Literature, FIlm, and Visual Art in German and Austria since 1945
• GERM51040: German Language 4 (Grammar & Translation)
• GERM20802: German Long Essay
• GERM10340: German Study Project
• GERM3000: Dissertation in German Studies
• ELAN60362: Border Crossings - Comparative Cultures of Diaspora

• Audio / Video:
  • Book launch (audio): Sebastian Truskolaski, Adorno and the Ban on Images, King's College London, 3 March 2021.
  • Book launch (audio): Walter Benjamin, The Storyteller, London Review of Books Bookshop, 23 June 2016.
    
    
  • Book launch (audio): Walter Benjamin, The Storyteller, Birkbeck, University of London, 22 September 2016.
  • Book launch (video): Cat Moir, Ernst Bloch's Speculative Materialism,Historical Materialism, 14 December 2021.
  • Book launch (audio): Daniel Mourenza, Walter Benjamin and the Aesthetics of Film, Trinity College Dublin, 23 February 2021.
    
    
• Radio:
  • BBC 3 'Free Thinking' (audio): Discussion of Walter Benjamin, The Storyteller, 23 June 2016.
  • Resonance FM 'Clear Spot' (audio): Discussion of Walter Benjamin, The Storyteller, 15 November 2016.
    
    
• Interviews:
  • Jonathon Catlin, 'Adorno and the Ban on Images: An Interview with Sebastian Truskolaski', Journal of the History of Ideas (Blog), 26 May 2021.