In May 2023 I successfully defended my PhD thesis titled Mediating the Real: Self-Reflection in Recent American Reportage. The book was published with Transcript (available via Columbia University Press in the U.S.) and is freely available as PDF.
Basically, I have been trying to make sense of the experimental reportage of David Foster Wallace, George Saunders, John Jeremiah Sullivan, Mac McClelland (now Gabriel Mac) and Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah. My supervisors were Prof. Michael C. Frank and Prof. em. Martin Heusser (University of Zurich). Thanks to a scholarship by the Emil Boral foundation I got the opportunity to study with Prof. Chris Wilson (check out his online resource Reading Narrative Journalism) at Boston College during the spring term 2018.
My previous education includes a Bachelor’s degree in Communication from the Zurich University of Applied Sciences (ZHAW), a Bachelor’s degree in English and German Literature and Linguistics from the University of Berne, (yes, that’s seven years of Bachelor studies) and a Master’s degree in English Literature and Linguistics and Comparative Literature from the University of Zurich. My research interests include journalism, realism, literary & media theory, rhetorical narratology and phenomenology.
Research Output
Book Chapters (peer-reviewed)
“Witnessing and the Theorization of Reportage.” In Literary Journalism and Social Justice edited by Robert Alexander and Willa McDonald, 69– 82. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2022. Online-Access
“The Disclosure of Difference.” In The Routledge Companion to American Literary Journalism, edited by William Dow and Roberta Maguire, 498–508. New York: Routledge, 2020. Online-Access
Pascal Sigg 