Popular Cultures - Prof. Dr Daniel Illger

 Video games and television series, YouTube and TikTok, blockbusters and bestsellers – our present is profoundly shaped by popular media and the practices of their consumption. Through our research and teaching, we aim to contribute to understanding the functions and effects of the popular from a media-aesthetic perspective. Fundamental to our work is the assumption that an analysis of popular cultural phenomena can help to comprehend the desires and fears, hopes, dreams, and concerns of reception communities, which transcend social milieus and cultures and potentially number in the millions. In this sense, the study of popular culture can serve as a tool for cultural analysis and diagnosing the times, sharpening our view of a present marked by global crises and conflicts, which inspire both apocalyptic visions of doom as well as transhumanist future concepts and ecocritical utopias.

Daniel Illger studied Film Studies, General and Comparative Literature, as well as Philosophy in Berlin and Münster. He is a Professor of Popular Cultures at the European University Viadrina in Frankfurt/Oder. He earned his PhD with a dissertation on the portrayal of cities in post-war Italian cinema and completed his habilitation with a study on the fantasy mode in video games. The Skargat trilogy (Stuttgart 2015-2017) was published by Klett-Cotta. His main area of focus is transmedial, aesthetics-theory-based popular culture research.