I am a Professor of Transnational American Studies (Political Theory, Aesthetics and Public Humanities) at the Ludwig Maximilians University of Munich. My institutional website is available here.
My research mainly revolves around the intersection of aesthetic forms and political theory, with a particular interest in current configurations of Liberal culture. I write about American, French, and German literature and philosophy, with occasional forays into classical Chinese philosophy.
Previously, I taught Philosophy in Potsdam, Comparative Literature in Munich, and American Literature in Göttingen.
I have held Visiting Fellowships at Harvard University, Brown University, the University of Oxford, King’s College London, New York University, and the London School of Economics. I write in English, German, and somewhat less frequently in my native language, French.
Since 2020, I have been the Principal Investigator of the ERC Starting Grant project "The Arts of Autonomy: Pamphleteering, Popular Philology, and the Public Sphere, 1988–2018”. We also edit an anthology of polemical literature accessible here.
For all professional enquiries, please contact me at: p.monot@lmu.de
Recent Publications
Hundert Jahre Zärtlichkeit:
Surrealismus, Bürgertum, Revolution
Matthes & Seitz Berlin, 2024.
Activist Writing: History, Politics, Rhetoric
Edited with David Bebnowski and Sakina Shakil Gröppmaier, Intercom 2024.
Robopathen und Robopathinnen aller Länder…
Wenn die KI die Drehbücher schreibt
Merkur, 891, p. 84–98.
Three Historicist Comments: Otium, Critique, Revolutionary Reformism, or What Was Interesting About the Culture Wars
Minnesota Review, Spring 2024
仁 / rén
Loanwords to Live With: An Ecotopian Lexicon, University of Minnesota Press
Armut als Kapital: Eine Kritik an Didier Eribon, Édouard Louis und Geoffroy de Lagasnerie,
in: Arbeit – Bewegung – Geschichte: Zeitschrift für historische Studien
Is All Discourse Official?
On the Poetics of Gifting and Gossiping
La Lumière, la Vie, la Lettre et Le Pain: de l’Eucharistie à la Découverte de la Faim
In: La Littérature et la Vie, Paris: Classiques Garnier.
Selected Conference Papers
MLA Annual Convention 2024, Philadelphia
“Paratexts After Paper”
Conference Paper, January 2024
Goethe-Universität Frankfurt
“Why Write? Literature and Political Agency: Ten Theses”
Guest Lecture, May 2023
Université Paris-Sorbonne
“Gray Material: Universalism, Particularism, and Their Literary Forms”, March 2023
University of Chicago
“Political Hypocrisy: Surrealism and the Aesthetics of Moral Rectitude”
Annual Meeting of the American Comparative Literature Association (ACLA), March 2023
Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
“Selbstermächtigungen: Poesie und Politik des Pamphlets”
Guest Lecture, with David Bebnowski, November 2022
Kulturwissenschaftliches Institut, Essen
“Abschusslisten: Über ein Ordnungsprinzip polemischer Literatur”
November 2022
Universität Tübingen
“Why Philology? An Introduction”, June 2022
Forum Arbeit – Bewegung – Geschichte
Round table with Patrick Eiden-Offe and Anke Stelling. Presentation of the Special Issue “Arbeit und Literatur” of the journal Arbeit – Bewegung – Geschichte, April 2021
MLA Annual Convention 2020, Seattle
“The Nature of Interpretation and the Nature of the Real”, January 2021
Academy of Sciences and Literature, Mainz
“Will Machines Ever Be Free?”, November 2019
King’s College London
“Automata and Autonomy: Is Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Émile a Turing Test?”, October 2018
Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin
“American Wanderlust: Alexander von Humboldt, Henry David Thoreau, and American Landscape Painting” with Prof. Dr. Margit Kern and Dr. Amrei Buchholz, August 2018
Beurs van Berlage, Amsterdam
“Has Modernism Become Geopolitical?”, Modernist Studies Association, August 2017
University of Oxford
“The Poetics of Democratic Self-Limitation”, May 2017