I am Senior Lecturer of American Studies and History at the University of Amsterdam. My book, Nightmare Envy & Other Stories: American Culture and European Reconstruction (Oxford University Press, 2018), is a study of Americanist writing and institutions in the 20th century. Other essays and reviews have appeared in n+1, New Yorker.com, The New Republic, Vrij Nederland, and De Groene Amsterdammer, as well as Amerikastudien/American Studies and American Quarterly. I received my doctorate in the History of American Civilization from Harvard University, and was president of the Netherlands American Studies Association (NASA) from 2014 to 2020.

I am also the editor of the European Review of Books, a multlingual magazine of culture and ideas. The ERB launched a crowdfunding campaign in May 2021, and its first print issue appeared in June 2022. The magazine publishes essays (as well as fiction and various experiments) both in English and in a writer’s mother tongue. Some of my own writing in the magazine can be found here:

• Do we need a European Review of Books? (January 15, 2021)
• Europas & Bulls: on a logo and where it takes you (April 19, 2021)
• A kayak in Zierikzee: On American discoveries of Europe (June 1, 2021)
• €0 (June 13, 2022)

Book

Nightmare Envy & Other Stories: American Culture and European Reconstruction (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018)

Essays & Reviews

• “In the heart of the heart of the Countryside,” Volume 60: The World in Reviews (December 2021).
• "Crematorium planned for former flower shop," De Groene Amsterdammer, October 28, 2020. [in Dutch translation: "Voormalige bloemenzaak wordt crematorium," De Groene Amsterdammer 144:44-45 (October 28, 2020), p.44-49.]
• "Searching for Consolation in Max Weber’s Work Ethic," The New Republic (July 2, 2020). [in Dutch translation: "De onttovenaar van de wereld," De Groene Amsterdammer 144:25 (June 17, 2020), p. 36-41.]
• "Only Dead Metaphors Can Be Resurrected," European Journal of American Studies, 15.2 (Summer 2020).
• "Portraits in Oil," N+1 (November 1, 2019). [in Dutch translation: "Onze kunst, maar dan heel anders," De Groene Amsterdammer (September 11, 2019)]
• "The Audacity of Grief," The New Republic (May 16, 2019). [in Dutch translation: "Amerika's treurzanger," De Groene Amsterdammer 144:1-2 (January 9, 2020), 44-49.]
• H-Diplo Roundtable Review, Volume XX, No. 25 (February 18, 2019): on David H. Price, Cold War Anthropology: The CIA, the Pentagon, and the Growth of Dual Use Anthropology (2016).
• "A New Translation of an Anti-Heroic German Doorstopper of 1968," New Yorker.com (November 26, 2018).
• "My Fellow Prisoners: On John McCain," N+1, Issue 33 (Winter 2019).
• "Trolling and Terrorism: Surrealism in Charlottesville," De Groene Amsterdammer (August 23, 2017). [in Dutch translation]
• "The Tomb of Adam and the Tomb of Ornithorhynchus," in American Phantasmagoria: Modes of Representation in US Culture; in honor of Alide Cagidemetrio (Venice, Supernova, 2017), 45-64. 
• "Act Normal or Go Away: Dutch Election Diary," N+1 (March 18, 2017). 
• "This is Not the Apocalypse," N+1 (January 12, 2017). 
• "The Obama Speeches," N+1, Issue 27 (Winter 2017).
• "Miracles and Mummeries: Antonin Scalia and American Religion," N+1, issue 25 (Spring 2016).
• "Culture, Personality, and the American Century," American Quarterly, 66.4 (December 2014): 1117-1127.
• "Redeemer Nation / Remedy Nation: American Studies and Military Occupation," in Legacies of the U.S. Occupation of Japan: Appraisals after Sixty Years, edited by Rosa Caroli and Duccio Basosi (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2014).
• "Why American Civilization?: American Literature and Academic Exchange in Occupied Europe," Zeitgeschichte, 39.1 (May 2012): 20-31.
• "Flight to Germany: Paul Beatty, the Color Line, and the Berlin Wall," Amerikastudien / American Studies 55.4, special issue on "African American Literary Studies: New Texts, New Approaches, New Challenges" (April 2011): 725-738.
• "'Other' American Studies: The Salzburg Seminar, American Intellectuals and Postwar Europe," in E pluribus unum or E pluribus plura? Unity and Diversity in American Culture, edited by Hans-Jürgen Grabbe, David Mauk, and Ole Moen (Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter, 2011)

Courses