Dietmar Meinel is currently working as a postdoc in American Studies at the University of Duisburg-Essen. He has published in English and German, his articles have appeared in the European Journal of American Culture and NECSUS: European Journal of Media Studies. His monograph Pixar’s America: The Reanimation of American Myths and Symbols (2016) has been published by Palgrave MacMillan. Together with Elena Furlanetto he also edited A Poetics of Neurosis: Narratives of Normalcy and Disorder in Cultural and Literary Texts (2018). His research interests include popular culture, visual culture, antebellum America, and literary and cultural theory. As an associate member of the network, he will conduct research on a project titled “Knowing When to Fail: The Performance of Failure as a Subversive Practice from Below”