'A Forgotten Best-Seller, A Transatlantic Tunnel, and the Technology of Literature'

The Global Studies Seminar presents “A Forgotten Best-Seller, A Transatlantic Tunnel, and the Technology of Literature” by Denison University’s Assistant Professor of German Ross Etherton.

Bernhard Kellermann’s 1913 technoutopian science-fiction novel The Tunnel, which envisioned a tunnel linking America and Europe, was a runaway success, becoming Germany’s first worldwide best-seller. Written at the cusp of two ages, the novel remained a perennial bestseller for the first part of the 20th century, but fell into obscurity after the horrors of two world wars. This presentation seeks to resuscitate this forgotten work, to situate it within its time, and t0 explore how the technologies the novel presents both propel and frustrate its narrative.

Etherton’s research interests include 19th- and 20th-century literature, short forms of literature, music, media theory, and intersections of literature and technology. He has published on Alexander Kluge’s Schlachtbeschreibung (The Battle), Ernst Jünger, and Neil Young. His current research projects range from an infrastructural reading of Ernst Jünger’s Sturm to a media-archaeological analysis of Jimi Hendrix’s virtuoso performance of the song “Machine Gun.”