Léa Gbeassor, M.A.
- Teaching and Research Assistant in English Literature
- Assistant Prof. Dr. Michael C. Frank
- Room number
- PET 106
Research Interests
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Historical Materialism
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Afrofuturism & Africanfuturism, speculative fiction more generally
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African and African American literatures
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Postcolonialism & Ecocriticism
About Me
I am a teaching and research assistant at Prof. Dr. Michael C. Frank’s Chair of English Literatures of the 19th and 20th century. I hold a BA, as well as an MA in English Literature und Linguistics, as well as in French Literature and Linguistics from the University of Zurich.
I am currently working on my PhD project tentatively entitled Afrofuturism: Imagining Alternative Energy Worlds. This project seeks to discuss the complexities emerging around the energy transition from fossil fuels to renewables. Thereby, I look to Afrofuturist literature and films that feature a story of transition. As a first step, I am interested in tracing the different visions of an energy transition or juster energy world these works present. Furthermore, I pay particular attention to the moments within these stories that, despite their claims of portraying a transition, do not break with the prevailing colonial and capitalist structures that we currently live within. Indeed, I want to find out what this replication of ideas originating in the very capitalist logic these works seek to overcome means. Are they simply blind spots in otherwise extraordinarily visionary works? Or is there a correlation between these blind spots and the environment within which these works were produced and published? My current hypothesis is that these Afrofuturist works, despite their superficially visionary allure, mostly just reflect the state of the world as it is, including all its complexities, both in their content and their form.
Recent Activities
Paper presentation titled “‘Wakanda Forever!’ Energy Utopias in Black Panther.” at Petrocultures 2026: Situating Energy conference at TU Dresden, August 24-28, 2026.
Guest lecture titled “Rivers Solomon’s The Deep: Triple Abyss of the Black Atlantic” at TU Dortmund, June 25, 2026
Paper presentation titled “Infrastructural Violence in the Niger Delta: Nnedi Okorafor’s ‘The Popular Mechanic’” at the SAUTE conference entitled Listening to Africa: Englishes in the Global South in Bern, June 06-07,2025
“‘Data as the New Oil’: Extractivism in Neptune Frost (2021).” Matatu, vol. 55, 2024, pp. 1-29.
“‘Data as the New Oil’: Resource Extraction and Digital Infrastructures in the Afrofuturist Film Neptune Frost (2021)”. GAPS conference on “Post/Colonial Environments”. University of Zurich, May 9-11, 2024.
Introduction to Kona Khasu’s talk at the event series ‘Literaturmittag’, organized by Stiftung Litar, given together with Dr. Martin Mühlheim. Zürich, October 19, 2021.
Teaching
Introduction to Postcolonialism (FS27)
Afrofuturism (FS26)
English Literature: Textual Analysis
Supervision
I am happy to supervise BA theses that match my research interests. Please feel free to reach out to me via email if you would like to write about a topic related to science fiction or speculative fiction, including Afrofuturism, or African or African American literatures.