Hanjo Berressem (born 1956) studied English Literature and Art History at the University of Aachen. During his studies, he received DAAD scholarships to spend a year at the University of Michigan and a year at Brown University. After finishing his Ph. D. thesis on the work of Thomas Pynchon in 1989, he began work on his Habilitation, which was funded by a DFG research grant. In 1994, he spent a year at the University of Berkeley. After finishing his Habilitation in 1996, he taught American Literature and Culture at the Universities of Bielefeld (1996-1998), Hannover (1998-2000) and Cologne, where he is currently teaching. In 2002, he was ›Visiting Scholar‹ at the University of California (UCLA). He is Speaker of the Zentrum für Medienwissenschaften and a member of the a.r.t.e.s. Graduate School. His academic interests include contemporary American fiction (in particular the work of Thomas Pynchon, William Gibson and Bret Easton Ellis), Media Studies, as well as the work of Michel Serres and Gilles Deleuze. He has recently finished two ›complementary‹ book manuscripts, one on Gilles Deleuze (»Crystal Philosophy«), the other on the notion of ›Eigenvalue‹ (»Crystal Science«).