{"id":9,"date":"2023-06-07T09:45:21","date_gmt":"2023-06-07T09:45:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/rainer-guldin.ch\/?page_id=9"},"modified":"2026-01-08T20:19:26","modified_gmt":"2026-01-08T20:19:26","slug":"biography","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/rainer-guldin.ch\/?page_id=9","title":{"rendered":"Living"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\u00abIt has always disturbed me that a lifetime is objectively measured in decades, years, months. I think that this standard is completely unsuitable [\u2026]. There are very intense periods that are full of experiences and there are others that are pretty dull.\u00bb Vil\u00e9m Flusser<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Trans-Ili Alatau, near Almaty, Kazakhstan (2018)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was born in Zug (central Switzerland) in 1954. When I was nine, I moved to the southern part of the country where I lived until 1974. I attended the Ginnasio (1966-1971) and the Liceo (1971-74) in Lugano (Premio Maraini 1974). In 1974, I moved back to Z\u00fcrich where I studied, first History, and then English and German Literature at the University of Z\u00fcrich (1974-1980) and at Aston University in Birmingham (1976-77). During this year, I worked as a language teacher in a Grammar School in Lichfield (Staffordshire, England). My “Lizentiat” (Streams and Canals<\/a>: The Relation of Body and Text in H. P. Lovecraft\u2019s Writing<\/em>, University of Z\u00fcrich 1980) was dedicated to the relationship of body and text in the work of the American writer H.P. Lovecraft<\/a> who was not as well know then as he is today. As the main subject of my exams I chose the English Gothic novel and the work of E.T.A. Hoffmann<\/a> (what Tzvetan Todorov called litt\u00e9rature fantastique<\/em>). My Ph.D. thesis (Riten der Randzonen<\/a>. Hubert Fichtes Untersuchungen zur Tradition des Abartigen<\/em>, University of Z\u00fcrich 1984) was on the work of the German Writer Hubert Fichte<\/a>. It was the first German Ph.D. on this writer. My doctoral advisor was Prof. Peter von Matt<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

After that I worked as “Aussenlektor” for the Benziger Verlag in Z\u00fcrich (English, American and Italian literature), language teacher (Italian and German 1985-87) and social worker (people out of work and refugees, 1988-89). I also worked for the Red Cross in Z\u00fcrich (1990-91) and the Swiss Disaster Relief Unit (SKH) for whom I travelled to Amman (Jordania) at the time of the Gulf War (October 1990) and to Bulgaria (January 1991). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the fall of 1991, I moved back to Lugano and started teaching German in the local Liceo (Grammar School) (1991-2013). In 1993, I got married. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 1996, I began working for the Faculty of Communication Sciences (and later for the Faculty of Economics) in the newly opened Universit\u00e0 della Svizzera Italiana (USI) in Lugano, first as a lecturer of English (1996-1997) and then as a lecturer of German as a foreign language (1997-2022). From 1999 to 2002, I was assistant professor of the Swiss writer Adolf Muschg in a course on German Literature and Culture, which I took over in 2003 in the role of an Adjunct professor (2003-2022). In these years, I have been teaching courses abroad: a seminar on translation at UERJ (Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro), in 2001; a seminar on the work of Vil\u00e9m Flusser at the Bauhaus University in Weimar, in 2003; a seminar on translation as metaphor at the Centre for Translation and Intercultural Studies at the University of Manchester (UK), in 2013; and a master course on multilingual literature at HSG<\/a> (University of St. Gallen) in 2013 and 2015. I was also visiting professor at UFMG (Humanities Letters and Arts, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais) in Belo Horizonte in 2012.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since 2017, I have been living and writing between Lugano and Vienna. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2022, I retired.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I speak fluently German (but also Swiss German because of my origin), Italian (and the Italian dialect spoken in the area of Lugano), French and English. I have advanced knowledge in Portuguese, Spanish and Haitian Creole (because of my wife), as well as basic knowledge in Russian, and know some Turkish whose study I unfortunately did not pursue long enough. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

My main areas of interest are metaphor theory, translation and multilingualism<\/a> in philosophy and literature, the metaphorics and history of body and landscape<\/a>, the philosophical and cultural relevance of clouds and winds<\/a>, and the work of Vil\u00e9m Flusser<\/a>, Jacques Ellul and Michel Serres<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the moment, I am working on a few new book projects<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n
\n

Rainer Guldin<\/a><\/h1><\/div>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00abIt has always disturbed me that a lifetime is objectively measured in decades, years, months. I think that this standard is completely unsuitable [\u2026]. There are very intense periods that are full of experiences and there are others that are pretty dull.\u00bb Vil\u00e9m Flusser I was born in Zug (central Switzerland) in 1954. When I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":1,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-9","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rainer-guldin.ch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/9","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rainer-guldin.ch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rainer-guldin.ch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rainer-guldin.ch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rainer-guldin.ch\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9"}],"version-history":[{"count":109,"href":"https:\/\/rainer-guldin.ch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/9\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1364,"href":"https:\/\/rainer-guldin.ch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/9\/revisions\/1364"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rainer-guldin.ch\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}