Sonja Schillings is a postdoctoral researcher at the Graduate Centre for the Study of Culture (Justus-Liebig-Universität Gießen) in Germany. She has recently defended her dissertation entitled Hostis Humani Generis and the Narrative Construction of Legitimate Violence (GSNAS/John-F.-Kennedy-Institute for North American Studies, Freie Universität Berlin). Recent publications include work on discursive containment in legal constructions of piracy, and the concept of the state of nature in contemporary Anglo-American fiction.