Dissertations

In Progress
Anat Benzvi

Abstraction and Institution

Advisers:
Michael Jennings, Inka Mülder-Bach
Daniel Kashi

Verschollenheit: Figuren der Rechts(un)fähigkeit im Werk Kafkas

Advisers:
Devin Fore, Barbara Nagel
Erica Passoni

“The Other Among Us: Early Modern German Discourses on Atypical Bodies, 1500-1770”.

Adviser:
Joel B. Lande
Mareike Peschl

Uncommon Realities: Cultural Perspectives on Illusions

Advisers:
Barbara Nagel, Thomas Macho
Ron Sadan

Large Print, Small Forms: The Birth of German Modernism from the Newspaper

Adviser:
Michael Jennings
Dennis Schäfer

“From Authors to Archives: The Amanuenses of the Age of Goethe”

Advisers:
Joel B. Lande, Nikolaus Wegmann

2024

Gyoonho Kong

“Phenomenology of Video Games: Space, Time, and Perspective”

Advisers:
Barbara Nagel, Paize Keulemans, Ervin Malakaj
Julian Petri

The Fiction of Agency and the Agency of Fiction: Kleist’s Poetics of Action

Adviser:
Michael Jennings

2023

Sonja Andersen

Artistry, Agency, and the Everyday in Catharina Regina von Greiffenberg’s Works

Adviser:
Barbara Nagel
Current Position:
Department of Modern Languages, Literatures, and Cultures - University of Massachusetts Boston
Mary Grayson Brook

“Mutterherz: Motherhood and Dedifferentiation in German Realism”

Adviser:
Barbara Nagel
Current Position:
Princeton University Postgraduate Research Associate
Alexander Draxl

On Schicksal: The Return of Tragedy in Modernity

Advisers:
Brigid Doherty, Joseph Vogl
Andreas Strasser

“Die Idylle in der Literatur der deutschen Nachkriegszeit”

Adviser:
Devin Fore

2021

Andrew Dechet

The Economics of Sight: Early Photography and Commodity Capitalism, 1839-1867

Adviser:
Michael Jennings
Sebastian Klinger

How to Do Sleep with Words: Sleep Experiments in Literature, Science, and Society, 1899–1929

Advisers:
Michael Jennings, Joseph Vogl
Current Position:
Matthews Junior Research Fellow at New College, University of Oxford
William Stewart

Mathematik ist immer Geist: The Persistence of Mathematical Humanism and Aesthetic Rationality in Postwar Germany

Adviser:
Devin Fore
Current Position:
College Fellow at Harvard University

2020

Paul Babinski

World Literature in Practice: The Orientalist’s Manuscript between the Ottoman Empire and Germany

Advisers:
Nikolaus Wegmann, Anthony Grafton
Current Position:
Postdoctoral Researcher, University of Copenhagen
Anton J. Bunia

Happy Endings: On Affirmative Art, PhD 2020

Advisers:
Nikolaus Wegmann, Inka Mülder-Bach
Current Position:
European Commission
Sean Toland

Concert Halls & Weekly Journals. Fictive Music Criticism in German Romanticism

Advisers:
Joel B. Lande, Inka Mülder-Bach

2019

Alice Christensen

Touching Temperature: Questions of Measurement and Feeling, 1870–1930

Advisers:
Michael Jennings, Daniel Heller-Roazen
Hannah Hunter-Parker

Old Books, New Times: Medieval Manuscripts and German Literature around 1800

Advisers:
Sara S. Poor, Nikolaus Wegmann
Current Position:
Amherst College
Carolina Malagon

Phlogisticated Relations: Lichtenberg and Ritter’s Readings of Chemistry

Advisers:
Joseph Vogl, Michael Gordin
Current Position:
Freelancer NYC area
Matthew Vollgraff

The Science of Expression: Ausdruckskunde and Bodily Knowledge in German Modernist Culture

Advisers:
Michael Jennings, Sigrid Weigel
Current Position:
The Warburg Institute

2018

Hannes Mandel

Readers' Lore. Media, Literature, and the Making of Folk-Lore

Advisers:
Nikolaus Wegmann, Thomas Y. Levin
Current Position:
University of Texas, Austin
Jonathan Martin

The Romance of Love and Law: Marriage in Twelfth-Century German Romance

Adviser:
Sara S. Poor
Current Position:
Illinois State University

2017

Megan Ewing

Rough Surfaces The Collage Works of Rolf Dieter Brinkmann

Adviser:
Michael Jennings
Current Position:
University of Michigan
Frederic Ponten

Collaborating with the Enemy Wartime Analyses of Nazi Germany

Advisers:
Nikolaus Wegmann, Michael Gordin
Current Position:
Institut für Germanistik, Universität Regensburg,

2016

Matthew Birkhold

Borrowing Werther: The Rise and Regulation of Fan Fiction in Eighteenth-Century Germany

Advisers:
Christiane Frey, Joseph Vogl
Current Position:
Ohio State University
Tanvi Solanki

Reading as Listening: The Birth of Cultural Acoustics 1764–1803

Adviser:
Nikolaus Wegmann
Current Position:
Yonsei University

2015

Christian Jany

Scenographies of Perception: Recasting the Sensuous in Hegel, Novalis, Rilke, Proust

Advisers:
Brigid Doherty, Claudia Brodsky
Current Position:
Dozent, Literatur- und Kulturwissenschaft, ETH Zürich
Mareike Stoll

Schools for Seeing: German Photobooks between 1924 and 1937 as Perception Primers and Sites of Knowledge

Advisers:
Michael Jennings, Sigrid Weigel
Current Position:
weißensee school of art and design-Berlin and Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin

2014

Timothy Attanucci

Stories from Earth Adalbert Stifter and the Poetics of Earth History

Advisers:
Joseph Vogl, Nikolaus Wegmann
Current Position:
Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz
Alana King

Mysticism & Confessional Conflict in Post-Reformation Germany: The Mystical Theology of Valentin Weigel (1533–1588)

Adviser:
Sara S. Poor
Jeffrey Kirkwood

Cinema Non Facit Saltus: Early German Film and the Cinematic Psyche

Adviser:
Thomas Y. Levin
Current Position:
Binghamton University, State University of New York
Peter Kuras

Early German Cinema and Dogmatic Jurisprudence

Adviser:
Thomas Y. Levin
Current Position:
Self-employed

2012

Margareta Ingrid Christian

Horror Vacui: A Cultural History of Air Around 1900

Advisers:
Michael Jennings, Joseph Vogl
Current Position:
University of Chicago
Sarah Eldridge

Conceiving Generation: The Novel and the Nuclear Family around 1800

Advisers:
Brigid Doherty, Joseph Vogl
Current Position:
University of Tennessee, Knoxville
Petra Spies McGillen

Original Compiler: Notation as Textual Practice in Theodor Fontane

Adviser:
Nikolaus Wegmann
Current Position:
Dartmouth College
Michael McGillen

Eschatology and the Reinvention of History: Theological Interventions in German Modernism, 1920–1938

Adviser:
Michael Jennings
Current Position:
Dartmouth College

2011

Mark Ilsemann

Creaturely Lives: Romanticism and the Rhetoric of Natural History

Adviser:
Stanley Corngold
Current Position:
University of Virginia

2010

Lisa Cerami

Ineffable Histories: German Mysticism at the Jahrhundertwende

Adviser:
Michael Jennings
Kata Gellen

Earwitnesses: Noise in German Modernist Writing

Advisers:
Michael Jennings, Daniel Heller-Roazen
Current Position:
Duke University
Angela Holzer

Rehabilitationen Roms: Die Römische Antike in Der Deutschen Kultur Zwischen Winckelmann und Niebuhr

Adviser:
Walter Hinderer
Current Position:
DFG Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft

2009

Michael House

Grounding Fictions: Systematic Skepticism and Critical Doubt 1792–1807

Advisers:
Michael Jennings, Nikolaus Wegmann
Current Position:
University of South Carolina

2008

Florian Becker

Epistemic Strategies in Twentieth-Century German Theatre: Brecht, Weiss, Müller

Adviser:
Michael Jennings
Current Position:
Bard College
Sonja Boos

The Archimedean Podium: Public Speeches in Postwar Germany, 1953–1967

Advisers:
Brigid Doherty, Barbara Hahn
Current Position:
University of Oregon
Jakob Norberg

Sociability and Its Enemies Political Theory and Literature in West Germany After 1945

Adviser:
Michael Jennings
Current Position:
Duke University
Tobias Wilke

Medien der Unmittelbarkeit: Dingkonzepte und Wahrnehmungstechniken 1918–1939

Adviser:
Thomas Y. Levin

2007

May Mergenthaler

Ein Unendlicher Dialog: Das Projekt Der Frühromantik In Den Athenaeums-Fragmenten

Advisers:
Barbara Hahn, Arnd Wedemeyer
Current Position:
Ohio State University
Sarah Pourciau

Explications: Etymology as Language Science, 1822–1941

Advisers:
Michael Jennings, Barbara Hahn
Current Position:
Duke University
Michael Taylor

Moving Bodies: Poetic Theatricality in the Late Enlightenment

Advisers:
Barbara Hahn, Arnd Wedemeyer
Current Position:
Bard College Berlin

2006

Alison Beringer

Word and Image in the Klosterneuburger Evangelienwerk Manuscript and Cultural Contexts for the Vernacular Volume I and II

Adviser:
Michael Curschmann
Current Position:
Montclair State University

2005

Nicola Gess

Gewalt Der Musik Literatur und Musikkritik UM 1800

Adviser:
Thomas Y. Levin
Current Position:
Universität Basel
Matthew Niednagel

New German Documentary: The Discourse of Personal Non-Fiction in the Age of Media Convergence

Adviser:
Thomas Y. Levin

2004

Marton Dornbach

Acts of Understanding: Spontaneous Subjectivity, Hermeneutic Receptivity, and the Consequences of German Idealism

Adviser:
Stanley Corngold
Günter Schmidt

The Legacy of Chronos: Temporality of Revolution in Culture, Sciences, and Politics

Adviser:
Thomas Y. Levin
Current Position:
University of Freiburg
Jutta Schmitt

Historical Fictions: Representations of Nineteenth-Century Jewish Salons

Adviser:
Barbara Hahn
Brian Tucker

Reading Riddles: Rhetorics of Obscurity From Romanticism to Freud

Adviser:
Stanley Corngold
Current Position:
Wabash College

2003

Daniel Magilow

The Space Between the Pictures: Photography, Literature, and the Late-Weimar Photo-Essay

Adviser:
Michael Jennings
Current Position:
University of Tennessee, Knoxville

2002

Angela Borchert

Gelegenheitsdichtung und Geselligkeitsdichtung an Herzogin Anna Amalias Hof in Weimar und in Tiefurt (1754–1807) I & II

Adviser:
Walter Hinderer
Current Position:
Western University, Ontario, Canada
James McFarland

Constellation Nietzsche/Benjamin

Adviser:
Michael Jennings
Current Position:
Vanderbilt University
Heidi Swanson

Written Friendship Hannah Arendt, Brigitte Reimann, Christa Wolf

Adviser:
Barbara Hahn
Current Position:
Self-employed
Daniel Jiro Tanaka

Forms of Disenchantment: Kant and Neo-Kantianism in the Early Work of Walter Benjamin

Adviser:
Michael Jennings
Current Position:
The Evolution Institute

2000

Ahmet Bayazitoglu

Motion Sickness: Literatures of Migration and Minority

Adviser:
Barbara Hahn
Current Position:
The Hun School, Faculty
Laura Deiulio

The Promise and the Body: Marriage in German Literature around 1800

Adviser:
Stanley Corngold
Current Position:
Christopher Newport University
Monique Rinere

Transformations of the German Novel: Simplicissimus in Eighteenth-century adaptations

Adviser:
Michael Curschmann
Current Position:
Licensed Psychoanalyst