Ron Sadan

Ron Sadan is Lecturer in German. His research reconstructs Robert Walser’s prose as a theory of literary opacity. His dissertation defines parasemiosis as the generation of meaning through formal friction. It develops a typology of opacity—phonetic, syntactic, narrative—grounded in material strain rather than semantic collapse. He also writes on Auerbach, media history, and material culture after 1800. He has taught all levels of German since 2018 and previously taught with the Prison Teaching Initiative.

His research has been supported by Fulbright, DAAD, PIIRS, the Leo Baeck Institute, and the Donald and Mary Hyde Fellowship. In 2021, he was Visiting Scholar in the SFB “Cultures of Vigilance” at LMU Munich. He holds a BA from St. John’s College, Annapolis.