books :: articles :: presentations :: lectures :: dissertations directed

EMPLOYMENT HISTORY

Professor of German and Comparative Literature, University of Oregon (2000-present)
Director, Comparative Literature Program, University of Oregon (2000-2004)
Acting Director, Creative Writing Program, University of Oregon (2001-2002)
Associate Professor of German, University of Oregon (1992-2000)
Acting Director, Comparative Literature Program, (1992-93, 98-99)
Assistant Professor of German, University of Oregon (1987-92)
Assistant Professor of German, Haverford College (1985-87)

EDUCATION

Ph.D. (German) University of California, Irvine, 1984
M.A. (German) University of California, Irvine, 1981
B.A. (German) University of Louisville, 1979

DISSERTATION

"Romantic Distance: The Poetics of Estrangement and Self-Discovery in Novalis' Heinrich von Ofterdingen" (William J. Lillyman, director)

BOOK

Fatherland: Novalis,Freud and the Discipline of Romance. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1992.

BOOKS (EDITED)

Peripheral Visions: The Hidden Stages of Weimar Cinema. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2001.

Co-edited with Karla Schultz. The Idea of the Forest:German and American Perspectives on the Culture and Politicsof Trees. New York: Peter Lang, 1996.

ARTICLES

26. “Der virtuelle Bogen: Abgrund und Brücke in Friedrich Schillers Elegie Der Spaziergang,” to be published in Landschaftsgänge—Bewusstseinslandschaften: Zur Kulturgeschichte und Poetik des Spaziergangs, ed. Axel Gellhaus and Helmut Schneider (Cologne: Böhlau Verlag, forthcoming).

25. “Charming the Carnivore: Bruce Chatwin’s Australian Odyssey” in Bianca Theisen and John Zilcosky, ed., Writing Travel . (Under consideration, University of Toronto Press).

24. “F. W. Murnau, C. D. Friedrich and the Conceit of the Absent Spectator,” Modern Language Notes 120 (2005): 633-53.

23. “Theodor Fontane, Effi Briest.” New History of German Literature, ed. David E. Wellbery and Judith Ryan (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 2005), 636-40.

22. "Eduard Mörike, Gedichte." New History of German Literature, ed. David E. Wellbery and Judith Ryan (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 2005), 614-20.

21. “Lautverschiebung: Music and Materiality in Ernst Jandl’s Laut und Luise,” in Axel Dunker, ed., Literatur ohne Kompromisse: ein buch für jörg drews (Bielefeld: Aisthesis, 2003), 365-75.

20. “The Moon, the Mail, and the Province of German Literature,” in Jürgen Fohrmann and Helmut Schneider, ed., 1848 und das Versprechen der Moderne (Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2003), 129-46.

19. “ Reading and the Art of Leisure in Mörike’s ‘Wald-Idylle,’” Modern Language Notes 116 (2001): 536-550.

18. “The Gothic Imaginary: Goethe in Strasbourg,” Deutsche Vierteljahrsschrift für deutsche Literaturgeschichte und Geisteswissenschaft (2001): 5-14.

17. “Leinwand: Zur Physiognomie des Raumes in F. W. Murnaus Nosferatu,” in Sigrid Lange, ed., Raumästhetik in der Moderne ( Bielefeld: Aisthesis, 2001), 289-97.

16. Introduction to Peripheral Visions: The Hidden Stages of Weimar Cinema [see above under “books (edited)”], 9-19.

15. “Horror vacui,” in Peripheral Visions: The Hidden Stages of Weimar Cinema [see above under “books (edited)”], 145-70.

14. “The Eye of the Panther: Rilke and the Machine of Cinema,” Comparative Literature 52 (2000): 143-56.

13. “Blind Gestures: Chaplin, Diderot, Lessing,” Modern Language Notes 115 (2000): 381-402.

12. “Alchemies of Distraction in James’s Portrait of a Lady and Fontane’s Effi Briest,” arcadia 34 (1999): 89-112.

11. “Personal Effects: Rilke, Barthes, and the Matter of Photography,” Modern Language Notes 113 (1998): 612-634.

10. “Emil Jannings, Falstaff, and the Spectacle of the Body Natural,” Modern Language Quarterly 58 (1997): 83-109.

9. “Ausgerechnet Oregon!: Cross-Cultural Meditations.” Epilogue to The Idea of the Forest [see above under “books (edited)”], 211-221.

8. “The Detective and the Witch: Local Knowledge and the Aesthetic Pre-History of Detection,” Comparative Literature 47 (1995): 307-329.

7. “The Stones Speak! Novalis and the Romantic Archaeology of the Psyche,” in Reading after Foucault: Institutions, Disciplines, and Technologies of Self in Germany, 1750-1820, ed. Robert S. Leventhal (Detroit: Wayne State, 1994), 211-232. [Reprinted from Fatherland.]

6. “The Education of the Human Race: Lessing, Freud and the Savage Mind,” The German Quarterly 64 (1991): 178-89.

5. “Sacrifice and the Semiotics of Power in Der zerbrochene Krug,” Comparative Literature 41 (1989): 230-51.

4. “Dreams, History and the Romantic Fragment in Arno Schmidt’s Aus dem Leben eines Fauns,” Bargfelder Bote: Materialien zum Werk Arno Schmidts 115 (June 1987): 5-9.

3. “The Urn and the Lamp: Disinterest and the Aesthetic Object in Mörike and Keats,” Studies in Romanticism 26 (1987): 3-25.

2. “The Bible as Fable: History and Form in Lessing and Novalis,” The Lessing Yearbook 16 (1984): 55-78.

1. “Language and Romantic Irony in Novalis' Die Lehrlinge zu Sais,” The Germanic Review 56 (1981): 51-61.

PRESENTATIONS

“Architecture and the Theatrical Baroque: Bellotto in Dresden,” annual convention of the Modern Language Association, Chicago, December 29, 2007.

“Time and the Art of Hanging: Bierce and Kafka,” annual convention of the German Studies Association, San Diego, October 7, 2007.

“Shot Reverse/Shot and the Conceit of the Absent Spectator” annual convention of the German studies Association, New Orleans, October, 2003.

“Poison and the Discourse of Flattery: Lessing’s ‘Snow White,’” annual convention of the German Studies Association, San Diego, October 3, 2002.

“Strangers to Themselves: Walking the Province of German Literature,” annual convention of the Modern Language Association, Toronto, December 29, 1997.

“Lessing, Pantomime, and Shakespeare’s Ghost,” annual convention of the Modern Language Association, Washington, D.C., December 28, 1996

“Apparitions of the Letter in Fontane’s Effi Briest,” annual convention of the German Studies Association, Seattle, October 11, 1996.

“Nazi Prodigals: Shakespeare and the Recuperation of Frederick the Great,” convention of the Society of Eigteenth-Century Studies, Charleston, S. C., March 1994.

“The Detective and the Witch: Local Knowledge in Kleist, Fontane and Conan Doyle,” convention of the German Studies Association, Washington, D. C., October 1993.

“Screen Memories: The Shadow of Technology in Early Cinema,” annual meeting of the German Studies Association, Los Angeles,September 1991.

“Death in the Forest: Goethe’s ‘Erlkönig,’” convention of the Society for Eighteenth Century Studies, Pittsburgh, April 1991.

“Der Golem: Film as Fetish,” convention of the German Studies Association, Buffalo, October 1990.

“Representing Revolution: Runge’s Fall des Vaterlandes,” convention of the American Associa­tion of Teachers of German, Boston, November 1989.

“Figures of the Museum in the Early Twentieth Century,” convention of the German Studies Association, Milwaukee, October 1989.

“The Orient as Romantic Hallucination,” convention of the Modern Language Association, New Orleans, December 1988.

“Die Erziehung des Menschengeschlechts: Lessing’s Phylogenetic Fantasy,” convention of the German Studies Association, Philadelphia, October 1988.

“Novalis and Surveillance,” convention of the Modern Language Association, San Francisco, December 1987.

“Düringsche Chronik: History, Dreams and the Romantic Fragment in Arno Schmidt’s Aus dem Leben eines Fauns,” convention of the Modern Language Association, New York, December 1986.

“The Romance of Philology: Novalis’ Heinrich von Ofterdingen,” convention of the German Studies Association, Albuquerque, September 1986.

INVITED LECTURES

“The Virtue of Things: Genealogy and Judgment in Shakespeare and Kleist.” University of Washington, April, 2006.

“Sovereign Innocence: The Naïve Spectator in Friedrich Schiller’s Der Spaziergang ,” University of Chicago, January 25, 2006.

“Der virtuelle Bogen: Abgrund und Brücke in Friedrich Schillers Elegie Der Spaziergang,” Museum-Insel Hombroich, Neuss-Düsseldorf, June 30, 2005.

“Sublimation and Civilized Value: Dracula’s Legacy.” Humanities Institute, University of Minnesota, February, 2004.

“Ghost Medium: Transition and Transparency in C. D. Friedrich and F. W. Murnau,” Johns Hopkins University, April 19, 2002.

“The Moon, the Mail, and the Province of German Literature,” Reed College, October 2, 2001.

“Leinwand, Irrlicht: Zur Erforschung der Fläche in der Malerei und im Film,” University of Jena, January 2000.

“On Anamorphosis: Goethe’s Von Deutscher Baukunst," Columbia University, Nov. 5, 1999.

“Zeithorizonte: Zur Geographie der deutschen Literatur um 1848,” University of Bonn, July 2, 1999.

“Dracula and the Tides,” Johns Hopkins University, November 13, 1998.

“The Moon, the Mail, and the Province of German Literature,” Stanford University, May 11, 1998.

“The Spirit of the Letter in Fontane’s Effi Briest,” Duke University, January 23, 1998; University of Illinois-Chicago, February 16, 1998.

“Rilke und der nicht erwiderte Blick,” Deutsche Sommerschule am Pazifik, Lewis and Clark College, July 17, 1997.

“Emil Jannings, Falstaff, und das Schicksal des politischen Körpers,” Universities of Bonn and Potsdam, April 1995.

“From Lessing to Lumière: Space and the Prehistory of Cinema,” University of Washington, February 1994.

“Local Knowledge and the Poetics of Detection,” University of Missouri, Columbia, February 1993.

“Military Ecology,” convention of the American Association of Teachers of German, Baden Baden, July 1992.

“Lessing, Freud and the Savage Mind: The Education of the Human Race,” University of California, Irvine, January 1990.

“The Raw and the Cooked: Kultur and its Ethnological Alternatives,” University of Wisconsin, Madison, May 1989.

“Fatherland: Goethe’s ‘Erlkönig’ and the Politics of Interpre­tation,” Berkeley, March 1988.

AWARDS

• Alexander von Humboldt Foundation

              Fellowship for Research in Bonn, Germany for Academic Year 1994-95, renewed fall 2004

• National Endowment for the Humanities

              Summer Seminar for College Teachers, "Modernity and its Discontents: Film, Literature and Myth of the               Weimar Republic," University of California, Berkeley, June - August, 1989 (Anton Kaes, Director)

• Rippey Innovative Teaching Award for 2002-04
• Recipient of the Reinhold Foundation Faculty Support Fellowship in Arts and Sciences, 2000
• Honorary Member of the Golden Key Honor Society, inducted 1997

DISSERTATIONS DIRECTED

Roberta Di Carmine, Representations of Africa in Italian Cinema, African Cinema, and Italian-African Autobiography, 2003. [Di Carmine recently accepted a tenure-track appointment in film studies at Western Illinois University.]

Lea Williams, Writing on All Fronts: Gender, Nationalism, and the Literature of War, 2001. [Willliams holds a tenure-track position at Presbyterian University in Clinton, South Carolina.]

Katherine Jenckes, Allegories of Writing History in Borges and Benjamin, 2001. [Jenckes holds a tenure-track assistant professorship at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. She previously held an assistant professorship at Rice University.]

Amanda Holmes, The Urban Uncanny: Literary Responses to Vienna and Buenos Aires, 2001. [Holmes has a tenure-track appointment at McGill University in Montreal]

John Walker, Mechanization and Caricature in the Aesthetics of Expressionism (co-directed with Wolf Sohlich), 1998. [Walker is principal of a private preparatory school in Northern California.]

Joachim Noob, Non Vitae sed Scholae discimus: Der Schülerselbstmord in der Literatur um die Jahrhundertwende, 1997 [Noob's dissertation was published under the same title by Carl Winter Universitätsbuchhandlung, Heidelberg.]

Lynn E. Ries, Nation and Culture, Culture and Nation: Kleist's Die Hermannsschlacht, Schiller's Wilhelm Tell and the Struggle for National Consciousness, 1995.

Hedwig Fraunhofer, Postpaternalism and the Fear of the Feminine: The Economic and the Erotic in Strindberg, Brecht, Giradoux, and Sartre, 1995 [Fraunhofer is a tenured associate professor in German and French at the University of Georgia and State College, Milledgeville, GA.].

Carsten Strathausen, At War with the Senses: Nazi Aesthetics and Cinematic Perception, 1995 [Strathausen is a tenured associate professor of German at the University of Missouri, Columbia. He is author of The Look of Things: Vision and Poetry around 1900 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003).]

Barbara Kratzer, Ambivalente Stimmen aus einer Kolonie: Deutsche Frauen in Südwestafrika (1893-1914), 1993 [Kratzer held a tenure-track position in German at Washington-Jefferson College before returning to Germany.]