MARTIN KLEBES received his Ph.D. in Comparative Literary Studies in 2003 from Northwestern University. He taught at Kenyon College and at the University of New Mexico before coming to Oregon in 2007.

He is the author of Wittgenstein’s Novels (Routledge, 2006), and translator of Ernst-Wilhelm Händler’s debut collection of stories, City with Houses (Northwestern University Press, 2002). He also translated several chapters in a collection of writings by Hannah Arendt, entitled Reflections on Literature and Culture (Stanford University Press, 2007). Other recent publications include a trio of articles on W.G. Sebald, an essay on Steve Reich’s minimal music and its relationship to memory and history, and an article on Wilhelm Dilthey’s pursuit of his idea of the Geisteswissenschaften (for full citations click on the Curriculum Vitae button above).

Martin’s research focuses on the interrelation between literary and philosophical texts from the Enlightenment to the present, with particular emphasis on the German tradition, but also including French and American critical thought and contemporary texts, novels in particular. His current project concerns the development of discourses of terror from the French Revolution through its reverberations in 19th-century Germany to 20th- and 21st-century textual instances of ‘terrorism’ in Germany and the U.S.

Martin is also a co-founding member of the editorial board of the electronic journal parapluie that went online in 1997. Guided by the belief that any analysis of culture must participate in the very cultural process which it addresses, parapluie has been publishing essays written in German on cultural phenomena, arts, and literature that are intended for a readership beyond that of more specialized academic journals.

One of his favored modes of transportation is his single-speed moutain bike, but he also likes to go for the occasional leisurely drive.