Research Interests:

My research examines the interface between literature and politics, philosophy, and the visual arts in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. I have published articles on iconic postwar writers including Heinrich Böll and Paul Celan, on literary institutions, such as Gruppe 47 and the Ingeborg Bachmann Preis, on theories of reading, and on the aesthetics and politics of early post-World War II literature. My recent focus has been on German-language writers who have contributed to transnational and global debates from the 1950s to the present.

Selected Publications:

“Literary Awards and the Practice of Aesthetic Judgment.” forthcoming in Journal of Austrian Studies, 45:3-4 (2012)

“Kunstbetrachtungen: Paul Celan über den Surrealisten Edgar Jené.” Der Betrachter ist im Text! Kunstrezeption in der deutschsprachigen Literatur nach 1945. ed. Sylwia Werner. Berlin: Trafo, 2011, 301-318.

“Gruppe 47: Literature, Politics, and the Political Economy of Postwar Publishing.” German Life and Letters, 62.4 (2009), 448-64.

“Dichten, Denken, Lesen: Theories of Reading in Paul Celan and Martin Heidegger.” The Germanic Review, 84.1 (2009), 59-83.

“Dimensions of Engagement:  Politics and Aesthetics in Heinrich Böll’s Early Fiction.” The German Quarterly  80.3 (2007), 350-67.

“Burned Bridges:  The Rise and Fall of the Former BBC Journalist Karl-Eduard von Schnitzler in East Germany.”  Yearbook of the Research Center for German and Austrian Exile Studies.  Amsterdam:  Rodopi, 2003, 159-76.