Carmen Bartl, Ph.D. candidate
Received her first B.A. in German, English and Swedish literature from the University of Bucharest, Romania with a thesis on the melancholy of Georg Büchner's texts. With a 5-year stipend from the Polish government, she then completed another B.A. and an M.A. in Comparative Literature at the Jagiellonian University of Cracow, with theses, respectively, on the intertwining of allegory and grotesque in the dramas of the Polish avantgarde writer S.I. Witkiewicz, and on the death drive permeating his novels. Her interests include critical theory, cultural anthropology, psychoanalysis, theories of identity. Her dissertation project will address the rhetorics of surplus in German philosophy and literature from Kant to Freud. Carmen is also a translator of fiction and non-fiction books from Swedish, German, or English into either Romanian or Polish. Most recently she has translated Friedrich Schlegel's "Fragmente" into Polish (made possible by a grant from the Jagiellonian University) and is now working on the Romanian translation of Norman Davies' "God's Playground", supported by the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Jerome Bolton, Ph.D. candidate,
Received his MA in German Studies from the University of Colorado at Boulder, where he wrote his master’s thesis on Theodor Adorno and the cultural significance of race and jazz during and after the Weimar Republic. His current research interests include: Nietzsche, the philosophy of music, the Frankfurt School and Critical Theory, and 19th and 20th Century German literature and culture.
Lydia Butt, Ph.D. candidate
Lydia entered the program in 2006 after receiving her MA in German and Media and Communication Studies from the University of Göttingen. She also studied at the University of California at Berkeley, supported by a Fulbright Grant, and was a visiting doctoral student at the University of Zurich. Her interests include 18th and 19th century German literature, aesthetic theory, drama and theatricality, and literature and other media. She is currently working on her thesis entitled “Die Inszenierung der Einbildung. Imagination und Drama im Werk Lessings, Goethes und Schillers.” She is grateful to the organizers and participants of NYU’s “Forum on Forms of Seeing” (2008/09) and the Doctoral Colloquium of the Lessing Society in Wolfenbüttel (2009) for the chance to present and discuss early drafts of her dissertation research.
Lydia discovered her love for teaching while serving as a Teaching Assistant for the first time in Fall 2007. She has since been teaching a seminar on G.E. Lessing (“Drama, Dramaturgy, Aesthetics”) as well as several German language classes on both the Elementary and Intermediate level. In 2008, she was among the recipients of NYU’s “Outstanding Teaching Assistant Award.”
Thorsten Carstensen, Ph.D. candidate
Thorsten Carstensen entered the graduate program at NYU in 2007. He has published articles on Peter Handke, Hermann Broch and J.M. Coetzee. He is the co-editor of the new English translation of Hans Fallada's novel "Wolf unter Wölfen" ("Wolf Among Wolves," Melville House, 2010), for which he also provided an afterword. His most recent publications include an essay on the cinema of Wes Anderson and book reviews on Thomas Bernhard and Weimar cinema. Thorsten is currently completing his dissertation on Peter Handke's refashioning of the epic, investigating the relationship between geology, mythmaking and Romanesque architecture. His other research interests include German Modernism (Ernst Jünger, Thomas Mann) and the enduring relevance of Romantic thought in contemporary German and American fiction.
Thorsten received his Master’s degree in German Literature from the Universität Freiburg with a thesis on narration and representation in Hermann Broch’s novel "Die Schlafwandler". He is the recipient of Fulbright, DAAD, Max Kade and Baden-Württemberg grants that enabled him to study and research at the University of Michigan, Yale University and the University of Canterbury, Christchurch. Thorsten spent the fall of 2010 at the Universität Zürich, where he taught a seminar on "Peter Handke and the adventure of storytelling."
Dan Childers, Ph.D. candidate
Research Interests: Paradoxical responses to phenomenology from Musil, Proust, and Heidegger to Wittgenstein and de Man. Role of narrative in hermeneutics and ethics. The crisis of identity and secularisation in the Goethezeit and the Romantics. Psycho-analysis, Freud, and Lacan: the nature of desire, pleasure, and the economy of Besetzung from the Entwurf Einer Psychologie onwards; mourning, object-loss, and the reality-principle; Wortvorstellung/Sachvorstellung, consciousness and attention. Theories of Translation. Stifter and Realism. Computational linguistics, semantics, lexicography and ontology. Early German Cinema. Film Theory.
Jacob Denz, Ph.D. candidate
Received his AB in Germanic Languages and Literatures from Princeton University in 2010, where his thesis examined the question of embodiment in Bertolt Brecht's Lehrstuecke in relation to psychoanalytic, phenomological, and historical materialist accounts of agency. General areas of interest include Marxism and cultural studies, critical theory, feminism, queer studies, phenomenology, and the uses of "antiquity" in philosophical writing.
Lauren Faraone, Ph.D. candidate
Studied German literature and philosophy at the University of Colorado, Boulder (2001-2004), and then at Johns Hopkins University (2005-2007) and is an associate in the Graduiertenkolleg,“Figur des Dritten” (2006). Research interests include late 19th C. and early 20th C. literature & poetry, aesthetic theory, rhetoric, and hermeneutics. Dissertation project will be a study of the figure of childhood in modern literature and memoir (e.g., Stifter, Rilke, Benjamin, Baudelaire, Adorno, etc.) as a reflection of “the modern”, with a focus on problems of language & understanding, emerging juridical discourses, issues of autonomy and sovereignty, and the “turn” to childhood in the Avant-garde (Klee, Kandinsky, etc.).
Susanne Fuchs, Ph.D. candidate
Susanne entered the doctoral program in 2010, after studying German Literature and Cultural Studies at the University of Vienna and the University College London. Her master’s thesis, “Eternal Youth: Picture and Poetry in Faust II” explores the figure of puer aeternus and its utilization as personifications of poetry. She worked in publishing, journalism, and in several fields within cultural management. Interests: 18-20th century literature (pervious boundaries of fictitious realities), 20th century philosophy, ethics and theatre (encounter of I and Other).
Andrea Hacker, Ph.D. candidate
2000-2005 studied mediaevistik, linguistics, German literature and philosophy at Paris-Lodron-University, Salzburg and Humboldt University, Berlin. 2004 conducted research as part of master’s thesis award in New York. Received M.A. on ”Hass, Wahnsinn und Finsternis in der Prosa Rainald Goetz’“ in 2005. Current focus on psychoanalysis, drug culture, Austrian/German literature of the 20th century, philosophy of constructivism, Jewish mysticism (Kabbalah), structures of power (psychological principles and literary criteria of s/m) She is currently writing her dissertation with the preliminary title "Der Typus des Geistesmenschen an der Grenze zwischen Sinn und Wahnsinn: Georg Buechners Lenz, Thomas Bernhards Das Kalkwerk and Rainald Goetz' Irre."
Kurt Hollender, Ph.D. candidate
Kurt entered the doctoral program in 2011 after studying German literature at the Freie Universität Berlin, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and the Georg-August-Universität Göttingen. Kurt earned his B.A. in Modern Languages and Literatures from Kenyon College (2006) and his M.A. in Germanic Languages and Literatures (2010) from the University of Illinois, where his thesis focused on political philosophy in Hans J. C. von Grimmelshausen’s baroque novel Simplicissimus. His research interests include German literature around 1900, literary theory, economics and literature, digital humanities, and early modernism.
Dania Hückmann, Ph.D. candidate
Received her BA in Comparative Literature and European Studies from New York University (2002) and her MA in Comparative Literature, German Literature and North-American Studies at the Freie Universität Berlin (2007). Her MA thesis focused on the idea and implications of borders in Jean Améry’s work as a means of testifying to his experience in Auschwitz and its aftermath. Her dissertation analyzes revenge in German Realism. She has organized the interdisciplinary workshop “Rhetoric of Testimony: Jean Améry and Primo Levi”, has published on Jean Améry, Thomas Bernhard, Heinrich von Kleist and co-authored an article on 9/11 and the NYU community for Traumatology. Her research interests include theories of trauma and violence, 20th Century German Literature, Realism, Jean Améry, Heinrich von Kleist and Theodor Fontane.
Marcus Hurwitz, MA candidate
Jonathan Kassner, Ph.D. candidate
Studied Philosophy, Comparative Literature and Modern History in Berlin and Paris (2003-2009). Received his M.A. from the Freie Universität Berlin in 2010. He wrote his master’s thesis (2009) in Philosophy on the correlation of anxiety and desire. Recently he published an essay on Walter Benjamin (“Im Kerkerkontinuum der Kreatur. Zu Walter Benjamins Ontologie im Ursprung des deutschen Trauerspiels”, in: M. Schaub (Ed.), Grausamkeit und Metaphysik. Figuren der Überschreitung in der abendländischen Kultur, Bielefeld: transcript, 2009). Interests: Critical Theory, Poststructuralist Thought, Aesthetics, German Idealism, Psychoanalysis, Avantgarde Literature of the 20th century.
Alicja Kowalska, Ph.D. candidate
1998-2005 Studies in Cultural Analysis and Literature at the European University Viadrina (Frankfurt/Oder, Germany). 2003 Studies in French and English Literature at the University of Metz (France). 2001-2003 Scholar of the German Academic Foundation (Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes). 2005 M.A. in Cultural Analysis. Thesis: “Literary Quotations in Philosophical Texts. On the Relation between Literature and Philosophy in Stanley Cavell's Essay: Avoidance of Love: A reading of King Lear.” 2005 Took part in ”Studienkolleg zu Berlin“, a one year scholarship program of the German Academic Foundation. 2006 Associated to the Graduiertenkolleg “Lebensformen und Lebenswissen.” (Forms of Life and the Know How of Living) Frankfurt/Oder and Potsdam. Research Interests: Intersections of Literature and Philosophy. Literature in Philosophy. Autobiography and Philosophy. Media and Film Theory. Critical Theory.
Sean Larson, Ph.D. candidate
Studied Political Theory and Philosophy at the Ludwig-Maximilians Universität in Munich as well as German and Latin American Literature at the University of Florida, where his thesis explored the unfinished project of Adorno’s Negative Dialectics in the face of the Habermasian critique. Research interests include Lacan, Hegel, the Frankfurt School, Marxism and dialectics.
Barbara Natalie Nagel, Ph.D. candidate
Received her M.A. in comparative literature and history from Free University Berlin (2005) with a thesis on apathy in Italian neorealism (Cesare Pavese, Michelangelo Antonioni). Since fall 2008 she is a fellow of the DFG-Doctoral Program “Lebensformen und Lebenswissen”. Research Interests: German literature around 1800; Baroque as literary-historical problem; history and theory of rhetoric; law and literature; film and literature; psychoanalysis; theories of reading. Currently, she is finishing her dissertation “Der Skandal des Literalen. Barocke Literalisierungen bei Gryphius, Kleist, Büchner.”
Eric Trump, Ph.D. candidate
Studied: Spanish, German, English literature; MA in journalism. Background: teaching; journalism; bieothics. Research interests: post-war German literature and history; European intellectual history; Trans-Atlantic studies; bioethics. Eric Trump has worked as a journalist in the United States and abroad and in the field of bioethics. He is interested in perpetrators and victims.
Kevin Vennemann, Ph.D. candidate
Received his Magister from Freie Universitaet Berlin in 2006. Is the author of two novels (Nahe Jedenew (2005) and Mara Kogoj (2007), both Suhrkamp Verlag), the translator of a collection of essays from the New York literary magazine n+1 (Suhrkamp Verlag 2008) as well as of a forthcoming essay collection by the American writer Mark Greif.
He recently co-edited and co-annotated a new edition of Else Lasker-Schüler's play IchundIch (Jüdischer Verlag 2009) and has been a frequent contributor of radio features and essays on literature, visual art and modern architecture for German and Austrian public radio.
Kevin's scholarly interests include: intersections of theories of visual art and film with literature, aesthetics in exile, queer studies, writing on architecture and the modern city, Peter Weiss, Elfriede Jelinek, Siegfried Kracauer, the Frankfurt School, as well as writing from and about Israel and the Yishuv respectively.
James Wagner, Ph.D. candidate
Joshua Winchester, MA candidate
Earned his BA in Comparative Literature from New York University (2011) where he wrote his honors thesis on Jean-Luc Nancy’s theories of community in Kathy Acker's works, Blood and Guts in High School, Don Quixote, which was a dream, and Empire of the Senseless. Received the Senior Honors Thesis Research Grant from the department of Comparative Literature (2010), so that he could research Jacques Derrida’s early seminars at the University of California in Irvine. Regularly attended events, lectures, and seminars hosted by the Collège international de philosophie (CIPh) while researching in Paris (2010). Rigorously studied American, English, French, German, and Irish texts, both contemporary and otherwise, during his undergraduate education. Translates regularly, including Derrida’s essay “Devant la loi” for a Graduate seminar on Kafka (2008), and more recently Mikkel Borch-Jacobsen’s seminar “Écoute.” Currently researching the uses of anxiety, exhaustion, and apathy in German literature and philosophy from 1880 to 1930. General research interests include psychoanalysis, translation theory, continental philosophy, legal theory, cinema studies, French Theory, and the Frankfurt school. Research subjects span all different milieu, from pedagogy to plagiarism and the history of intellectual property rights.
Ruth Lauren Zisman, Ph.D. candidate
Entered the doctoral program in 2008. Ruth received her B.A. in English Literature and Philosophy at Vassar College (2004) and her M.A. in Humanities and Social Thought at New York University (2008). Ruth’s master's thesis examined Friedrich Nietzsche's essay, Über Wahrheit und Lüge im außermoralischen Sinne, as lens through which to read the relationship between truth and violence in philosophical, literary, and political discourses. Ruth's current research interests include: Nietzsche, Freud, Heidegger, Romanticism, early twentieth-century literature, deconstruction, psychoanalysis, and trauma studies. Ruth’s dissertation project seeks to locate and trace the place of the 'home front' in select works of Freud, Rilke, and Lou Andreas-Salomé and to explore the concepts of violence and trauma developed therein. In 2010, Ruth was the recipient of the College of Arts and Sciences "Outstanding Teaching Award." Beginning in Fall 2011, Ruth will serve as a "Visiting Instructor of Humanities" at Bard College, where she will teach courses in Philosophy and First Year Seminar.
