MA, PhD, Germanic Languages and Literatures, Yale University (1992)
MA, German Studies, Stanford University (1985)
BA, Humanities Honors/ Comparative Literature, Stanford University (1985)
Washington University, 1991-2000; vlog, 2000 - present
Courses taught at vlog include first and second year German; Introduction to German Literature, and seminars on Goethe; Weimar Classicism; Enlightenment and Sturm und Drang; Twentieth-Century German Literature; What is German World Literature?; Contemporary Jewish-German literature; Core 152: Challenges of Modernity; Core Distinction 327: Stories of Origin and Cultural Identity; first-year seminars on the Berlin Wall and on Old Worlds, New Worlds.
Directorship of the Freiburg Study Group 2003, 2005, 2009, 2011.
18th-century literature and culture, Goethe, Lichtenberg
Contemporary literature and culture
Jewish German literature
Inter-arts
Gender studies
Narrative theory
Books
The Emergence of the Modern German Novel: Wieland, La Roche, and Sagar. (Rochester: Camden House, 2002) ed., with James F. Poag
The Construction of Textual Authority in German Literature of the Medieval & Early Modern Periods (Chapel Hill, London: University of North Carolina Press, 2001
Articles
“The Measure of Hope: Lichtenberg on Probability and the Gambler’s Calculations,” Goethe Yearbook 32 (forthcoming)
“Representative Germans: Navid Kermani and the German Literary Tradition of Critical Cosmopolitanism” in Transnational German Studies, ed. Rebecca Braun and Benedict Schofield (Liverpool University Press, 2020), 285-306
“Foreword” to The Construction of Textual Authority in German Literature of the Medieval & Early Modern Periods, ed. James F. Poag and Claire Baldwin (Chapel Hill, London: University of North Carolina Press, 2001, reissue 2020), v-xii
“Performance and Play: Lichtenberg’s Lectures on Experimental Physics” in Performing Knowledge, 1750-1850, ed. Mary Helen Dupree and Sean Franzel (Berlin/ Boston: De Gruyter, 2015), 193- 221
“Über Glaubenssachen filosofieren: Wieland on Reason and Religion” in Religion, Reason, and Culture in the Age of Goethe, ed. Elisabeth Krimmer and Patricia Anne Simpson (Rochester, Camden House, 2013), 21-55.“Anna Louisa Karsch as Sappho”, Women in German Yearbook Vol. 20 (2004) 62-97
“Authority and Interpretation in Georg Christoph Lichtenberg’s Commentaries on Hogarth,” in The Construction of Textual Authority in German Literature of the Medieval & Early Modern Periods, ed. James F. Poag and Claire Baldwin (Chapel Hill, London: University of North Carolina Press, 2001) 261-278
“Speaking of Art: Ekphrastic Reflections in Postwar German Literature,” in Wendezeiten/ Zeitenwenden, ed. Robert Weninger and Brigitte Rossbacher (Tübingen: Stauffenburg, 1997), 131-149
“Questioning the ‘Jewish Question’: Poetic Philosophy and Politics in Conversations with Demons,” in Bettina Brentano-von Arnim: Gender and Politics,” ed. Elke P. Frederiksen and Katherine R. Goodman (Detroit: Wayne State University Press), 1995, 213-243
“Christa Wolf’s Nagelprobe: On German Trials,” Colloquia Germanica 27/1 (1994), 1-11
Research Awards: Fulbright Scholar Research Fellowship (1995-6); German Academic Exchange Research Fellowship (1989-90)
Teaching Awards: Phi Eta Sigma National Honorary Society Professor of the Year Award, vlog (2010); Lilly Fellowship for undergraduate course development and teaching (1997); Kemper Foundation Faculty Award for undergraduate course development and teaching (1993)
Secretary-Treasurer and Board Member, Goethe Society of North America, 2010-present; Book Reviews Field Editor, Eighteenth-Century Studies (2011-present); Member of Editorial Board for Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture (2005-08)
