Overview
Paul Fleming is the L. Sanford and Jo Mills Reis Professor of Humanities and the former Taylor Family Director of Cornell’s Society for the Humanities (2017-2024).
As Professor of Comparative Literature and German Studies, he has published the monographs Exemplarity and Mediocrity: The Art of the Average from Bourgeois Tragedy to Realism (2009) and The Pleasures of Abandonment: Jean Paul and the Life of Humor (2006) along with edited volumes on Hans Blumenberg, Siegfried Kracauer, the scholars around Stefan George, and Ulrich Peltzer. He has translated Peter Szondi’s Essay on the Tragic (2002) and Hans Blumenberg’s Care Crosses the River (2010) as well as co-translated Blumenberg’s The Saint Matthew Passion (2022).
He edits the book series “Signale” in Cormell University Press, co-edits the journal New German Critique, and serves on the boards of diacritics and the book series Paradigms: Literature & the Human Sciences in de Gruyter Press.
Fleming has published widely on close reading, distant reading, gestures in text, precarity and the new life on the road, dilettantism, notions of humor, Critical Theory, and much more. Recent graduate seminars include “Critical Theory and American Black and Queer Thought,” “Prophetic Realisms: Literature and the Shape of Things to Come,” and “Writing Revolution 1830-1848.” In general, his teaching covers eighteenth and nineteenth century German and European literature, especially the novel; aesthetics and hermeneutics from 1750 to the present; and Critical Theory.
Office Hours
By appointment
Research Focus
Publications
Books
- Exemplarity and Mediocrity: The Art of the Average from Bourgeois Tragedy to Realism (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2009).
- The Pleasures of Abandonment: Jean Paul and the Life of Humor (Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2006).
Book Translations
- Hans Blumenberg, The Saint Matthew Passion (Cornell: Cornell University Press, 2022)
- Hans Blumenberg, Care Crosses the River (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2010)
- Peter Szondi, An Essay on the Tragic (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002).
Selected Articles
- “Where to Begin?” a special section on Close Reading, in: symploke 32 (forthcoming)
- “Reading for the Gesture,“ in Internationalen Archiv für Sozialgeschichte der Deutschen Literatur, November 2023, 231-240.
- “The End of the Road: New Nomads after the American Dream,” Im Fuhrpark der Literatur, Festschrift for Eva Geulen, Wallstein Verlag 2022
- “Ein Bund von Sternen: Konstellation bei Kommerell,“ Lektürepraxis und Theoriebildung: Zur Aktualität Max Kommerells, Wallstein Verlag, ed. Christoph König (April 2018)
- “Tragedy, for Example: Distant Reading and Exemplary Reading (Moretti),” New Literary History, special edition “For Example” (Fall 2017)
- “Dilettantenkunsthochschule,” in Neue Rundschau, special edition on “Strategischer Dilettantismus” ed. U. Wirth (Fall 2017)
- “Witz,” Handbuch: Psychoanalyse und Literatur, eds. F. Berndt and E. Goebel, Berlin: De Gruyter (Fall 2017)
- “Verfehlungen: Hans Blumenberg and the United States,” New German Critique (Fall 2017)
- “Secret Germany / Crooked Germany: Ernst H. Kantorowicz.” Telos special issue on Stefan George “The Poet and the University: Stefan George among the Scholars” (Fall 2016)
- “Beside Oneself: Parapraxis as a Paradigm of Everyday Life (Freud).” in Between Exemplarity and Singularity: Literature, Philosophy, Law, eds. A. Haverkamp, M. Lowrie, S. Luedemann, Routledge Press, 2015.
- “The Art of Flirtation: Simmel’s Coquetry without End.” In Flirtations: Rhetorics and Aesthetics this side of Seduction, eds. D. Hofmann-Schwartz, B. N. Nagel, L. Stone. New York: Fordham University Press, 2015.
- “Belatedness: A Theory of the Epic.” in MLN: A Festschrift for Rainer Nägele (2014)
- “Vom Kasus zum Fall: Heyses ‘Auf Tod und Leben’ und Storms ‘Ein Bekenntnis’.” In: Wirklichkeit und Wahrnehmung: Neue Perspektiven auf Theodor Storm. Zeitschrift für Germanistik, Neue Folge, Bd. 27. eds. E. Strowick and U. Vedder (2013).
- “Bodies. Ernst H. Kantorowicz.” In Escape to Life. German Intellectuals in New York. A Compendium on Exile after 1933, eds. Eckart Goebel and Sigrid Weigel, Berlin/ New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2012
“On the Edge of Non-Contingency: Lifeworld and Anecdotes,” a special Telos issue on Hans Blumenberg (Spring 2012)
- “Kannitverstan: The Contingent Understanding of Anecdotes.” In Oxford German Studies (Special issue on Johann Peter Hebel) vol. 40 (1), 2011, pp. 72-81.
- “The Perfect Story: Anecdote and Exemplarity in Linnaeus and Blumenberg.” In Thesis 11 (Special issue on Hans Blumenberg) vol. 104 (1), 2011, pp.72-86.
- “Dream Chamber: Poe, Baudelaire, Benjamin.” In Zeitschrift für deutsche Philologie, 4/2010, pp. 579-92.
- “The Promises of Childhood: Autobiography in Goethe and Jean Paul.” In Goethe-Yearbook, vol. 14 (2007), pp. 27-37.
- “Forgetting – Faust: Adorno and Kommerell.” In Adorno and Literature, eds. David Cunningham and Nigel Mapp. London: Continuum, 2006, pp. 133-44.
- “Die üblichen Verdächtigen. Das Bild des Kriminellen bei Quetelet und Galton.” In Intellektuelle Anschauung. Figurationen von Evidenz zwischen Kunst und Wissen, eds. Sibylle Peters and Martin Schäfer. Bielefeld: transcript Verlag, 2006, pp. 225-38.
- “Kill Kiddo. Superman und die Maske der Mittelmäßigkeit.” In Unfinished Business. Quentin Tarantinos Kill Bill und die offenen Rechnungen der Kulturwissenschaft, eds. Achim Geisenhanslüke and Christian Steltz. Bielefeld: transcript Verlag, 2006, pp. 173-81.
“The Secret Adorno.” In Qui Parle 15.2 (Fall 2005), pp. 97-114.
“Am Rande: Verlassenheit und Lust. Robert Minders Aufsätze zu Jean Paul.” In Kultur, Literatur und Wissenschaft in Deutschland und Frankreich. Zum 100. Geburtstag Robert Minders, eds. Albrecht Betz and Richard Faber. Würzburg: Könighausen & Neumann, 2004, pp. 279-88.
- “Mikroskopische Belustigungen: Jean Paul und die Selbstbehauptung der Kleinen.” In “Für viele stehen, indem man für sich steht.” Formen literarischer Selbstbehauptung in der Moderne, eds. Eckart Goebel and Eberhard Lämmert. Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2004, pp. 50-62.
- “June 10, 1796: An Alien Fallen from the Moon.” In The New History of German Literature, eds. David Wellbery et al. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2004, pp. 465-70.
- “Die Moderne ohne Kunst: Max Kommerells Gattungspoetik in Jean Paul.” In Max Kommerell: Leben – Werk – Aktualität, eds. Walter Busch and Gerhart Pickerodt. Göttingen: Wallstein, 2003, pp. 54-73.
- “Paragramm: Grimmelshausens Poetik der Unbeständigkeit.” In Die Endlichkeit der Literatur, eds. Eckart Goebel and Martin von Koppenfels. Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2002, pp. 35-49.
- “Das Gesetz: Hölderlin und die Not der Ruhe.” In Hölderlin-Jahrbuch (2000/01), pp. 273-92.
“The Crisis of Art: Max Kommerell and Jean Paul’s Gestures.” In Modern Language Notes, vol. 115, no. 3 (2000), pp. 519-43.
