The Department of German Studies offers students a wide variety of opportunities to explore the language, literature and culture of German-speaking countries. Courses are offered in English translation as well as in German, with subjects ranging from medieval to contemporary literature and include studies of film, visual culture, intellectual history, music, psychology and women's studies. The department also offers opportunities to explore Dutch and Swedish language.

The department is home to New German Critique, a leading journal that is devoted to publishing research on German culture in the 20th and 21st centuries, with particular focus on the history and theory of literature, theatre, media, intellectual history and the graphic arts. Students also have the opportunity as part of Cornell's Study Abroad program to attend the renowned Berlin Consortium for German Studies. The department works closely with the U.S.A.-Interns program to provide qualified students summer internships with German companies and agencies. All Cornell students are eligible to apply for a Certificate in German Language Study, which formally recognizes their study beyond the third semester (GERST 2000) of German language in the Department of German Studies.

Department website

Isabel Avens

Graduate Student

Klarman Hall
imc37@cornell.edu

Departments and programs

James Webster

Goldwin Smith Professor Emeritus of Music

Klarman Hall
jcw4@cornell.edu
607/255-3611

Education

  • Ph.D., Princeton University

Departments and programs

Anne Chen

Undergraduate Coordinator

Klarman Hall

Departments and programs

David Bathrick

Professor Emeritus

Publications

Books (authored):

  • The Powers of Speech: The Politics of Culture in the GDR.  Lincoln, Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press. 1995
  • The Dialectic and the Early Brecht : An Interpretive Study of "Trommeln in der Nacht".  Stuttgart, Germany: Akademischer Verlag H.-D. Heinz. 1975

Books (edited):

  • Visualizing the Holocaust: Documents, Aesthetics, Memory.  Rochester, NY: Camden House. 2008
  • Modernity and the Text : Revisions of German Modernism.  New York: Columbia University Press.1989
Klarman Hall

Education

  • Ph.D., University of Chicago

Departments and programs

Susan Buck-Morss

Jan Rock Zubrow ’77 Chair Emerita in Government

Klarman Hall
sbm5@cornell.edu

Departments and programs

Links

Christian Metz

August Feodor Lynen Fellow

Klarman Hall

Departments and programs

Erik Born

Assistant Professor

Publications

Selected Journal Articles (Peer-Reviewed)

“German Media Studies: A Critical Update.” New German Critique 150 (2023): 5–24.

“Zeitlupe: Cinematic Technique and Literary Form in the Weimar Republic.” German Studies Review 44.3 (2021): 469–488.

“Some Omissions in the Universal Library: Kurd Lasswitz and the Emergence of Science Fiction.” Monatshefte 110.4 (Winter 2018): 529–551. doi: 10.3368/m.110.4.529

“Media Archaeology, Cultural Techniques, and the Middle Ages: An Approach to the Study of Media before The Media." Seminar: A Journal of Germanic Studies 52.2 (2016): 107–133. doi: 10.3138/seminar.52.2.2

Selected Book Chapters

“What was Time Axis Manipulation?” In Friedrich Kittler: Neue Lektüren, edited by Jens Schroeter and Till Heilmann. Berlin: Springer, 2022.

“Cinema Panopticum: Wax, Work, Waxworks.” In ReFocus: The Films of Paul Leni, edited by Martin Norden and Erica Tortolani. Edinburgh, UK: Edinburgh University Press, 2021.

“Notation: From Scrolls to Scores.” In Hans Richters Rhythmus 21. Schlüsselfilm der Moderne. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2012.

Selected Web-Based Publications

“Going Wireless in the Belle Époque.” Continent 7.1 (Spring 2018): 5–16.

“The Promise of Television.” The Promise of Cinema: German Film Theory, 1907–1933. Companion Website (October 2017).

Selected Translations

Florian Sprenger. “Environments of Experimentation and Epistemologies of Surroundings: John Scott Haldane’s Physiology and Biopolitics of the Living.” Grey Room 75 (Spring 2019): 6–35.

Timon Beyes and Jörg Metelmann, eds. The Creativity Complex. Translated by Erik Born and others. Bielefeld: transcript Verlag, 2018.

Kurd Lasswitz, “The Universal Library.” Mithila Review: The Journal of International Science Fiction & Fantasy 9 (September 2017).

Klarman Hall
193 Goldwin Smith Hall
erikborn@cornell.edu

Education

  • PhD, University of California, Berkeley, German Studies and Medieval Studies, Designated Emphasis in Film & Media Studies
  • BA, The University of Chicago, Fundamentals: Issues & Texts

Departments and programs

Links

Peter Uwe Hohendahl

Jacob Gould Schurman Professor Emeritus

Publications

  • Literaturkritik und Öffentlichkeit. München: Piper, 1974.
  • The Institution of Criticism. Ithaca : Cornell University Press, 1982.
  • A History of German Literary Criticism (Editor and Contributor). Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1988.
  • Building a National Literature. The Case of Germany 1830-1870. Ithaca : Cornell University Press, 1989.
  • Reappraisals: Shifting Alliances in Postwar Critical Theory. Ithaca : Cornell University Press, 1991.
  • Geschichte, Opposition, Subversion. Studien zur Literatur des 19. Jahrhunderts. Köln : Böhlau, 1993.
  • Prismatic Thought. Theodor W. Adorno. Lincoln, NE : University of Nebraska Press, 1995.
  • German Studies in the United States. A Historical Handbook, (Editor and Contributor). New York : Modern Language Association of America, 2003.
  • Heinrich Heine. Europäischer Schriftsteller und Intellektueller. Berlin : Erich Schmidt, 2008.
  • The Fleeting Promise of Art: Adorno's Aesthetic Theory Revisited.  Ithaca: Cornell UP, 2013.
  • Erfundene Welten: Relektüren zu Form und Zeitstruktur in Ernst Jüngers erzählender Prosa. Paderborn: Wilhelm Fink, 2013.
Klarman Hall
puh1@cornell.edu
607/255-8353

Departments and programs

Keeley Boerman

Department Manager & Graduate Field Assistant

Klarman Hall
183 Goldwin Smith Hall
kse6@cornell.edu
607/255-4047

Departments and programs

Geoffrey Carter W Waite

Associate Professor

Publications

  • Nietzsche’s Corps/e: Aesthetics, Politics, Prophecy, or, The Spectacular Technoculture of Everyday Life. Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press, 1996; Post-Contemporary Interventions, ed. Fredric Jameson and Stanley Fish). Second edition 1998.
  • “Heidegger, Schmitt, Strauss: The Hidden Monologue, or, Conserving Esotericism to Justify the High Hand of Violence.” Cultural Critique 69 (Spring 2008): 113-44.
  • “Lefebvre without Heidegger: Left-Heidegerianism qua contradictio in adiecto.” Space, Difference, Everyday Life: Reading Henri Lefebvre. Ed. Kanishka Goonewardena, Stefan Kipfer, Richard Milgram, Christian Schmid. (London: Routledge, 2008), 94-112.
  • “A Short Political Philology of Visceral Reason (A Red Mouse’s Long Tail).” Parallax 36 (July-September 2005): 8-27.
  • “Radio Nietzsche, or, How to Fall Short of Philosophy.” Gadamer’s Repercussions: Reconsidering Philosophical Hermeneutics. Ed. Bruce Krajewski. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004), 169-211.
  • “Salutations.” In the above anthology, 256-306.
  • “Hölderlin with Nietzsche in Two Wars, 1916–1946.” Nietzsche: Godfather of Fascism? On the Uses and Abuses of Philosophy. Ed. Jacob Golumb and Robert S. Wistrich. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002), 196-214.
  • “Nietzsche’s Baudelaire, or, The Sublime Proleptic Spin of His Politico-Economic Thought.” Representations 50 (Spring 1995): 14–52.
  • “Lenin in las meninas: An Essay in Historical-Materialist Vision.” History and Theory 35:3 (1986): 248-84.
Klarman Hall
183 Goldwin Smith Hall
gcw1@cornell.edu
607/255-8357

Departments and programs

Links

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