RESEARCH | german

Research.

Cultural studies. My transdisciplinary work in German-speaking cultural studies includes film studies, memory studies, intellectual history, cultural history, GDR studies, and decolonization. In my research, I draw upon research methods and theoretical frameworks from a variety of fields, including literary hermeneutics, critical historiography, ethnography, translation studies, and various schools of critical theory. My research frequently incorporates a reflexive critique of canonical scholarship.
19th to 21st-century literature. I am especially interested in how literary works of the period 1848-1990 (Vormärz to German reunification) serve as anchor points for mapping broader social movements (e.g., nationalism, Vergangenheitsbewältigung, die Wende). My course, "The Author as Public Intellectual," introduces upper-division German students to movements, themes and research methods in this area.

Translation studies. My research takes translation as an analytical framework for examining how discourses are transformed or "rewritten" (in André Lefevere's sense) across historical ruptures or cultural boundaries. My work on the historiography of German Volkskunde, for instance, considers the translation of historiographic tropes across succeeding social-political ruptures in and surrounding the discipline in the FRG, GDR, and reunified Germany.

History of science. My interest in the history, philosophy, and sociology of science spans from Popper and the Vienna Circle to Bachelard's epistemic ruptures, Lepenies' social historiography of science, and Latour's laboratory studies. My research in this area focuses on the history of German cultural anthropology, folklore studies and linguistics, and dovetails analytically with the critical historiography of Hayden White and his interpreters.

Cultural anthropology. I hold an M.A. in cultural anthropology from Rice University, where I studied under George E. Marcus, Stephen A. Tyler, James D. Faubion, and other scholars associated with the "writing culture" critique that transformed the methods, scope, and ethics of ethnography. I continue to apply an "ethnographic eye" in my German Studies research and teaching. In my position between the two fields, I advocate for collaboration between US-based German Studies scholars and German cultural anthropologists.