# Dissertations
**Source**: https://german.princeton.edu/department/research/dissertations
**Parent**: https://german.princeton.edu/
In Progress
Contested *Assemblage*: Remapping the Genealogy of Modern Landscape
Advisers:\
Johannes Wankhammer, Devin Fore
“The Persistence of Nostalgia: Modernity’s Pathology”
Adviser:\
Devin Fore
Verschollenheit: Figuren der Rechts(un)fähigkeit im Werk Kafkas
Advisers:\
Devin Fore, Barbara Nagel
“The Other Among Us: Early Modern German Discourses on Atypical Bodies, 1500-1770”.
Adviser:\
Joel B. Lande
“Manuscript and Medium: The Amanuenses of the Age of Goethe”
Adviser:\
Joel B. Lande
### 2025
Anat Benzvi
HOW TO WRITE ABOUT VALUE:
ROBERT MUSIL’S MAN WITHOUT QUALITIES
Advisers:\
Michael Jennings, Inka Mülder-Bach
Mareike Peschl
*Uncommon Realities: Cultural Perspectives on Illusions*
Advisers:\
Barbara Nagel, Thomas Macho
Ron Sadan
*Near Sense Literary Opacity through the Feuilleton Form In Texts and Manuscripts of Robert Walser*
Adviser:\
Barbara Nagel
*Kritische Theorie und DDR. Ein Versuch*
Adviser:\
Johannes Wankhammer
Current Position:
Researcher, Universität Gießen and Wien
### 2024
“Phenomenology of Video Games: Space, Time, and Perspective”
Advisers:\
Barbara Nagel, Paize Keulemans, Ervin Malakaj
Julian Petri
The Fiction of Agency and the Agency of Fiction: Kleist’s Poetics of Action
Adviser:\
Michael Jennings
### 2023
[Sonja Andersen](https://www.bc.edu/content/bc-web/schools/morrissey/departments/eastern-slavic-german.html)
Artistry, Agency, and the Everyday in Catharina Regina von Greiffenberg’s Works
Adviser:\
Barbara Nagel
Current Position:
Visiting Assistant Professor, Boston College Department of Eastern, Slavic, and German Studies
Mary Grayson Brook
“Mutterherz: Motherhood and Dedifferentiation in German Realism”
Adviser:\
Barbara Nagel
Current Position:
Princeton University Postgraduate Research Associate
Alexander Draxl
On *Schicksal*: The Return of Tragedy in Modernity
Advisers:\
Brigid Doherty, Joseph Vogl
Andreas Strasser
“Die Idylle in der Literatur der deutschen Nachkriegszeit”
Adviser:\
Devin Fore
### 2021
Andrew Dechet
The Economics of Sight: Early Photography and Commodity Capitalism, 1839-1867
Adviser:\
Michael Jennings
[Sebastian Klinger](https://www.new.ox.ac.uk/)
How to Do Sleep with Words: Sleep Experiments in Literature, Science, and Society, 1899–1929
Advisers:\
Michael Jennings, Joseph Vogl
Current Position:
Matthews Junior Research Fellow at New College, University of Oxford
[William Stewart](https://german.fas.harvard.edu/people/william-stewart)
*Mathematik ist immer Geist:* The Persistence of Mathematical Humanism and Aesthetic Rationality in Postwar Germany
Adviser:\
Devin Fore
Current Position:
College Fellow at Harvard University
### 2020
[Paul Babinski](https://religion.uga.edu/)
World Literature in Practice: The Orientalist’s Manuscript between the Ottoman Empire and Germany
Advisers:\
Nikolaus Wegmann, Anthony Grafton
Current Position:
Assistant Professor, Department of Religion, University of Georgia
Anton J. Bunia
Happy Endings: On Affirmative Art, PhD 2020
Advisers:\
Nikolaus Wegmann, Inka Mülder-Bach
Current Position:
European Commission
Sean Toland
Concert Halls & Weekly Journals. Fictive Music Criticism in German Romanticism
Advisers:\
Joel B. Lande, Inka Mülder-Bach
### 2019
Alice Christensen
Touching Temperature: Questions of Measurement and Feeling, 1870–1930
Advisers:\
Michael Jennings, Daniel Heller-Roazen
[Hannah Hunter-Parker](https://www.amherst.edu/people/facstaff/hhunterparker)
Old Books, New Times: Medieval Manuscripts and German Literature around 1800
Advisers:\
Sara S. Poor, Nikolaus Wegmann
Current Position:
Amherst College
[Carolina Malagon](https://www.linkedin.com/in/carolina-malagon-555743188)
Phlogisticated Relations: Lichtenberg and Ritter’s Readings of Chemistry
Advisers:\
Joseph Vogl, Michael Gordin
Current Position:
Freelancer NYC area
[Matthew Vollgraff](https://bilderfahrzeuge.hypotheses.org/matthew-vollgraff)
The Science of Expression: Ausdruckskunde and Bodily Knowledge in German Modernist Culture
Advisers:\
Michael Jennings, Sigrid Weigel
Current Position:
The Warburg Institute
### 2018
[Hannes Mandel](https://liberalarts.utexas.edu/germanic/faculty/hm23434)
Readers' Lore. Media, Literature, and the Making of Folk-Lore
Advisers:\
Nikolaus Wegmann, Thomas Y. Levin
Current Position:
University of Texas, Austin
[Jonathan Martin](https://lan.illinoisstate.edu/faculty-staff/profile.php?ulid=jsmart5)
The Romance of Love and Law: Marriage in Twelfth-Century German Romance
Adviser:\
Sara S. Poor
Current Position:
Illinois State University
### 2017
[Megan Ewing](https://lsa.umich.edu/german/people/faculty/mewing.html)
Rough Surfaces The Collage Works of Rolf Dieter Brinkmann
Adviser:\
Michael Jennings
Current Position:
University of Michigan
[Frederic Ponten](https://www.uni-regensburg.de/sprache-literatur-kultur/germanistik-ndl-2/mitarbeitende/frederic-ponten/index.html)
Collaborating with the Enemy Wartime Analyses of Nazi Germany
Advisers:\
Nikolaus Wegmann, Michael Gordin
Current Position:
Institut für Germanistik, Universität Regensburg,
### 2016
[Matthew Birkhold](https://germanic.osu.edu/people/birkhold)
Borrowing Werther: The Rise and Regulation of Fan Fiction in Eighteenth-Century Germany
Advisers:\
Christiane Frey, Joseph Vogl
Current Position:
Ohio State University
[Tanvi Solanki](https://uic.yonsei.ac.kr/main/academic.asp?mid=m03_01_01&act=view&uid=968&keyword=)
Reading as Listening: The Birth of Cultural Acoustics 1764–1803
Adviser:\
Nikolaus Wegmann
Current Position:
Yonsei University
### 2015
[Christian Jany](https://lit.ethz.ch/personen/person-detail.html?persid=191224)
Scenographies of Perception: Recasting the Sensuous in Hegel, Novalis, Rilke, Proust
Advisers:\
Brigid Doherty, Claudia Brodsky
Current Position:
Dozent, Literatur- und Kulturwissenschaft, ETH Zürich
[Mareike Stoll](https://www.matters-of-activity.de/en/members/604/dr-mareike-stoll)
Schools for Seeing: German Photobooks between 1924 and 1937 as Perception Primers and Sites of Knowledge
Advisers:\
Michael Jennings, Sigrid Weigel
Current Position:
weißensee school of art and design-Berlin and Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
### 2014
[Timothy Attanucci](https://www.germanistik.uni-mainz.de/abteilungen/neuere-deutsche-literaturwissenschaftgeschichte/dr-timothy-attanucci/)
Stories from Earth Adalbert Stifter and the Poetics of Earth History
Advisers:\
Joseph Vogl, Nikolaus Wegmann
Current Position:
Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz
Alana King
Mysticism & Confessional Conflict in Post-Reformation Germany: The Mystical Theology of Valentin Weigel (1533–1588)
Adviser:\
Sara S. Poor
[Jeffrey Kirkwood](https://www.binghamton.edu/art-history/people/profile.html?id=kirkwood)
*Cinema Non Facit Saltus*: Early German Film and the Cinematic Psyche
Adviser:\
Thomas Y. Levin
Current Position:
Binghamton University, State University of New York
[Peter Kuras](http://peterkuras.com/)
Early German Cinema and Dogmatic Jurisprudence
Adviser:\
Thomas Y. Levin
Current Position:
Self-employed
### 2012
[Margareta Ingrid Christian](https://german.uchicago.edu/people/margareta-ingrid-christian)
*Horror Vacui*: A Cultural History of Air Around 1900
Advisers:\
Michael Jennings, Joseph Vogl
Current Position:
University of Chicago
[Petra Spies McGillen](/department/people/alumni/graduate-alumni/petra-spies-mcgillen)
Original Compiler: Notation as Textual Practice in Theodor Fontane
Adviser:\
Nikolaus Wegmann
Current Position:
Dartmouth College
[Michael McGillen](https://home.dartmouth.edu/faculty-directory/michael-j-mcgillen)
Eschatology and the Reinvention of History: Theological Interventions in German Modernism, 1920–1938
Adviser:\
Michael Jennings
Current Position:
Dartmouth College
[Sarah Vandegrift Eldridge †](/department/people/alumni/graduate-alumni/sarah-vandegrift-eldridge)
Conceiving Generation: The Novel and the Nuclear Family around 1800
Advisers:\
Brigid Doherty, Joseph Vogl
### 2011
Mark Ilsemann
Creaturely Lives: Romanticism and the Rhetoric of Natural History
Adviser:\
Stanley Corngold
Current Position:
University of Virginia
### 2010
Lisa Cerami
Ineffable Histories: German Mysticism at the *Jahrhundertwende*
Adviser:\
Michael Jennings
[Kata Gellen](https://german.duke.edu/people/kata-gellen)
Earwitnesses: Noise in German Modernist Writing
Advisers:\
Michael Jennings, Daniel Heller-Roazen
Current Position:
Duke University
[Angela Holzer](https://www.dfg.de/en/dfg_profile/head_office/structure/contacts/index.jsp?id=484851525251)
Rehabilitationen Roms: Die Römische Antike in Der Deutschen Kultur Zwischen Winckelmann und Niebuhr
Adviser:\
Walter Hinderer
Current Position:
DFG Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft
### 2009
[Michael House](https://www.sc.edu/study/colleges_schools/artsandsciences/dllc/our_people/house_michael.php)
Grounding Fictions: Systematic Skepticism and Critical Doubt 1792–1807
Advisers:\
Michael Jennings, Nikolaus Wegmann
Current Position:
University of South Carolina
### 2008
[Florian Becker](https://berlin.bard.edu/people/profiles/florian-becker)
Epistemic Strategies in Twentieth-Century German Theatre: Brecht, Weiss, Müller
Adviser:\
Michael Jennings
Current Position:
Bard College
[Sonja Boos](https://gerscan.uoregon.edu/profile/sboos/)
The Archimedean Podium: Public Speeches in Postwar Germany, 1953–1967
Advisers:\
Brigid Doherty, Barbara Hahn
Current Position:
University of Oregon
[Jakob Norberg](https://german.duke.edu/people/jakob-norberg)
Sociability and Its Enemies Political Theory and Literature in West Germany After 1945
Adviser:\
Michael Jennings
Current Position:
Duke University
Tobias Wilke
Medien der Unmittelbarkeit: Dingkonzepte und Wahrnehmungstechniken 1918–1939
Adviser:\
Thomas Y. Levin
### 2007
[May Mergenthaler](https://germanic.osu.edu/people/mergenthaler.4)
Ein Unendlicher Dialog: Das Projekt Der Frühromantik In Den Athenaeums-Fragmenten
Advisers:\
Barbara Hahn, Arnd Wedemeyer
Current Position:
Ohio State University
[Sarah Pourciau](https://scholars.duke.edu/person/sarah.pourciau)
Explications: Etymology as Language Science, 1822–1941
Advisers:\
Michael Jennings, Barbara Hahn
Current Position:
Duke University
[Michael Taylor](https://berlin.bard.edu/people/profiles/michael-thomas-taylor)
Moving Bodies: Poetic Theatricality in the Late Enlightenment
Advisers:\
Barbara Hahn, Arnd Wedemeyer
Current Position:
Bard College Berlin
### 2006
[Alison Beringer](https://www.montclair.edu/profilepages/view_profile.php?username=beringera)
Word and Image in the *Klosterneuburger Evangelienwerk* Manuscript and Cultural Contexts for the Vernacular Volume I and II
Adviser:\
Michael Curschmann
Current Position:
Montclair State University
### 2005
[Nicola Gess](https://germanistik.philhist.unibas.ch/de/personen/nicola-gess/)
Gewalt Der Musik Literatur und Musikkritik UM 1800
Adviser:\
Thomas Y. Levin
Current Position:
Universität Basel
Matthew Niednagel
New German Documentary: The Discourse of Personal Non-Fiction in the Age of Media Convergence
Adviser:\
Thomas Y. Levin
### 2004
Marton Dornbach
Acts of Understanding: Spontaneous Subjectivity, Hermeneutic Receptivity, and the Consequences of German Idealism
Adviser:\
Stanley Corngold
Günter Schmidt
The Legacy of Chronos: Temporality of Revolution in Culture, Sciences, and Politics
Adviser:\
Thomas Y. Levin
Current Position:
University of Freiburg
Jutta Schmitt
Historical Fictions: Representations of Nineteenth-Century Jewish Salons
Adviser:\
Barbara Hahn
[Brian Tucker](https://wabash.edu/academics/profiles/home.cfm?site_folder=modern_languages&facname=tuckerb)
Reading Riddles: Rhetorics of Obscurity From Romanticism to Freud
Adviser:\
Stanley Corngold
Current Position:
Wabash College
### 2003
[Daniel Magilow](https://history.utk.edu/people/daniel-magilow/)
The Space Between the Pictures: Photography, Literature, and the Late-Weimar Photo-Essay
Adviser:\
Michael Jennings
Current Position:
University of Tennessee, Knoxville
### 2002
[Angela Borchert](https://www.uwo.ca/languages/about_us/borchert.html)
Gelegenheitsdichtung und Geselligkeitsdichtung an Herzogin Anna Amalias Hof in Weimar und in Tiefurt (1754–1807) I & II
Adviser:\
Walter Hinderer
Current Position:
Western University, Ontario, Canada
[James McFarland](https://as.vanderbilt.edu/grees/bio/james-mcfarland)
Constellation Nietzsche/Benjamin
Adviser:\
Michael Jennings
Current Position:
Vanderbilt University
Heidi Swanson
Written Friendship Hannah Arendt, Brigitte Reimann, Christa Wolf
Adviser:\
Barbara Hahn
Current Position:
Self-employed
[Daniel Jiro Tanaka](https://evolution-institute.org/profile/jiro-tanaka/)
Forms of Disenchantment: Kant and Neo-Kantianism in the Early Work of Walter Benjamin
Adviser:\
Michael Jennings
Current Position:
The Evolution Institute
### 2000
Ahmet Bayazitoglu
Motion Sickness: Literatures of Migration and Minority
Adviser:\
Barbara Hahn
Current Position:
The Hun School, Faculty
[Laura Deiulio](http://cnu.edu/people/ldeiulio/)
The Promise and the Body: Marriage in German Literature around 1800
Adviser:\
Stanley Corngold
Current Position:
Christopher Newport University
[Monique Rinere](https://www.moniquerinere.com/about)
Transformations of the German Novel: Simplicissimus in Eighteenth-century adaptations
Adviser:\
Michael Curschmann
Current Position:
Licensed Psychoanalyst