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Thomas Pfau, Eads Family Professor of English & Professor of German

Thomas Pfau
Contact Info:
Office Location:  502 Allen
Office Phone:  919-681-3098
Email Address: send me a message

Teaching (Spring 2024):

  • ETHICS 320S.01, NARRATIVE AND MORAL CRISIS Synopsis
    Reuben-Coo 329, MW 10:05 AM-11:20 AM
    (also cross-listed as ENGLISH 319S.01)
  • XTIANTHE 782.01, POETRY &/AS THEOLOGY I Synopsis
    Gray 110, M 04:55 PM-07:25 PM
  • ENGLISH 890S.03, SPECIAL TOPICS SEMINAR Synopsis
    Divinity TBA, M 04:55 PM-07:25 PM
Teaching (Fall 2024):

  • ENGLISH 290S.01, SP TOP IN LANG. & LIT Synopsis
    Gray 319, MW 11:45 AM-01:00 PM
  • XTIANTHE 890.02, THEOLOGICAL TOPICS Synopsis
    Divinity TBA, M 04:55 PM-07:25 PM
Office Hours:

Tuesday 11:00am - 12:00pm
Education:

Ph.D.State University of New York, Buffalo1989
M.A.University of California, Irvine1985
BAUniversity of Constance, Germany1982
Specialties:

19th Century Literature
Romanticism
Critical Theory
Novels
Literary History & Criticism
Eighteenth Century Literature
Nineteenth Century Literature
Critical Theory
Research Interests: 19th Century Literature; Romanticism

A native of Germany, Thomas Pfau began his academic career in 1980 as a student of History and Literature at the University of Constance. In 1982, he came to the U.S. where, at UC-Irvine, he joined the Graduate Program in Comparative Literature and Theory. In 1985, he continued his studies in the Comparative Literature Program at SUNY-Buffalo where he received his Ph.D. in 1989 with a dissertation on self-consciousness in Romantic poetry and theory (Wordsworth, Shelley, et al.). Since then, his main interests have broadened to include a large array of Romantic writers -philosophical, literary, historical- in England and Germany. His published work has explored such questions as paranoia as an mediation of historically induced anxiety (in Blake, Godwin and the 1794 Treason Trials); moral speech as performance (in Hegel and J. L. Austin); problems of historicism in contemporary Romantic Studies and the work of Walter Benjamin; the Romantic conception of textual interpretation (in Schleiermacher). Besides translating and editing two volumes of theoretical writings by Hölderlin and Schelling, he also edited two essay collections on English Romanticism . Following his 1997 book, Wordsworth's Profession (Stanford UP), his most recent study of English and German Romanticism, entitled Romantic Moods: Paranoia, Trauma, and Melancholy, 1794-1840 is forthcoming from Johns Hopkins University Press

Areas of Interest:

British & German Literature
Romanticism
Nineteenth-Century Music
Continental Philosophy and 19th C. Intellectual History

Keywords:

Europe • Germany • Britain • Literature • Romanticism

Curriculum Vitae
Current Ph.D. Students   (Former Students)

  • Thomas Manganaro  
Recent Publications   (More Publications)

  1. Pfau, T, Response to My Interlocutors, Modern Theology, vol. 40 no. 2 (April, 2024), pp. 478-495 [doi]
  2. Pfau, T, Incomprehensible Certainty Metaphysics and Hermeneutics of the Image (June, 2022), pp. 784 pages, ISBN 9780268202484  [abs]
  3. Aers, D; Pfau, T, Exploring Christian Literature in the Contemporary and Secular University, Christianity and Literature, vol. 70 no. 3 (September, 2021), pp. 263-275  [abs]
  4. Pfau, T, Kantian Aesthetics as "soft" Iconoclasm, Logos (United States), vol. 24 no. 3 (June, 2021), pp. 69-88 [doi]
  5. Pfau, T, Absolute Gegebenheit: Image as aesthetic Urphanomen in Husserl and Rilke, in Phenomenology to the Letter: Husserl and Literature (November, 2020), pp. 227-260, ISBN 9783110648386 [doi]  [abs]