Thomas Pfau

Thomas Pfau
Contact Info:
Office Location:  502 Allen Building
Office Phone:  (919) 681-3098, (919) 684-2741
Email Address:   send me a message
Web Page:   http://www.duke.edu/web/secmod/cv.html

Teaching (Spring 2012):

  • Xtianthe 220.02, THEOLOGICAL TOPICS Synopsis
    Tba, M 06:15 PM-08:45 PM
  • English 271cs.01, THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF BELIEF Synopsis
    Friedl bdg 126, M 06:15 PM-08:45 PM
  • German 322.02, GERMANIC SEMINAR Synopsis
    Old chem 119, W 04:40 PM-07:10 PM

Education:

  • Ph.D. State University of New York at Buffalo, 1989
  • M.A. University of California at Irvine, 1985
  • BA University of Constance, Germany, 1982
Specialties:

19th Century Literature
Critical Theory
Literary History & Criticism
Research Interests:

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 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), he has just completed a study of English and German Romanticism, entitled Romantic Moods: Paranoia, Trauma, and Melancholy, 1794-1840.

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

  • Selin Ever
  • Magdalena Zurawski
  • Lynda Nyota
  • Erin Allingham
Recent Publications   (More Publications)

  1. "Locke's Desire / Shaftesbury's Sentiment: Empiricism Conquers the Will." Romanticism and the Emotions. Ed. R. Sha and J. Faflak. Johns Hopkins University Press, 2012.  [author's comments]
  2. "The Appearance of Stimmung: Play as Virtual Rationality,”." Stimmung. Zur Wiederkehr einer ästhetischen Kategorie. Ed. Anna-Katharina Gisbertz. Wilhelm Fink Verlag, March, 2011.
  3. T. Pfau. ""William Paley"." Blackwell Encyclopedia of Romantic Literature, 4 vols.. Ed. Frederick Burwick, Nancy Goslee, et al.. Blackwell, 2011. 
  4. T. Pfau. ""Bildungsroman"." Blackwell Encyclopedia of Romantic Literature Ed. Frederick Burwick, Nancy Goslee, et al.. Blackwell, (2011)
  5. T. Pfau. Paul Fry, Wordsworth and the Poetry of What We Are.  Modern Philology 108.3 (2011): 191-94.

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