Thomas Pfau

Contact Info:

Fall 2012 - Spring 2013: on sabbatical at the National Humanities Center

Office Location:	502 Allen Building
Office Phone:	(919) 681-3098, (919) 684-2741
Email Address:
Web Page:	http://www.duke.edu/web/secmod/cv.html

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.  review of Tilottama Rajan, Romantic Narrative (Johns Hopkins UP, 2010).  The Eighteenth Century: Theory & Interpretation (July, 2013).  [abs]
2. "Rethinking the Image (with some reflections on G. M. Hopkins)." Yearbook for Comparative Literature  (April, 2013)
3. "A Note on the pre-History of European Nihilism: Eroticism and Damaged Life in Don Giovanni." andererseits: Yearbook of Transatlantic German Studies 2 (2013)  forthcoming
4. "Rational Theology and the Catholic Critique of Modernity, 1780-1830." The Oxford Handbook on European Romanticism. Ed. Paul Hamilton (Kings C, London).  2013.  forthcoming
5. T. Pfau. Re/Minding the Modern: Human Agency, Intellectual Traditions & Responsible Knowledge. University of Notre Dame Press, 2013. (In production; expected publication date, September 2013 (MS length: 295,000 words))