Education:
- Ph.D., State University of New York, Buffalo, 1989
- M.A., University of California, Irvine, 1985
- BA, University of Constance, Germany, 1982
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. Recent Publications (More Publications)
Edited Volumes
- Pfau, T. Incomprehensible Certainty Metaphysics and Hermeneutics of the Image. , June, 2022 (784 pages pp.). [abs]
Articles in a Collection
- Pfau, T. "Response to My Interlocutors." April, 2024, 478-495. [doi]
- Aers, D; Pfau, T. "Exploring Christian Literature in the Contemporary and Secular University." September, 2021, 263-275. [abs]
- Pfau, T. "Kantian Aesthetics as "soft" Iconoclasm." June, 2021, 69-88. [doi]
- Pfau, T. "Absolute Gegebenheit: Image as aesthetic Urphanomen in Husserl and Rilke." Phenomenology to the Letter: Husserl and Literature November, 2020, 227-260. [doi] [abs]
Curriculum Vitae |