Kurt Beals

Kurt Beals

Associate Professor of German and Comparative Literature
Director of the Max Kade Center for Contemporary German Literature
Performing Arts Department (Affiliate)
PhD, University of California, Berkeley
research interests:
  • 20th- and 21st-Century German Literature and Culture
  • Translation Theory and Practice
  • Experimentalism and Avant-Gardes
  • Digital Humanities

contact info:

office hours:

  • On leave through Fall 2022
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mailing address:

  • Washington University
    CB 1104
    One Brookings Drive
    St. Louis, MO 63130-4899

Kurt Beals' research focuses on experimental movements in 20th-century and contemporary German literature, including Dada, Concrete poetry, and digital poetry.

Beals focuses on the ways that these movements incorporate, respond to, and reflect on contemporaneous developments in media technologies and information theory. His book Wireless Dada: Telegraphic Poetics in the Avant-Garde was published in 2019 by Northwestern University Press. He has published articles on authors including George Grosz, Paul Celan, Regina Ullmann, and Max Bense, in journals including New German Critique, The German Quarterly, and Dada/Surrealism. He is also co-editor of the volume Hans Richters Rhythmus 21: Schlüsselfilm der Moderne. In addition, Beals has translated a wide range of works from German into English, including a volume of poetry by the contemporary German poet Anja Utler, a collection of stories by the Swiss author Regina Ullmann, the volume Is that Kafka? 99 Finds by Reiner Stach, and a forthcoming volume of speeches and essays by Jenny Erpenbeck.


Beals earned his bachelor's degree in philosophy from Oberlin College, with a minor in German. He earned his master's degree and doctorate in German from the University of California, Berkeley. His dissertation research was supported by grants from the DAAD (Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst) and the ACLS (American Council of Learned Societies). Beals teaches general courses on German language and culture, as well as courses focused more specifically on experimental literature, media theory, and contemporary poetry.

Fall 2021 Courses

The Task of the Translator (German 493)

This undergraduate course offers an introduction to the theory and practice of translation, consisting of three main components. First, students will have the opportunity to translate a wide range of fictional and non-fictional texts from a variety of genres (short stories, journalism, academic prose). The focus will be on translation from German to English, but we will also translate from English to German. Second, we will read selections from key works on the theory of translation, from Martin Luther's sixteenth-century treatise on his Bible translation to twentieth-century essays by philosophers like Walter Benjamin, and we will consider important translation practices such as the film dubbing and subtitling. Third, we will analyze excerpts from some of the most celebrated literary translations of the past 200 years, including German translations of authors ranging from Shakespeare to J.K. Rowling as well as English translations of authors such as Goethe and Kafka. The course aims to give students a sense of the challenges and rewards of translation as well as a deeper understanding of the relationship between language, thought, and culture. Prerequisite: German 302D and German 340C/340D OR German 341/341D OR German 342/342D

    Literary Seminar: Media and Experiment (German 528)

    This graduate seminar covers innovative engagements with new media over roughly the past century, incorporating both theoretical frameworks and aesthetic responses. On the one hand, the course will cover major works of media theory from this period, particularly as they apply to literature, with an emphasis on German authors. Theorists are likely to include Benjamin, Heidegger, Adorno, McLuhan, Kittler, Siegert, and Krämer. On the other hand, we will consider how new media have shaped aesthetic practices, particularly in literary movements identified as experimental or avant-garde. The focus in this respect will be on German-language contributions to movements such as Dada and Concrete poetry, including the works of Raoul Hausmann, Max Bense, and Ferdinand Kriwet. In addition, we will consider works by authors such as Yoko Tawada that foreground the role of written media, and by contemporary writers and artists such as Julius Popp and Amaranth Borsuk who work at the intersection of textual and digital media. Readings can be done in German or English; discussion will be in English.

      Selected Publications

      Wireless Dada: Telegraphic Poetics in the Avant-Garde (Northwestern University Press, 2019).

      “High-Tech Heimat: Mountains and Mediation in Literature, Film, and Visual Art,” German Quarterly 92, no. 2 (2019)

      “‘Do the new poets think? It’s possible’: Computer Poetry and Cyborg Subjectivity,” Configurations (2018)

      “Dada: Art and the Discourse of Advertising,” New German Critique (2017)

      Regina Ullmann, The Country Road. New Directions, 2015. (Translation)

      Wireless Dada: Telegraphic Poetics in the Avant-Garde

      Wireless Dada: Telegraphic Poetics in the Avant-Garde

      Is That Kafka?

      Is That Kafka?

      The Country Road

      The Country Road