Teaching Faculty 2008-09
Miriam Bailin Associate Professor, English; Comparative Literature; Women and Gender Studies Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley Research interests: Victorian literature and culture; the novel; history of the book Recent Publication: Book "The Sickroom in Victorian Fiction: The Art of Being Ill. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1994; paperback ed. 2007. mlbailin@wustl.edu (314) 935-7132
Lionel Cuillé Lecturer, Romance Languages and Literatures (French); Comparative Literature; Interdisciplinary Program in the Humanities Agrégé de Lettres Modernes/Doctorate ENS Lettres et Sciences Humaines (Lyon) Research interests: 19th- and 20th-century European literature, especially poetry; avant-garde movements; literary theory; French cinema Recent Publications: Articles "La qualité différentielle: Ponge et le darwinisme ["The Differential Quality: Ponge and Darwinism"]. In Ponge, résolument. Lyon: ENS, 2004. 233-45. Study of Ponge's critique of social Darwinism and his articulation of the existentialist tensions between freedom and determinism. "Le palladium anti-nietzschéen: Ponge lecteur de Fautrier" ["The Anti-Nietzschean Palladium: Ponge, Reader of Fautrier"]. In Ponge, résolument. Lyon: ENS, 2004. 179-91. How Ponge, interpreting Fautrier's paintings of disfigured "hostages," subverts Nietzsche's Birth of Tragedy to establish the ethical imperative of art. “Recueil de circonstances ou manifeste du recueillement: Dix-neuf poèmes élastiques de Blaise Cendrars" ["Collection of Circumstances or Manifesto of Self-Consciousness: Blaise Cendrars's Nineteen Elastic Poems"]. Méthode! No. 2 (2002). 195-202. A study of how, through poetry, Cendrars assembled a community of exiled avant-gardist artists and rethought the ideology of the Italian Futurists. lcuille@wustl.edu (314) 935-9499
Robert Hegel Liselotte Dieckmann Professor of Comparative Literature Professor, Asian and Near Eastern Languages and Literatures (Chinese) Ph.D., Columbia University Research interests: Narrative forms and conventions in late imperial China (1500-1900); book culture, practices of reading and writing; legal writing; conceptions of right and wrong implicit in narrative texts of all forms; translation of crime reports from China's last dynasty Recent Publications: Books Ed. and trans. True Crimes in Eighteenth-Century China: Twenty Case Histories. Seattle: U of Washington P. (forthcoming, 2009). Narratives of capital crimes as presented to the emperor for approval: their investigation, testimony by all concerned, and the process of determining the appropriate punishments. Ed., with Katherine Carlitz. Writing and Law in Late Imperial China: Crime, Conflict, and Judgment. Seattle: U of Washington P, 2007. Collection of essays that explore conventions of legal writing; the reflection of law and legal practice in fiction; and the representation of changing administrative concerns in the crafting of legislation—all in response to varying reading communities, primarily in Qing (1644-1911) China. Reading Illustrated Fiction in Late Imperial China. Stanford:  Stanford UP, 1998. A study of the printing and circulation of fictional texts and the images that appeared in their illustrations, concentrating on the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries. Articles "Picturing the Monkey King: Illustrations and Readings of the 1641 Novel Xiyou bu.” In The Art of the Book in China. London: London University School of Oriental and African Studies, 2006 (Percival David Foundation Colloquies 23). 175-91. Study of llustrations in the novel's first edition that comment ironically on the narrative, suggesting an unusually close relationship between the illustrator and the text. "Dreaming  the Past: Memory and Continuity Beyond the Ming Fall.” In Trauma and Transcendence in Early Qing Literature. Ed. Wilt Idema, Wai-yee Li, and Ellen Widmer. Cambridge: Harvard U Asia Studies Center, 2005. 345-71. How imaginative reconstructions of the tragic end a previous golden age serve as metaphors for the trauma of dynastic change in fiction and plays by a circle of 17th-century Chinese writers. http://artsci.wustl.edu/~rhegel/ rhegel@wustl.edu (314) 935-7476 Click here for complete CV
Robert Henke Professor, Comparative Literature; Performing Arts (Drama) Chair, Performing Arts Department Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley Research interests: English and Italian Renaissance drama; orality and literacy; festival and ritual Recent Publications: Books Ed., with Eric Nicholson. Transnational and Transcultural Exchange in Early Modern Drama: Theater Crossing Borders. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate P (forthcoming, 2008).  A collection of transnational and comparative essays on early modern drama.  Performance and Literature in the Commedia dell’Arte. Cambridge UP, 2002.  Examines the interplay between oral and literary cultures in the commedia dell'arte.  Articles “Representations of Poverty in the Commedia dell’Arte.” Theatre Survey (forthcoming, 2008). “Comparing Poverty: The Fictions of the Poor in Ruzante and Shakespeare.” Comparative Drama 41:2 (2007): 193-217. http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~pad/faculty/henke.html rhenke@wustl.edu (314) 935-9336
Emma Kafalenos Senior Lecturer, Comparative Literature Ph.D., Washington University Research interests: Narrative theory; postmodernism; comparative arts; poetics Recent Publications: Books Narrative Causalities. Columbus: Ohio State UP, 2006. Explores the effect of context on interpretations of consequences and causes, and argues that narratives, by determining the contexts in which events are perceived, shape readers' interpretations of causality, whether the narratives being read are nonfiction or fiction. Ed. Narrative 9:2 (May 2001). Spec. issue on contemporary narratology. Articles "Effects of Sequence, Embedding, and Ekphrasis in Poe's 'The Oval Portrait.'" A Companion to Narrative Theory. Ed. James Phelan and Peter Rabinowitz. Blackwell Companions to Literature and Culture. Oxford: Blackwell, 2005. 253-68. On the possibilities for communication enabled by ekphrasis: the re-representation in words of a prior visual artwork. "The Power of Double Coding to Represent New Forms of Representation: The Truman Show, Dorian Gray, 'Blow-Up,' and Whistler's Caprice in Purple and Gold." Poetics Today 24:1 (May 2003): 1-33. Analysis of the representational possibilities of artworks contained within artworks in several media. "Reading Visual Art, Making–and Forgetting–Fabulas." Narrative 9:2, Spec. Issue: Contemporary Narratology (May 2001): 138-45. How we read photographs to make stories. emkafale@wustl.edu (314) 935-7613
Fatemeh Keshavarz Professor, Asian and Near Eastern Languages and Literatures (Persian); Jewish, Islamic, and Near Eastern Studies; Comparative Literature Chair, Dept. of Asian and Near Eastern Languages and Literatures Ph.D., London University Research interests: Persian poetry; theories of translation; Islamic mysticism; women's studies Recent Publications: Books Jasmine and Stars: Reading More Than Lolita in Tehran (Islamic Civilization and Muslim Networks). Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 2007. A blend of personal memoir and literary analysis intended to humanize Iran, a country masked from Western readership by political conflic, that critiques "New Orientalist narratives" which present  a lopsided and exaggerated view of Eastern cultures, a trend  best exemplified in the national best-seller Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi. Recite in the Name of the Red Rose: Poetics of Sacred Making in Twentieth-Century Iran. Columbia: U of South Carolina P, 2006. A study of reconfigurations of the concept of the sacred as reflected in modern Persian poetry. Reading Mystical Lyric: The Case of Jalal aI-Din Rumi. Columbia: U of South Carolina P, 1998. A study of mystical experience and its poetic expressions in Rumi’s lyric poetry. http://artsci.wustl.edu/~fatemeh fatemeh@wustl.edu (314) 935-5156
Lutz Koepnick Professor, Germanic Languages and Literatures; Film and Media Studies; Comparative Literature Ph.D., Stanford University Research interests: German literature and film; visual culture; media history and theory; critical theory and aesthetics Recent Publications: Books Co-ed., with Sabine Eckmann. Caught by Politics: Hitler Exiles and American Visual Culture. New York: Palgrave, 2007. A study of the aesthetics of German and European exile visual artists, designers, and directors in the US, such as Max Beckmann, George Grosz, Hans Richter, Peter Lorre, and Edgar Ulmer, and the response of American artists Walter Quirt, Jackson Pollock, and Robert Motherwell to the Europeanization of American culture. Co-ed., with Stephan Schindler. The Cosmopolitan Screen: German Cinema and the Global Imaginary, 1945 to the Present. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P, 2007. A look at German cinema’s enthusiasm for and anxiety about the blurring of cultural boundaries, World War II to the present. Framing Attention: Windows on Modern German Culture. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 2006. Explores different concepts of windows—both literal and figurative—in German visual culture, 19th century through the present. A new interpretation of evolving ways of seeing that characterize and define modernity. The Dark Mirror: German Cinema Between Hitler and Hollywood. Berkeley: U of California P, 2002. An investigation of how Nazi filmmakers appropriated Hollywood conventions and how German film exiles in the States reworked German cultural material to gain a place in the Hollywood studio system. Walter Benjamin and the Aesthetics of Power. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 1999. A study of Benjamin's seminal writings on the relationship between mass culture and fascism, including his influential critique of aesthetic politics; the changing role of popular culture in the 20th century; and the extension of Nazi aesthetics into contemporary culture. http://artsci.wustl.edu/~lkoep/ koepnick@wustl.edu (314) 935-4350
William Layher Assistant Professor, Germanic Languages and Literatures; Comparative Literature Ph.D., Harvard University Research interests: Medieval German literature; heroic poetry; mythology; medieval Scandinavian literature; German and Scandinavian drama Recent Publications: Book Co-ed., with Gerhild Sholz Williams. Consuming News: Newspapers and Print Culture in Early Modern Europe, 1500 – 1800. Amsterdam: Rodopi (forthcoming 2009). Studies of media revolutions (print, early newspapers) and cultural response (an interest in “news” and information networks) in the Early Modern period. Articles "The Big Splash: Endrhyme and Innovation in Medieval Scandinavian Poetics.” Scandinavian Studies. (forthcoming). Examines the use and function of end-rhymed verse in Old Norse and Old Swedish literature. “Elephants in the Garden: On Wild Beasts and Wlwalla in the Old Swedish Dikten om kung Albrecht.” Lärdomber oc skämptan [Didacticism and Entertainment]: Medieval Swedish Literature Reconsidered. Ed. Massimilliano Bampi and Fulvio Ferrari. Uppsala: Svenska Fornskrift-Sällskapet (forthcoming). A study of beast allegory and political propaganda in 14th-century Sweden. “Caught Between Worlds: Gendering the Maiden Warrior in Old Norse.” Women and Medieval Epic. Ed. Sara Poor and Jana Schulman. New York: Palgrave, 2007. 267-97. Based on saga texts, a look at the father/daughter dynamic in the medieval Norse warrrior-woman archetype. “Siegfried the Giant: Heroic Representation and the Amplified Body in the Heldenbuch of 1479.” Kulturen des Manuskriptzeitalters [Culture in the Manuscript Era].  Ed. Art Groos and Hans-Jochen Schiewer. Göttingen: V & R unipress, 2004. 181-215. A literary/historical study of late-medieval attitudes about the body and bones of the hero Siegfried. wlayher@wustl.edu (314) 935-8620 Click here for complete CV
Tabea Linhard Assistant Professor, Romance Languages and Literatures (Spanish); Comparative Literature Ph.D., Duke University Research interests: Contemporary Spanish and Mexican Literature and Cultural Studies; Mediterranean Studies; Jewish Diaspora; Immigration in Europe; Spanish Film Recent Publications: Book Fearless Women in the Mexican Revolution and the Spanish Civil War.  U of Missouri P, 2005.  Studies the intersections among gender, revolution and culture in early twentieth century Mexico and Spain. Articles "In the Precarious Exilic Realm: Edward Said’s Andalusian Journeys.” Humanism and the Global Hybrid: Reconstellating Edward Said and Jacques Derrida. Ed. Assimina Karavanta and Nina Morgan. Cambridge Scholars P (forthcoming, 2009).  Examines the use of al-Andalus to situate Said’s thinking in the Spanish-speaking world. “The Maps of Nostalgia: Juana Salabert’s Velódromo de invierno.” Revista Hispánica Moderna. 60.1 (June 2007): 72-93.  Treats Jewish exile in Spain during World War II. “Between Hospitality and Hostility: Immigration in Contemporary Spanish Culture.” MLN. 122.2 (March 2007): 400-22. An analysis of immigration from a postcolonial perspective.  tlinhard@artsci.wustl.edu (314) 935-8224 Click here for complete CV
Erin McGlothlin Associate Professor, Germanic Languages and Literatures; Comparative Literature Ph.D., University of Virginia Research interests: Recent Publications: Books Articles   mcglothlin@wustl.edu (314) 935-4288
Stamos Metzidakis Professor, Romance Languages and Literatures (French); Comparative Literature Assistant Chair, Dept. of Romance Languages and Literatures Ph.D., Columbia University Research interests: French-American colonial history and culture; literary theory; prose poetry; visual aspects of poetry; 19th- and 20th-century literature, primarily poetry Recent publications: Book Ed. Prose Poetry. Spec. issue Esprit Créateur. 36.4  (Winter, 1999). Introduction as well as comparative study of how Baudelaire and Magritte both take aspects of ordinary life and make them poetic or artistic, while at the same time taking the poetic and artistic and making them seem ordinary. Articles “A Neoformalist Approach to 19th-Century French Poetry.” Romance Studies (forthcoming, Spring, 2008). A reassessment of the role of form in cultural studies of French poetry. “Isidore Ducasse, précurseur d’Odilon Redon: L’hypotypose en noir et blanc”  ["Isadore Ducasse, precursor of Odilon Redon: The Hypotyposis in Black and White"]. Orbis Litterarum. 63.2 (April,  2008), 133-51. A comparative reading of the use of strong visual imagery, through the rhetorical figure hypotyposis,  in the scandalous symbolist poetry of Lautréamont and the visionary symbolist painting of Redon. “Des lyres au délire: Rimbaud dépassant Verlaine” [“From Lyres to Delirium: Rimbaud Surpassing Verlaine”]. Rimbaud vivant. 46 (June, 2007): 69-79.  A study of how Rimbaud takes to extremes the more conventional lyric poetry of his close friend and collaborator,  Verlaine. “Poétique de la ligne: Autour des colonnes sculptées” ["Poetics of the Line: Beating Around Sculpted Columns"].  Sculpture et Poésie: 1789-1848. [Sculpture and Poetry: 1789-1848].  Ed. Suzanne Nash and Cassandra Hamrick. Spec. issue,  Nineteenth-Century French Studies. 35:1 (Fall, 2006): 206-25. How both modern poetry and sculpture associate vertical figures (found in public monuments like towers and obelisks) with ideals like unchanging peace, harmony and beauty, while associating the horizontal axis of such figures with disorder, movement, and history itself.   smetz@wustl.edu (314) 935-4972 Click here for complete CV
Harriet Stone Chair, Committee on Comparative Literature Professor, Romance Languages and Literatures (French); Comparative Literature Ph.D., Brown University Research interests: 17th-century French studies; text and image; science and aesthetics in early modern Europe; literature and ethics Recent Publications: Books Tables of Knowledge: Descartes in Vermeer's Studio. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 2006. Examines how Dutch art, with its emphasis on the realistic depiction of objects, informs science's efforts to know the world in the 17th century. Co-Trans., with Gerhild Scholz Williams. On the Inconstancy of Witches. By Pierre de Lancre. 1612. Tempe: Arizona Center of Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2006. Ed. Racine. Spec. issue Esprit Créateur.(Summer, 1998). hastone@wustl.edu (314) 935-4473/5142
Former-and-Future Teaching Faculty
Nancy E. Berg Associate Professor, Asian and Near Eastern Languages and Literatures (Hebrew); Jewish, Islamic, and Near Eastern Studies; Comparative Literature Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania Research interests: Modern Hebrew & Arabic literatures; immigration literature; women's literature; genre literature Recent Publication: Book More and More Equal: The Literary Works of Sami Michael. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2005. Examines the works of the most significant Israeli writer to switch from Arabic to Hebrew, tracing his rise to literary prominence against the context of a changing society. nberg@wustl.edu (314) 935-4451
Henry Biggs Associate Dean and Director of Undergraduate Research Ph.D., University of California, Los Angeles Research Interests: Metrical phonology; linguistics; hip-hop; 16th-century French poetry hbiggs@wustl.edu (314) 935-6519
J. Andrew Brown Assistant Professor, Romance Languages and Literatures (Spanish) Ph.D., University of Virginia Research interests: 20th- and 21st-century Latin American narrative; literature and science; cyborg and posthuman theory; Argentine cinema. Recent Publications: Books Ed. TecnoEscritura: Literatura y tecnología en América Latina [TechnoWriting: Literature and Technology in Latin America]. Spec. Issue Revista Iberoamericana 73.220 (July-Sept, 2007). Recent scholarship from the US, Latin America, and Europe concerning the intersections of technology and literary narrative, film, internet poetry, and graphic novels. Test Tube Envy: Science and Power in Argentine Narrative. Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell UP, 2005. Examines the cultural relationships between popular science and narrative in Argentina from the 1820s to the present, including works by Domingo Sarmiento, Roberto Arlt, Jorge Luis Borges, and Julio Cortázar. Articles “Hacking the Past: Edmundo Paz Soldán’s El delirio de Turing and Carlos Gamerro’s Las Islas.” Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies 10 (December, 2006): 115-29. An examination of hacker culture and ideology as it relates to the Latin American postdictatorship. “Life Signs: Ricardo Piglia's Cyborgs.” Science, Literature, and Film in the Hispanic World. Ed. Jerry Hoeg and Kevin Larsen. New York: Palgrave, 2006. 87-107. A study of how Piglia employs posthuman imagery and theory to represent the trauma of the Dirty War in Argentina. “Ripped Stitches: Consumerism, Technology, and Posthuman Identity in Rafael Courtoisie's Tajos.” Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies 15.2 (August, 2006): 127-42. An exploration of the novel's connections between 1990s television culture and technological identity in Latin America. http://artsci.wustl.edu/~abrown/ abrown@wustl.edu (314) 935-8222
Letty Chen Associate Professor, Asian and Near Eastern Languages and Literatures (Chinese) Ph.D., Columbia University Research interests: Globalization; postcolonialism; postmodernism; identity politics; travel theory; mimesis; narratology Recent Publication: Book Writing Chinese: Shaping Chinese Cultural Identity (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006). A study of the current debate over the concept of identity as explored in literature from China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and by Chinese writers living abroad. Addresses how narratives use textual imitation and appropriation to synthesize diverse cultural identities. llchen@wustl.edu (314) 935-5147
Matt Erlin Associate Professor, Germanic Languages and Literatures Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley Research interests: 18th- and 19th-century German studies; literature and economics; the novel; aesthetic theory; urban culture Recent Publications: Books Co-ed., with Lynne Tatlock. German Culture in Nineteenth-Century America: Reception, Adaptation, Transformation. Columbia, SC: Camden House, 2005. Essay collection addressing key figures and moments in the adaptation of German culture in nineteenth-century America. Berlin’s Forgotten Future: City, History, and Enlightenment in Eighteenth-Century Germany. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 2004. Examines the link between the urban experience and new conceptions of history in the German Enlightenment. merlin@wustl.edu (314) 935-4005
Stephanie Kirk Assistant Professor, Romance Languages and Literatures (Spanish); Comparative Literature Ph.D., New York University Research Interests: Colonial Latin American literature and culture; early modern women's studies; gender studies Recent Publication: Book Convent Life in Colonial Mexico: A Tale of Two Communities. Gainesville, FL: UP of Florida, 2007. A study of how women in 17th- and 18th-century Mexican convents defied male control. Uses literary texts and historical documents, with a particular focus on Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz. skirk@wustl.edu (314) 935-8221
Paul Michael Lützeler Rosa May Distinguished University Professor in the Humanities Professor, Germanic Languages and Literatures; Comparative Literature Ph.D., Indiana University Research interests: German and European Romanticism; 20th-century German and European literature (especially exile literature, and contemporary German literature); cultural theories, including postmodernism, multiculturalism, postcolonialism, globalization, and the European identity Recent Publications (partial list): Books Kontinentalisierung: Das Europa der Schriftsteller [Continentalization: The Writers´ Europe]. Bielefeld: Aisthesis, 2007. A collection of case studies that treat concepts of modern Europe in each literary period since European Romanticism, including essays on Goethe and Coleridge, Romain Rolland, C. F. Meyer, Thomas Mann, and Milan Kundera. Postmoderne und postkoloniale deutschsprachige Literatur [Postmodern and Postcolonial Germanophone Literature]. Bielefeld: Aisthesis, 2005. An examination of the interconnectedness of postmodernism, multiculturalism, and postcolonialism and their impact on contemporary German and Austrian literature. Die Entropie des Menschen. Studien zum Werk Hermann Brochs [Human Entropy: Studies of the Works of Hermann Broch]. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2000. An interpretation of the modernist aesthetics of Hermann Broch as revealed through his novels and his correspondence with friends such as Hannah Arendt. Klio oder Kalliope? Literatur und Geschichte [Clio or Calliope? Literature and History]. Berlin: Erich Schmidt, 1997. A study of three phases of European literature in which links to history are prevalent: Romanticism, exile literature, and contemporary works. http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~jahrbuch/Jahrbuch.htm jahrbuch@artsci.wustl.edu (314) 935-4784
Stephan K. Schindler Professor, Germanic Languages and Literatures; Comparative Literature; Film and Media Studies Chair, Dept. of Germanic Languages and Literatures Ph.D., University of California, Irvine Research Interests: 18th- and 20th-century German literature; film studies; gender studies; psychoanalysis; Holocaust studies; international affairs Recent Publications: Books Co-ed., with Lutz Koepnick. The Cosmopolitan Screen: German Cinema and the Global Imaginary, 1945 to the Present. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P, 2007. A look at German cinema’s enthusiasm for and anxiety about the blurring of cultural boundaries sinceWorld War II.. Co-ed., with Paul Michael Lützeler. Gegenwartsliteratur: Ein germanistisches Jahrbuch [Contemporary Literature: A German Studies Yearbook]. Tübingen: Stauffenburg Verlag, 2002-07. Annual international yearbook on contemporary German literature. Eingebildete Koerper: Phantasierte Sexualitaet in der Goethezeiz [Imagined Bodies: Fantasized Sexuality in the Age of Goethe]. Tübingen: Stauffenburg Verlag, 2001. An investigation into the history of modern sexuality with a focus on sexual fantasies. Articles "Displaced Images: The Holocaust in German Film. " The Cosmopolitan Screen. 2007. 192-203. An analysis of the cinematographic and narrative challenges post-war German cinema has faced in representing the Holocaust. "Die blutende Brust der Amazone: Bedrohliche weibliche Sexualität in Penthesilea" ["The Amazon's Bloody Breast: Threatening Female Sexuality in Penthesilea"]. Kleists Erzählungen und Dramen: Neue Studieni [Kleist's Short Stories and Plays: New Studies]. Ed. Paul Michael Lützeler and David Pan. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2001). 191-202. A study of literary and philosophical ideas of female sexuality prevalent near the beginning of the 19th century. http://artsci.wustl.edu/%7Egerman/faculty.php?facID=17 skschind@wustl.edu (314) 935-5136
Gerhild Scholz Williams Barbara Schaps Thomas & David M. Thomas Professor of Humanities in Arts & Sciences; Associate Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs Professor, Germanic Languages and Literatures; Comparative Literature Ph.D., University of Washington Research interests: Early modern French and German daemonologies; late Middle Ages; Renaissance/Reformation; literature and history; translation Recent Publications: Books Ways of Knowing in Early Modern Germany: Johannes Praetorius as a Witness to his Time. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2006. An investigation of how Praetorius, an assiduous reporter of early modern Europe, offered accounts of political events, scientific discoveries, occult phenomena, and religious beliefs that challeged many authoritative interpretations of his day. Ed. On the Inconstancy of Witches. By Pierre de Lancre. 1612. Trans. Harriet Stone and Gerhild Scholz Williams. Tempe: Arizona Center of Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2006. Comprehensive English edition of de Lancre's report of his experiences in France's Basque region as a member of a royal commission empowered to cleanse the area of witches. Co-ed., with Chad Gunnoe, Jr. Paracelsian Moments: Science, Medicine, and Astrology in Early Modern Europe. Kirksville, MO: Truman State UP, 2003. Collection of essays exploring the intellectual, social, and cultural context within which physician Theophrastus Paracelsus wrote. Co-author, with Alexander Schwarz. Existentielle Vergeblichkeit: Verträge in Melusine, Faust, und Eulenspiegel [The Futility of Existence: Contracts in Melusine, Faust, and Eulenspiegel.] Berlin: Schmidt, 2003. An exploration of pacts and contracts in three popular early modern prose texts through a focus on narrative structure. http://artsci.wustl.edu/~gwilliam/gswweb.htm gerhildwilliams@wustl.edu (314) 935-5106
Executive Committee Members 2008-09
Nancy E. Berg Associate Professor, Asian and Near Eastern Languages and Literatures (Hebrew); Jewish, Islamic, and Near Eastern Studies; Comparative Literature Robert Hegel Liselotte Dieckmann Professor of Comparative Literature Professor, Asian and Near Eastern Languages and Literatures (Chinese) Robert Henke Associate Professor, Comparative Literature; Performing Arts (Drama) Chair, Performing Arts Department Emma Kafalenos Senior Lecturer, Comparative Literature Stephanie Kirk Assistant Professor, Romance Languages and Literatures (Spanish); Comparative Literature Paul Michael Lützeler Rosa May Distinguished University Professor in the Humanities Professor, Germanic Languages and Literatures; Comparative Literature Stamos Metzidakis Professor, Romance Languages and Literatures (French); Comparative Literature Assistant Chair, Dept. of Romance Languages and Literatures Wolfram Schmidgen Associate Professor, Department of English; Comparative Literature http://artsci.wustl.edu/~english/faculty/profile/?faculty=9 Harriet Stone Chair, Committee on Comparative Literature Professor, Romance Languages and Literatures (French); Comparative Literature Gerhild Scholz Williams Barbara Schaps Thomas & David M. Thomas Professor of Humanities in Arts & Sciences; Associate Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs Professor, Germanic Languages and Literatures; Comparative Literature
Affiliated Faculty
Prof. Robert Lamberton, Chair, Classics Prof. Marvin Marcus, Associate Professor, Asian and Near Eastern Languages and Literatures (Japanese) Prof. Angela Miller, Professor, Art History and Archaeology Prof Dolores Pesce, Chair, Music Prof. Henry Schvey, Professor, Performing Arts
Emeritae Faculty
Milica Banjanin Professor, Russian; Comparative Literature Ph.D., Washington University Research interests: 20th-century Russian literature; Russian modernism; interactions between the fine arts and literature Selected publications: Articles ""Where Are The Street Lights Running To?': The Poetics of Street Lights in Russian Modernism." New Zealand Slavonic Journal 38 (2004-2005): 71-91. A study of the relations between light, art, and technology in Russian Modernism. "Listening: The Poetics of Street Sounds in Russian Modernism." Slavic Almanach 10.1 (2004): 63-80. An examination of the sounds of St. Petersburg streets at the beginning of 20th century, as reflected in Russian Modernist poetry and fiction. "Echoes of the Commedia dell'arte in the Works of Blok: Transformations of an Image." Australian Slavonic and East European Studies. 4.1-2 (1990): 1-20. Elucidates Blok's use of the commedia dell'arte and the related iamges of masks, masquerade balls, and puppet-shows [balagan]. "Nature and the City in the Works of Elena Guro." Slavic and East European Journal. 30.2 (Summer 1986): 230-247. An exploration of Guro's poetic universe through the two central themes of her writing--nature and the city--as they appear in her unpublished, archival materials, and in her published work. banjanin@wustl.edu
Naomi Lebowitz Former Hortense and Tobias Lewin Professor in the Humanities English and Comparative Literature Ph.D., Washington University Research Interests: 19th- and 20th-century Scandinavian, English, and American fiction and literary philosophy, in particular, the works of: Henry James, William James, Dickens, Kierkegaard, Ibsen, and Italo Svevo. Selected Publications: Books The Philosophy of Literary Amateurism. Columbia, MO: U of Missouri P, 1994. Return of great masters of fiction to the chosen amateurism of their literary philosophies. Ibsen and the Great World. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP, 1990. How Ibsen's irony opens up a path to a spiritual dimension mankind is not yet able to inhabit. Kierkegaard: A Life of Allegory. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP, 1985. Analysis of Kierkegaard's use of literary devices to break through speculative philosophy and over-ambitious ethical claims. Italo Svevo. New Brunswick: Rutgers UP, 1978. Study of Svevo's anti-hero Zeno in light of Dostoievsky’s belief that fiction is the lie that saves the truth. Article “The World’s Pontoppidan and his 'Lykke Per' [Lucky Per]." Scandinavian Studies (Spring, 2006). The collision the fairy tale and social realism in Nobel prize winner Pontoppidan's novel as influenced by Kierkegaard, Ibsen, and Nietzsche.

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