Academic
Dissertation
“Anthro-Polypous: Multispecies Social Imaginaries in Early German Bildungsromane”
Beginning with Johann Friedrich Blumenbach’s (1752–1840) seminal treatise Über den Bildungstrieb und das Zeugungsgeschäfte(1781), the world of German letters saw a curious boom in uses of the freshwater polyp (hydra vulgaris) as a symbol of growth and development at both microbiological and macrohistorical scales. Examples can be found in the naturphilosophische, anthropological, and aesthetic works of Immanuel Kant (1724–1804), Johann Gottfried Herder (1744–1803), Friedrich Schiller (1759–1805), Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831), Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel (1772–1829), and Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling (1775–1854).
What does this polypoid lineage mean for contemporary scholarly understanding of the normative anthropology of the long nineteenth century? What does the body of the polyp, sublimated in metaphor, mean for scholarly understandings of the German literary imagination, especially considering the particular symbiosis between German thought and art during the long nineteenth century? Can tracing the influence of the figure of the polyp on intellectual and literary history bring aspects of the German tradition into relief that might nuance, modify, or even contradict scholarly narratives of the humanist, not to mention speciesist, hyper-individualism of German thought?
This dissertation reflects on the relationship between human and animal beings in the literature of the long eighteenth century through the lens of the unassuming polyp. It is argued that the discovery of the freshwater polyp, and more specifically, scientific and philosophical recognition of its significance for theories of growth and development, had a notable impact on anthropological explorations of Bildung during the subsequent century, producing ripples of influence evident in the prototypical genre of Bildung—the novel. Reevaluations of late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth-century anthropological speculations about the structure of human destiny are paired with novel readings of three major Bildungsromane—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s (1749–1832) Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre (1759–1796), Novalis’ (1772–1801) Heinrich von Ofterdingen (published posth. 1802, fragment), and Adalbert Stifter’s (1805–1868) Der Nachsommer (1857). Ultimately, the dissertation frames the polyp discourse of the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries as an integral part of a shift in Enlightenment thinking about the position of the human being in the world: namely, away from the paradigm of Renaissance humanism and toward a moral and aesthetic order informed by biological philosophy. Correspondingly, the recognition of the symmetry of polypoid and human life within tandem projects of discovery and self-discovery implies an ethical bond between animal and human life central to the concept of human purpose shared by many thinkers during the long nineteenth century and defined by a material and spiritual affinity with nature.
Academic
Teaching
In teaching, I seek to support my students in cultivating a passion for the material that will serve them as scholars, individuals, and citizens of the world. I believe that learning is not just about filling out our mental archives, as crucial as this is, but about defining our subjectivities and refining a code of ethics with which to approach others with openness, compassion, and understanding. Learning to love foreign languages and literatures is an act of faith in the project of humanity, and it is my aim as an educator to proliferate this love.
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