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Prof. Dr. Klaus Benesch

Education

  • 1999 Dr. habil.; University of Freiburg
  • 1990 Dr. phil.; University of Munich
  • 1986 M.A.; University of Munich
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Positions Held

  • Since 2022 LMU International Research Professor
  • 2007-22 Full Professor (Chair), Department of English and American Studies, LMU Munich
  • 2000-07 Full Professor (Chair), Department of English, University of Bayreuth
  • 2004 Exchange Professor, Department of English, Weber State University (Ogden, UT)
  • 2004 Outside offer: American Literature (chair/program director), University of Freiburg (rejected)
  • 2000 Outside offer: American Literature (chair/program director), University of Göttingen (rejected)
  • 1996 Exchange Professor, Department of English, University of Massachusetts (Amherst, MA)
  • 1993-00 Assistant Professor, Department of English/American Studies, University of Freiburg (Germany)
  • 1992-93 Adjunct Professor, American Studies, University of Munich
  • 1990-91 Adjunct Professor, Department of English, University of Duesseldorf
  • 1986-90 Instructor, American Studies, University of Munich
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Academic Service/Scholarly Affiliations

  • Dean, School of Languages and Literatures, LMU Munich, 2011-2013
  • Dean of Research, School of Languages and Literatures, LMU Munich, 2009-2011
  • Director (2007-2013) and Board member (2002-2014), Bavarian American Academy
  • Editorial Board, American Studies Encyclopedia Online (published by the American Studies Association), 2007-2010
  • Advisory Board, Revue francaise d'études americaine
  • Editorial Board, Prospettive Americane, published by LT2 (Venice).
  • Reader: University of Minnesota Press; University of Pennsylvania Press; University of Alabama Press; Palgrave-Macmillan (New York); Melus (The Journal of The Society for the Study of the Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States); PoCoPages (Presses universitaires de la Méditerranée); African-American Review; Pacific Coast Philology: Journal of the Pacific Ancient and Modern Language Association; Amerikastudien/American Studies (an academic quarterly published by the German Association for American Studies); Zeitschrift für Religions- und Geistesgeschichte
  • Referee/reader: German Research Foundation (DFG), Mercator-Research Center Ruhr, Humboldt Foundation, Swiss SNF, the Belgium National Fund for Scientific Research (NFSR), National Science Centre, Poland, and various other international academic funding institutions.
  • Member of the jury of the Academy of Finland, a governmental funding body for scientific research in Finland (2021/22)
  • Referee/reader for the Bogliasco Foundation, New York/Genoa
  • Referee/member of the prize committee "LMU Kulturpreis," 2009-2011, award total: €150,000; awarded to Mike Davis, Bruno Latour, Julia Kristeva, et al.
  • Member of the "Centre d´Études Africain Americain et Diasporique" (CEAAD/Paris)
  • Member of the research group "The Representation of Slavery in Literature and the Arts," Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition, Yale University, 2005-06 (organized and directed by David Blight)
  • Modern Language Association (MLA); Member of the MLA Delegate Assembly (delegate for scholars residing outside the US and Canada), 2003-2006
  • Rocky Mountain Modern Language Association (RMMLA)
  • American Studies Association (ASA)
  • Poe Studies Association (PSA)
  • The Society for Literature and Science (SLS)
  • Collegium for African American Research (CAAR)
  • European Association for American Studies (EAAS)
  • German Association for American Studies (DGfA)
  • Bavarian American Academy (BAA)
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Fellowships/Grants/Awards

  • LMU International Research Professor, Harvard University (2022/23)/ Ècole Normale Supérieur de Lyon   (2023/ 24)
  • Visiting professor (invited), School of Business, special program in 'Technology', University of St. Gallen, Switzerland (2018 and 2021)
  • Residency Fellowship in "Architecture," Bogliasco Foundation NewYork/Genoa, 2017
  • Visiting professor (invited), Venice International University (VIU), San Servolo, 2016
  • Professeur invité, Université de Bordeaux Montaigne, 2014-2015
  • Professeur invité, École Normale Supérieur de Lyon (ENS), 2010/11
  • Staff member (invited), International Program (IP), Universitá di Venezia, 2010-2012
  • Honorary member of the "Centre d'Études Africain Americaine Diasporique" (CEAAD/Paris), since 2010
  • Visiting professor (invited), Stanford University, Program in "Science, Technology, and Society," 2008
  • Member (invited) of the research group "The Representation of Slavery in Literature and the Arts," Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition, Yale University (organized and directed by David Blight), 2005-2006
  • Mellon Fellowship, Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas (Austin), 2003-2004
  • Max-Kade-Fellowship, University of Massachusetts (Amherst), 1996
  • Postdoctoral Fellowship of the German Research Foundation (DFG), 1991-1992
  • 'American Studies Award' (1990). Awarded by the 'Amerika-Institut', University of Munich, for the essay "Oral Narrative and Literary Text: Afro-American Folklore in Their Eyes Were Watching God". In: Callaloo. A Journal of Afro-American and African Arts and Letters (The Johns Hopkins University Press) 11.3 (1988): 627-35
  • Oskar-Karl-Forster publication grant (1990). For the publication of The Threat of History: Narrative Discourse and Historical Consciousness in Contemporary Afro-American Fiction
  • Research and Travel Grant by the German Academic Exchange Service, 1987
  • Doctoral Fellow of the Bavarian Graduate Fellowship Program (Bayerische Graduiertenförderung), University of Munich, 1986-88
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Research funding

  • "Selbstbeobachtung und Selbstermächtigung in der amerikanischen Aufklärung". Principal investigator, DFG Collaborative Research Centre 1369 "Cultures of Vigilance. Transformations—Spaces—Practices" (2019-24)
  • "Places of Beginnings: Topographies of Renewal in the American Renaissance, 1820-1870." Principal investigator, DFG research group 593 "Beginnings in/of Modernity" (2009-12)
  • Principal investigator, DFG research training group 1733 "Literature and Globalization" (2011-14)
  • Principal investigator, Elite Network of Bavaria, Doctorate Program "Mimesis" (2014-19)
  • Ongoing project funding by DFG, DAAD, DGfA, BAA, American Embassy/Consulate General and various academic and non-academic funding institutions

Supervised Doctoral and Post-Doctoral Degrees

 "Habilitation"

  • Schmidt, Kerstin, „Negative Space and the Making of Modern America: Spatial Reconfigurations in American Literature, Architecture, and Photography, 1850-1920“ (2010)
  • Pöhlmann, Sascha, „Future-Founding Poetry: The Topography of Beginnings From Whitman to the Twenty-First Century“ (2014)

Dissertations

  • Loredana Filip. "Happy Confessions? Science Communication and Reading in the Contemporary Age of US-American Self-Help" (2023)
  • Paolo Pitari. (cotutelle Ca'Foscari, Venice/LMU Munich) "The Existentialist Contradiction. The Necessary Unbearable Suffering of Free Will in David Foster Wallace" (2020)
  • Christin Faber."The Unsettled State of America: Contemporary Narratives of Home and Mobility in Times of Crisis" (2020)
  • Ines Ghalleb."The Interdisciplinary Mind: Modes of Evolution in Richard Power’s Galatea 2.2, Plowing in the Dark, The Echo Maker, and Generosity: An Enhancement" (2020)
  • Patrick Geiger. "Das flüssige Selbst: Henry David Thoreau’s Walden und globales Bewußtsein" (2020)
  • Hufford, Kent Landon Hufford. "From Necessity to Contingency: Tracing the Historiography of Technology in the Work of Stuart Chase, Lewis Mumford and Marshall McLuhan" (2020)
  • Bryan Howard Banker. "Black Hegelians, Dialectical Philosophy in the Aesthetics of W.E.B. DuBois, C.L.R. James, Paul Robeson, and Langston Huges" (2019)
  • Thoren Opitz. "From World Wide Walt to International Hov: The Making of Global Poetics in Whitman and Rap" (2018)
  • Andrew Frederick Allen. "After Postmodernism: Ethical Paradigms in Contemporary American Fiction" (2018)
  • Straß, Hanna. "Stories of Pollution: Narrating Toxicity in Postcolonial Contexts" (2015)
  • Vrzina, Anita. "Freeing the Image: Aesthetics and Politics of the Contemporary African American Novel" (2015)
  • Rees, Daniel. "Hunger and Modern Writing: Melville, Kafka, Hamsun, and Wright" (2015)
  • Huber, Sebastian. "Subject of the Event: Reagency in the American Novel after 2000" (2014)
  • Söllner, Louisa. "Missing Pictures: Photography, History, and Nostalgia in Cuban-American Literature" (2012)
  • Gerhold, Heike. "Outside the American Mainstream: Self and Society in T.C. Boyle’s Fiction" (2011)
  • Estes, Andrew. "Cormac McCarthy and the Writing of American Spaces" (2010)
  • Pöhlmann, Sacha. "Pynchon’s Postnational Imagination" (2008)
  • Block, Petra. "The Creolization of Food in New Orleans" (2007)

Publications

(as of 10/2022)

Books (monographs, edited volumes, series editor

  • General editor: "Architecture / Technology / Culture" (A/T/C) with Jeffrey Meikle (University of Austin, Texas), David Nye (University of Southern Denmark/Odense), and Miles Orvell (Temple University). Published by The University of Pennsylvania Press.
  • General editor (with Cathrin Klingsöhr-Leroy): "Wie wir lesen — Zur Geschichte, Praxis und Zukunft einer Kulturtechnik.” Bielefeld: Transcript-Verlag, since 2020.                                                                                      
  • General editor: Publications of the Bavarian American Academy and Award Monograph Series. Heidelberg: Heidelberg University Press/Winter (2007-2013).
  • Mythos Lesen. Buchkultur und Geisteswissenschaften im Informationszeitalter. Bielefeld: Transcript-Verlag, 2021
  • Walking and the Aesthetics of Modernity: Pedestrian Mobility in Literature and the Arts. Ed. with François Specq. New York/London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016.
  • Rethinking the American City: An International Dialogue. Ed. with Miles Orvell. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013.
  • Culture and Mobility (ed.). Heidelberg: Heidelberg University Press/Winter, 2013.
  • Scientific Cultures – Technological Challenges. A Transatlantic Perspective (with Meike Zwingenberger). Heidelberg: Winter, 2009.
  • The Power and Politics of the Aesthetic in American Culture (ed. with Ulla Haselstein). Heidelberg: Winter, 2007.
  • Space in America: Theory History Culture (ed. with Kerstin Schmidt). Amsterdam/New York: Rodopi, 2005.
  • African Diasporas in the New and Old Worlds: Consciousness and Imagination (ed. with Geneviève Fabre). Amsterdam/New York: Rodopi, 2004 (second edition, 2006).
  • The Sea and the American Imagination (ed. with Jon-K Adams and Kerstin Schmidt). Tübingen: Stauffenburg, 2004.
  • Romantic Cyborgs: Authorship and Technology in the American Renaissance. Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 2002. [2. ed., paperback, 2009]
  • Technology and American Culture (guest editor). Special volume of Amerikastudien/ American Studies 41.3 (1996).
  • The Threat of History: Geschichte und Erzählung im afro-amerikanischen Roman der Gegenwart [The Threat of History: Narrative Discourse and Historical Consciousness in Contemporary Afro-American Fiction]. American Studies Series. Ed. Peter Freese. Essen: Die Blaue Eule, 1990.

Critical Essays

  • [70]" Heimkehr aus dem Land des Lächelns. Adorno und die deutsche Kultur der Fünfziger Jahre." In: treibhaus. Jahrbuch für die Literatur der Fünfziger Jahre 19 (2023); 82-91
  • [69] "The Art of the Lie: Ein Plädoyer gegen die Wahrheit". In: Fakten und Verunsicherung. Ordnungen von Wahrheit,, Fiktion und Wirklichkeit. Hg. Carina Breidenbach, Ines Ghalleb, Dominik Pensel, Katharina Simon, Florian Telsnig und Martin Wittmann. Blaue Reihe. Hamburg: Meiner Verlag, 2022. 69-76
  • [68] “The Failing Notion of Home in a Global Age”. In: Anna Flügge and Giorgia Tommasi, editors. Perspective on Homelessness. Heidelberg: Winter Verlag, 2022. 31-48.
  • [67] "How I Built This — Horatio Greenough, Walden, and the Search for an American Architecture”. Transatlantic Currents. Essays in Honor of David E. Nye. European Views of the United States Vol 11. Hg. Kasper Grotle Rasmussen, Anne Mørk, Jørn Brøndal. Heidelberg: Winter, 2021. 153-170.
  • [66] "Und so erzähle ich mir mein Leben: Zum Zusammenhang von Bekenntnisliteratur und Subjektbildung". Zeitschrift für Religions- und Geistesgeschichte 73.4 (2021). 291-308
  • [65] "The Art of the Lie: Ein Versuch über die Lüge in Kunst, Politik und Philosophie". In: Zeitschrift für Religions- und Geistesgeschichte 73.2 (2021). 141-147
  • [64] "Is Truth to Post-Truth what Modernism Is to Postmodernism? Heidegger, the Humanities, and the Demise of Common-Sense". In: European Journal for American Studies 15.1 (2020). DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/ejas.15619
  • [63] “Das Versagen der Schrift: Gestik und Aufklärung in Melvilles Billy Budd, Sailor (An Inside Narrative)". Zeitschrift für Religions- und Geistesgeschichte 70.3 (2018). 1-12.
  • [62] "Technology". In: Herman Melville in Context. Ed. Kevin J. Hayes. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge UP, 2018. 177-87.
  • [61] "A Matter of Scale: Is Close Reading to American Studies What Place is to Space?" In: Projecting American Studies: Essays on Theory, Method, and Practice. Ed. Frank Kelleter und Alexander Starre. Heidelberg: Winter, 2018. 39 - 49.
  • [60] "Fake Supreme: William Gaddis and the Art of Recognition". In: Faking, Forging, Counterfeiting. Discredited Practices at the Margins of Mimesis. Daniel Becker, Annalisa Fischer, Simone Niehoff, Florencia Sanders und Yola Schmitz (eds.) Bielefeld: Transkript, 2018. 127 - 138.
  • [59] "Modern(s) Walking: An Introduction" (with François Specq). Walking and the Aesthetics of Modernity: Pedestrian Mobility in Literature and the Arts. Ed. Klaus Benesch and François Specq. New York/London: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2016.
  • [58] "Space, Place, Narrative: Critical Regionalism and the Idea of Home in a Global Age." "Space, Place, and Narrative," special issue of ZAA: A Quarterly of Language, Literature and Culture 64.1 (2016): 93-108.
  • [57] "Curb Your Enthusiasm: On Scarcity and Replenishment in Literature." "The Imagination of Limits: Exploring Scarcity and Abundance." RCC Perspectives. Ed. Frederike Felcht und Katie Ritson. Munich: Rachel Carson Center, 2015. 65-73.
  • [56] "Modern(s) Walking: Rousseau, Thoreau, Heidegger." The 'Journey of Life' in American Life and Literature. Ed. Peter Freese. Heidelberg: Heidelberg University Press/Winter: 65-80.
  • [55] "Wanderlust: Das Gehen als paradoxer Gründungsort der Moderne." Gründungsorte der Moderne: Von St. Petersburg bis Occupy Wall Street. Ed. Maha El Hissy and Sascha Pöhlmann. Munich: Fink, 2014. 177-191.
  • [54] "Science, Techology, and the Humanities: The Aesthetics of Knowledge Production." American Studies Today: Recent Developments and New Perspectives. Ed. Winfried Fluck, Erik Redling, Sabine Sielke, and Hubert Zapf. Heidelberg: Heidelberg University Press/Winter, 2014. 353-360.
  • [53] "Introduction" (with Miles Orvell). Rethinking the American City: An International Dialogue. Ed. Klaus Benesch and Miles Orvell. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014. xi-xvi.
  • [52] "Mobility." Rethinking the American City: An International Dialogue. Ed. Klaus Benesch and Miles Orvell. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014. 143-166.
  • [51] "Adrienne Kennedy" (Survey essay). The Methuen Drama Guide to Contemporary American Playwrights. Ed. Martin Middeke, Peter Paul Schnierer, Christopher Innes, and Matthew Roudané. London: Methuen, 2014. 95-110.
  • [50] "Culture and Mobility: An Introduction." Culture and Mobility. Ed. Klaus Benesch. Heidelberg: Heidelberg University Press/Winter, 2013. 1-8.
  • [49] "Places of Beginning: Topography and Renewal in Thoreau's Walden and Douglass's Narrative." Perspectives on Mobility. Ed. Ingo Berensmeyer and Christoph Ehland. Amsterdam/New York: Rodopi editions, 2013. 89-106.
  • [48] "Cultural Immobility: Thoreau, Heidegger, and the Modern Politics of Place." Amerikastudien/American Studies 57.3 (2012): 403-18.
  • [47] "Transnational American Studies - Looking Backward to the Future." Transnational American Memories. Ed. Udo Hebel. Heidelberg: Heidelberg University Press/Winter, 2012. 615-18.
  • [46] "American Renaissance" (Survey essay). English and American Studies. Theory and Practice. Ed. Martin Middeke, Timo Müller, Christina Wald, and Hubert Zapf. Stuttgart/Weimar: Metzler, 2012. 111-123.
  • [45] "Le langage des gestes. Noirceur et modernité dans Billy Budd de Melville." Littérature et esclavage. Ed. Sarga Moussa. Paris: Éditions Desjonqères, 2010. 205-18.
  • [44] "Where I Have Lived, and What I Lived For? Thoreau's Platial Iconicity." American Cultural Icons: The Production of Representative Lives. Ed. Berndt Engler and Günter Leypoldt. Wuerzburg: Könighausen und Neumann, 2010. 107-121.
  • [43] "Our Bikes Are Us: Speed, Motorcycles and the American Tradition of a 'Democratic' Technology." International Journal of Motorcycle Studies 6.1 (Spring 2010). http://ijms.nova.edu/Spring2010/IJMS_Artcl.Benesch.html
  • [42] "The Language of Gesture: Melville's Imaging of Blackness and the Modernity of Billy Budd." La clé des langues: cultures et langues étrangères. Ed. ÉduScol. January 2010. http://cle.ens-lyon.fr/03603459/0/fiche___pagelibre/&RH=CDL_ANG000000
  • [41] "Republican Machines: Selbsterfindung in der amerikanischen Aufklärung". In: Übertragene Anfänge. Imperiale Figurationen um 1800. Ed. Barbara Vinken, Günter Zöller, and Tobias Döring. München: Fink, 2010. 103-116.
  • [40] "Identität als Differenz: Selbst- und Fremdbilder von Alter und Neuer Welt im Vergleich." In: Acta Ising 2008: Dialog. Schule und Wissenschaft. München: Bayerischer Schulbuchverlag, 2009. 37-59.
  • [39] "Writing Grounds: Ecocriticism, Dumping Sites, and the Place of Literature in a Posthuman Age." Public Space and the Ideology of Place in American Culture. Ed. Miles Orvell und Jeffrey Meikle. Amsterdam/New York: Rodopi Editions, 2009. 345-65.
  • [38] "Diverging Cultures, Competing Truths? Science, Technology, and the Humanities: An Introduction." Scientific Cultures – Technological Challenges. A Transatlantic Perspective. Ed. Klaus Benesch and Meike Zwingenberger. Heidelberg: Winter, 2009. 5-17.
  • [37] "Gibt es den technologischen Determinismus? McLuhan, Leo Marx und die materialistische Medientheorie." McLuhan neu lesen: Kritische Analysen zu Medien und Kultur im 21. Jahrhundert. Ed. Derrick de Kerckhove, Martina Leeker, and Kerstin Schmidt. Bielefeld: Transcript, 2008. 95-104.
  • [36] "American Sea Literature" (survey essay). Reading in America Today: The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Contemporary Popular American Literature. Ed. Ken Womack. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2008. 848-62.
  • [35] "Notes on Race, Diaspora, and Humanism." "Postcolonialism et Francophonie." Special issue of Neohelicon 35.2 (2008): 29-38.
  • [34] "Introduction: The Power and Politics of the Aesthetic in American Culture" (with Ulla Haselstein). The Power and Politics of the Aesthetic in American Culture. Ed. Klaus Benesch and Ulla Haselstein. Heidelberg: Winter, 2007. 1-12.
  • [33] "In that Diaspora of Words: Gaddis, Kierkegaard, and the Art of Recognition(s)." Paper Empire: William Gaddis and the World System. Ed. Joseph Tabbi and Rone Shavers. Birmingham: University of Alabama Press, 2007. 28-45.
  • [32] "Science and Technology" (survey essay). American History Through Literature, 1870-1920. Ed. Tom Quirk and Gary Scharnhorst.  Detroit: Charles Scribner's Sons, 2006. 1007-1015. (Ms.: 28 pp.)
  • [31] "Technology" (survey essay). American History Through Literature, 1820-1870. Ed. Janet Gabler-Hover and Robert D. Sattelmeyer.  Detroit: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1146-1152. (Ms.: 19 pp.)
  • [30] "Concepts of Space in American Culture: An Introduction." Space in America: Theory History Culture. Ed. Klaus Benesch and Kerstin Schmidt. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2005. 11-21.
  • [29] "The Architectural Body: Reconfigurations of Space in Posthuman Culture." "Architecture Against Death." Special issue of Interfaces: Image Text Language 21-22 (2003/04): 357-66.
  • [28] "History on Wheels: A Hegelian Reading of 'Speed' in Contemporary American Literature." The Holodeck in the Garden: Science and Technology in Recent American Fiction. Ed. Charles B. Harris and Peter Freese. Normal, IL: Dalkey Archives Press, 2004. 212-224.
  • [27] "Ground Zero: Dispositive von Raum und Zeit in der amerikanischen Literatur der Gegenwart." Die US-amerikanische Gesellschaft im Spiegel ihrer zeitgenössischen Literatur. Loccumer Protokolle 74/03. Ed. Hans-Peter Burmeister. Loccum: Evangelische Akademie (2004). 27-41.   
  • [26] "The Concept of African Diaspora(s): A Critical Reassessment" (with Geneviève Fabre). African Diasporas in the New and Old Worlds: Consciousness and Imagination. Ed. Klaus Benesch and Geneviève Fabre. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2004. xi-xxx.
  • [25] "Notes From Underground: William Demby's The Catacombs and the Diasporic Roots of African American Modernism." African Diasporas in the New and Old Worlds: Consciousness and Imagination. Ed. Klaus Benesch and Geneviève Fabre.  Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2004. 233-251.
  • [24] "History on Wheels: A Hegelian Reading of 'Speed' in Contemporary American Literature." Science, Technology, and the Humanities in Recent American Fiction. Ed. Peter Freese and Charles B. Harris. Essen: Die Blaue Eule, 2004. 27-44.
  • [23] "The Dynamic Sublime: Geschwindigkeit und Ästhetik in der amerikanischen Moderne." Raum- und Zeitreisen: Studien zur Literatur und Kultur des 19. und 20. Jahrhunderts. Ed. Hans Ulrich Seeber and Julika Griem. Tübingen: Niemeyer, 2003. 102-117.
  • [22] "Myth, Media, and the Obsolescence of Postmodern Drama: Don DeLillo's Tragicomedy Valparaiso." Global Challenges and Regional Responses in Contemporary Drama in English. Ed. Jochen Achilles, Ina Bergmann, and Birgit Däwes. Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier, 2003. 133-47.
  • [21] "Postmoderne als Drama: Don DeLillos tragikomisches Theaterstück Valparaiso." Literaturwissenschaftliches Jahrbuch 44 (2003): 321-34.
  • [20] "Introduction: America and the Sea." The Sea and the American Imagination. Ed. Klaus Benesch, Jon-K Adams, and Kerstin Schmidt. Tübingen: Stauffenburg, 2003. 9-14.
  • [19] "Melville's Black Jack: Billy Budd and the Politics of Race in Nineteenth-Century American Maritime Life." The Sea and the American Imagination. Ed. Klaus Benesch, Jon-K Adams, and Kerstin Schmidt. Tübingen: Stauffenburg, 2003. 97-110.
  • [18] "The Pitfalls of Memory: Cross-Cultural Discourse and Autobiographical Form in Olaudah Equiano's Interesting Narrative." Sites of Memory in American Literatures and Cultures. Ed. Udo Hebel. Heidelberg: Winter, 2003. 31-42.
  • [17] "Frühe Amerikabilder: Die allegorische Darstellung der Neuen Welt in der europäischen Malerei des 16. Und 17. Jahrhunderts." Anderwege. Bilder und Texte für Eckhart Pilick. Ed. Joachim Giesecke. Rohrbach: Verlag Peter Guhl, 2000. 97-111.
  • [16] "The Art of Losing: Elizabeth Bishops Poetik des Verlusts." Literaturwissenschaftliches Jahrbuch 41 (Fall 2000): 287-98.
  • [15] "Romantik als Kulturkritik?" Romantik. Ed. Vera Alexander and Monika Fludernik. Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier, 2000. 147-65. 
  • [14] "Technology, Art, and the Cybernetic Body: The Cyborg as Cultural Other in Fritz Lang’s Metropolis and Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" Amerikastudien/American Studies. Ed. Mario Klarer. 44.3 (1999): 379-92.
  • [13] "From Franklin to Emerson: Contestations of Professional Authorship in Early National America." Contestations of American Culture(s). Ed. Udo Hebel. Heidelberg: Winter, 1999. 77-96.
  • [12] "Do Machines Make History? - Technological Determinism in Poe’s ‘The Man That Was Used Up’." Re-Visioning the Past: Historical Self-Reflexivity in American Short Fiction. From Romanticism to Postmodernism. Ed. Bernd Engler and Oliver Scheiding. Trier: WVT, 1998. 107-120.
  • [11] "Technology Writ Large: The Machine, the Body, and the Text in Melville's Shorter Narratives." Weber Studies: An Interdisciplinary Humanities Journal 14.3 (Fall 1997): 61-72.
  • [10] "Writing Machines: Technology and the Failures of Representation in the Work of Franz Kafka." Reading Matters: Narrative in the New Ecology of Media. Ed. Joseph Tabbi and Michael Wutz. Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP, 1997. 76-95.
  • [9] "Technology and American Culture: An Introduction." Amerikastudien/American Studies 41.3 (1996): 333-38.
  • [8] "Romantic Cyborgs: Technology, Authorship, and the Politics of Reproduction in Nineteenth-Century American Literature." Amerikastudien/American Studies 41.3 (1996): 339-359.
  • [7] "Between Reproduction and Authenticity: The Contested Status of Authorship in Hawthorne's 'The Artist of the Beautiful'." Rivista Di Studi Anglo-Americani 10. Ed. Rosella Mamoli Zorzi and Francesca Bisutti De Riz. Venezia: Suppernova, 1994. 120-27.
  • [6] "Slavery as Metaphor: Charles Johnson's Cross-Cultural Slave Narratives." Parcours identitaires. Ed. Geneviève Fabre. Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne Nouvelle, 1994. 127-38.
  • [5] "From a Thing Into an I Am: Autobiographical Narrative and Metahistorical Discourse in Contemporary African-American Fiction." Historiographic Metafiction in Modern American and Canadian Literature. Ed. Bernd Engler and Kurt Müller. Paderborn: Schöningh, 1994. 253-66.
  • [4] "Fictions of the Self: Geschichte, Identität und autobiographische Form." Compar(a)ison: An International Journal of Comparative Literature 1 (1994): 1-13.
  • [3] "Charles Johnson: 'The Education of Mingo'." The African-American Short Story, 1970-1990. Ed. Wolfgang Karrer and Barbara Puschmann-Nalenz. Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier, 1993. 169-79.
  • [2] "The Manumission of First-Person Viewpoint: Identität und Autobiographie in Charles Johnsons Oxherding Tale." Arbeiten aus Anglistik und Amerikanistik 17 (1992): 3-22.
  • [1] "Oral Narrative and Literary Text: Afro-American Folklore in Their Eyes Were Watching God." Callaloo. A Journal of Afro-American and African Arts and Letters(published by The Johns Hopkins University Press) 11.3 (1988): 627-35.
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Articles in Encyclopedias, Handbooks, etc.

  • "Romantic Cyborgs: Authorship and Technology in the American Renaissance." English and American Studies in German. Tübingen: Niemeyer, 2002. 120-21.
  • "The Threat of History - Narrative Discourse and Historical Consciousness in Contemporary Afro-American Fiction." English and American Studies in German. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 1991. 142-44.
  • Kindlers Literatur Lexikon: Supplementband [Kindler's Encyclopedia of Literature: Supplementary Volume] Munich: Kindler, 1998. Essays on:
    • "Charles Johnson: Being and Race: Black Writing Since 1970"
    • "Samuel R. Delany: Nova"
  • Kindlers Literatur Lexikon [Kindler's Encyclopedia of Literature] Munich: Kindler, 1989/90/91; updated and revised versions 2009. Essays on:
    • "James Baldwin: No Name in the Street"
    • "J.B.: Going to Meet the Man"
    • "J.B.: Tell Me How Long the Train`s Been Gone"
    • "Gwendolyn Brooks: The Poetical Works"
    • "William Wells Brown: Clotel, or the President`s Daughter"
    • "Frederick Douglass: Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Written by Himself"
    • "Langston Hughes: The Big Sea"
    • "L. H.: The Poetical Works"
    • "Zora Neale Hurston: Their Eyes Were Watching God"
    • "George L. Jackson: Soledad Brother"
    • "James Weldon Johnson: The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man"
    • "Gayl Jones: Corregidora"
    • "LeRoi Jones/Amiri Baraka: The System of Dante`s Hell"
    • "L.J.: Tales"
    • "L.J.: The Poetical Works"
    • "Claude McKay: Banana Bottom"
    • "C.M.: The Poetical Works"
    • "Melvin B. Tolson: The Poetical Works"
    • "Richard Wright: Uncle Tom`s Children"
    • "R.W.: Black Boy"
    • "R.W.: The Long Dream"
    • "R.W.: Eight Men"
    • "R.W.: American Hunger"
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Reviews, newspaper/magazine articles

  • "Maschinenliebe: Was Sex Roboter können und wie sie unser Verhältnis zur Technik verändern”.
    Telepolis 27. Februar 2018.
    https://www.heise.de/tp/features/Maschinenliebe-3987368.html

  • "Werner Sollors, African American Writing: A Literary Approach." Amerikastudien/American Studies 62.3 (2018) 503.
  • “Die Architektur des Glücks. Zur Aktualität einer Wohnutopie des 19. Jahrhunderts, und warum wir uns unbedingt an sie erinnern sollten”. Telepolis 26. Oktober 2017.
    https://www.heise.de/tp/features/Die-Architektur-des-Gluecks-3869012.html
  • “Wissenschaft im Zeitalter des Antiprofessionalismus”. Telepolis 5. Juni 2017.
    https://www.heise.de/tp/features/Wissenschaft-im-Zeitalter-des-Antiprofessionalismus-3731019.html
  • “Benvenuto Presidente!” Telepolis 13. November 2016
    https://www.heise.de/tp/features/Benvenuto-Presidente-3464567.html
  • "Die Antwort auf alle Fragen ist in seinen Cantos verborgen." Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung Nr. 128, "Literarisches Leben" (Saturday, June 4th 2016) 20.
  • "Eric G. Wilson, 'The Spiritual History of Ice.'" Kritikon Litterarum 1-2, 2011. 121-123.
  • "Alfred Hornung, Auto/Biography and Meditation." Anglia, 2011.
  • "Das Amerika der Autoren." Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung Nr. 116 (Monday, May 21st, 2007) 36.
  • "Lawrence Buell. Writing for an Endangered World: Literature, Culture, and Environment in the U.S. and Beyond." Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik 52.2 (2004): 202-04.
  • "Die Anfänge der Parabel - Gesichter Amerikas: Heinz Ickstadts literaturgeschichtliche Essays." Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung no. 213 (Friday, September 13th, 2002): 34.
  • "Die Verortung der Kultur: Anglistik und Amerikanistik als Kulturwissenschaft." Spektrum: Sprach, Literatur- und Kulturwissenschaften 3.1 (2001): 45-47.
  • "Elmar Schenkel and Stephan Welz (eds.). Lost Worlds and Mad Elephants: Literature, Science and Technology 1700-1990." Literaturwissenschaftliches Jahrbuch (2000): 429-31.
  • "Vorhang fällt, Spiel beginnt - Postdramatisch: Hans-Thies Lehmann blickt auf das Theater heute." Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung no. 127 (Friday, June 12th, 2000): 42.
  • "David E. Nye. Narratives and Spaces: Technology and the Construction of American Culture." Amerikastudien/American Studies 44.4 (1999): 586-87.
  • "David E. Nye. American Technological Sublime." Amerikastudien/American Studies 41/3 (1996): 506-8.
  • "Nicholas K. Bromell. By the Sweat of the Brow: Literature and Labor in Antebellum America." Kritikon Litterarum 21.3/4 (1994): 167-72.
  • "William Johnson's Natchez: The Ante-Bellum Diary of a Free Negro." Amerikastudien/American Studies 40.3 (Fall 1995): 532-33.
  • "Review Essay: Miles Orvell, The Real Thing: Imitation and Authenticity in American Culture, 1880-1940; Thomas Laqueur, Making Sex: Body and Gender From the Greeks to Freud; Donna J. Haraway, Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature." Amerikastudien/American Studies37.3 (1992): 535-41.
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Reprints

  • "Fake Supreme: William Gaddis and the Art of Recognition." In: Faking, Forging, Counterfeiting: Discredited Practices at the Margins of Mimesis." Ed. Daniel Becker et al. Bielefeld: Transcript, 2018. 127-138.
  • "Day and Night: Topography and Renewal in Thoreau's Walden and Douglass's Narrative. In: Contesting Enrivonmental Imaginaries: Nature and Counternature in a Time of Global Change. Ed. Steven Hartman. Leiden: Brill, 2017. 13-27.
  • "Our Bikes Are Us": Speed, Motorcycles, and the Tradition of a Democratic Technology." In: Culture and Mobility. Ed. Klaus Benesch. Heidelberg: Heidelberg University Press/Winter, 2013. 65-80.
  • "Charles Johnson: 'The Education of Mingo.'" Short Story Criticism. Farmington: Gale, 2011.
  • 22 survey entries (revised) for the new edition of Kindlers Literatur Lexikon [Kindlers Literary Encyclopedia]. Stuttgart: J.B. Metzler Verlag, 2007.
  • "Myth, Media, and the Obsolescence of Postmodern Drama: Don DeLillo's Tragicomedy Valparaiso." In: Media Encounters . Ed. Jürgen Müller. Münster: Nodus, 2007. 161-171.
  • "Melville's Black Jack: Billy Budd and the Politics of Race in 19th Century Maritime Life." Monuments of the Black Atlantic: Slavery and Memory. Ed. Joanne Braxton and Maria I. Diedrich. Münster: LIT, 2004. 67-75.
  • "The Pitfalls of Memory: Cross-Cultural Discourse and Autobiographical Form in Olaudah Equiano's Interesting Narrative." Cross Perspectives on African Americans: Celebrating Michel Fabre. GRAAT [Publications des Groupes Recherches Anglo-Américaines de l'Université de Tours] 27 (2003): 9-21.
  • "From a Thing Into an I Am: Autobiographical Narrative and Metahistorical Discourse in Contemporary African-American Fiction." A shorter version of this essay is reprinted in: "Approches Critiques De La Fiction Afro-Américaine." GRAAT  18 (1998): 7-21.
  • "William Johnson's Natchez: The Ante-Bellum Diary of a Free Negro." This review was also published in: AFRAM NEWSLETTER. Publication du Centre Afro-américaines et des Nouvelles Littératures en Anglais de la Sorbonne Nouvelle. 40 (1994): 34-37.
  • "Charles Johnson: 'The Education of Mingo'." Reprinted as "Slavery as Metaphor: Charles Johnson's Cross-Cultural Slave Narratives." Parcours identitaires. Ed. Geneviève Fabre. Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne Nouvelle, 1994. 127-38.
  • "Oral Narrative and Literary Text: Afro-American Folklore in Their Eyes Were Watching God." An abbreviated version of this essay has been reprinted in: Contemporary Literary Criticism. Ed. Roger Matuz. Detroit: Gayle Research Inc., 1990. 270-74; and as "The Role of Black English in Their Were Watching God" in: Zora Neale Hurston's There Eyes Were Watching God. Bloom's Notes. A Contemporary Literary Views Book.  Ed. Harold Bloom. Broomall, PA: Chelsea House Publishers, 1999. 51-53.
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Current Research and Work in Progress

Book project/monograph, under contract with the University of Pennsylvanmia Press

Architecture and the Construction of Ideas

Author: Klaus Benesch

Summary

What connects a popular NPR podcast titled “How I built this” to the construction of four makeshift spiral towers in Watts, Los Angeles, by Italian-American immigrant Sabato Rodia or Henry David Thoreau’s experiment in ‘lowly’ living at Walden Pond? While relating the story of how successful tech entrepreneurs ‘built’ their enormously profitable start-ups the podcast taps into a powerful constructivist repertoire of ‘building’—a company, a city, or a nation—that resonates with Americans ever since the ‘framing’ (another distinctly architectural metaphor) of the Constitution. Yet if most Americans would agree that building something is an integral part of our national character, there is much less consent as to how we use what we have built, how we dwell in our buildings (architectural or otherwise), and how building and designing sometimes concretize and epitomize diverging cultural forces. Though closely tied to established social norms and building practices, architecture, as I argue in this book, often introduces new thoughts, a new aesthetic understanding of our environment, new cultural attitudes, or a new perspective on both the past and future of American society. My objective, thus, is twofold: first, I take a fresh look at American intellectual history through the lenses of architecture and architectural theory; and, second, I show how writers wary of the consequences of unbridled modernization and change have used architecture to rethink what it means to live under conditions of modernity and, ultimately, to forge alternative concepts for society at large.

 

DFG-Sonderforschungsbereich "Vigilanzkulturen: Transformationen - Räume - Techniken"

Teilprojekt, A03; Titel: "Selbstbeobachtung und Selbstermächtigung in der amerikanischen Aufklärung"

Projektleitung: Prof. Dr. Klaus Benesch; Mitarbeiter: Patrick Geiger

Das Teilprojekt untersucht die für die Themenstellung des SFB sehr wichtige Transformation religiöser in aufgeklärt-weltliche Formen von Vigilanz anhand ausgewählter historischer Quellen und autobiographischer Texte des 18. Jahrhunderts. Ausgehend von der sich im 18. Jahrhundert in den amerikanischen Kolonien ausbreitenden, systematischen Selbstbeobachtung in Form von Tagebüchern und Tugendkatalogen, wie man sie exemplarisch bei William Byrd oder Benjamin Franklin findet, sollen säkularisierte Formen der puritanischen ideology of control beschrieben
werden. Diese sind Teil einer alle Lebensbereiche erfassenden Kultur der Selbstoptimierung, die von einem neuen, aufgeklärten Verständnis von Schicksal und Geschichte als grundsätzlich offenen Kategorien menschlicher Selbstentfaltung sowie der daraus resultierenden Unwägbarkeit hinsichtlich der Erreichung selbstgesetzter Ziele angetrieben wird. Das Teilprojekt Arbeit anhand von Tagebüchern, Tugendkatalogen, Autobiographien, Zeitschriften (Early American Almanacs), Korrespondenzen und politischen Essays unterschiedliche Erscheinungsformen dieser Transformation heraus und nimmt dabei sowohl die Differenzen als auch die Kontinuitäten zwischen religiösen und weltlich-autonomen Praktiken von Vigilanz in den Blick.

https://www.sfb1369.uni-muenchen.de/forschung/teilprojekte/projektbereich_a/teilprojekt_a02/index.html


DFG-Forschergruppe 593 "Anfänge (in) der Moderne: Theoretische Konzepte, literarische Figurationen, historische Konstruktionen"
Teilprojekt "Anfangsorte: Topographien der Erneuerung in der amerikanischen Romantik, 1820 – 1870"

Das Teilprojekt Anfangsorte hat zum Ziel, den Zusammenhang zwischen Anfängen und den Orten, an die diese Anfänge imaginativ gebunden bzw. zu denen sie in Beziehung gesetzt werden, in der formativen Periode der amerikanischen Literatur, der sogenannten „American Renaissance“, zu analysieren. Es verbindet damit zwei den Kategorien von Raum und Zeit untergeordnete und zumeist isoliert betrachtete Konzeptualisierungen des Anfangs, die für die im 19. Jahrhundert entstehende Nationalliteratur der USA von zentraler Bedeutung sind. Das Projekt geht von der Annahme aus, daß sowohl Orte als auch Anfänge grundsätzlich diskursiv konstituiert sind, und daß beide im literarischen Diskurs der Zeit in komplexer Weise miteinander verschränkt werden. Den kultur- und geistesgeschichtlichen Hintergrund für diese Verschränkung bildet dabei zum einen die Herausbildung einer eigenen, an der sublimen Weite des amerikanischen Naturraums orientierten nationalen Ästhetik. Zum anderen wird in einem Teil der zeitgenössischen Literatur genau dieses Ausgreifen in den transzendentalen Raum der Natur als Problem gesehen und nunmehr mit der (Selbst-)Beschränkung auf konkrete, genau bestimmbare ‚Orte’ beantwortet. In welchem Verhältnis diese Orte dann einerseits zum epochalen Projekt der neuen Nation stehen bzw. andererseits die Brüche und Ambiguitäten in der diskursiven Konstruktion von Modernität insgesamt widerspiegeln, soll am Beispiel zentraler Texte von Thoreau und Whitman unter Einbeziehung der „space/place“-Debatte im Ecocriticism und in den Environmental Studies herausgearbeitet werden.

Website: http://www.forschergruppe-anfaenge.lmu.de/

Verantwortlich für den Inhalt: Amerika-Institut