Dr. Christian Weber (Ph.D. Indiana University) is an Assistant Professor of German. His research interests include 18th to 21st century literature, philosophy, and culture (with special focus on the Goethezeit); literary and aesthetic theory; phenomenology of vision; history and philosophy of biology; scientific models of generating poetry; culture and critique of technology (esp. Fordism and its European reception); cultivation/construction of national and transnational identities.
In his dissertation „Forme Menschen nach meinem Bilde“: Mythopoetische Kritik der Einbildungskraft in Goethes früher Lyrik, Christian focuses on the liberation of the creative poetic imagination from theological and philosophical regimes in the 18th century. He argues that Goethe assumes this task in a self-reflexive attempt to recapture the momentary act of dichten in order to define the limits of poetry. Two essays resulted from his research: “Goethes Ganymed und der Sündenfall der Ästhetik” (Deutsche Vierteljahrsschrift 81.3, 2007) and “Goethes Prometheus: Kritik der poietischen Einbildungskraft” (Goethe Yearbook 2008, forthcoming).
Currently, Christian is working on an article on “The Phenomenal Evolution of Human Vision,” which renders a phenomenological description of human vision or, rather, how we have tried to come to terms with it. His next book-length project will explore the multi-faceted uses of organicist/mechanist metaphors as models of cultivating/engineering national identities from the 17th and 18th century (Great Britain, France, Switzerland, and ‘Germany’) to the 20th century (United States, Soviet Union, Nazi Germany).
- Current Courses
- Previous Courses
- German Cinema - GET3524
- The “Age of Goethe” and Its Legacy - GEW4930/GEW5596
- Robots, Monsters, and Test-Tubed Babies: Technology and the Human
- The Footballization of Europe
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