CV - Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures

BERNHARD MALKMUS
Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures
The Ohio State University
1775 College Road, 498 Hagerty Hall
Columbus, OH 43210, U.S.A
tel #1 614 447 6985
fax #1 614 292 8510
e-mail malkmus.1@osu.edu
Academic Positions____________________________________________________________
2013 – present
Associate Professor of German at the Ohio State University (tenured)
Affiliated Associate Professor of Comparative Studies
2007 – 2013
Assistant Professor of German at the Ohio State University (tenure-track)
2006 – 07
Postdoctoral Fellow of Comparative Literature at Goldsmiths,
University of London
2005 – 06
Lektor and Director of Studies in German at Pembroke College,
University of Cambridge
2001 – 02
Lecturer of German literature at the Charles University, Prague
Education____________________________________________________________________
2002 – 06
PhD in German and comparative literature
University of Cambridge
spring 2002
visiting fellow in comparative literature
Harvard University
1997 – 2000
M.A. in literature, linguistics, and pedagogy
Universität Konstanz
1996 – 97
visiting student
University of Cambridge
1994 – 96
B.A. (equivalent) in modern languages
Universität Würzburg
1992
Abitur (Humanistisches Gymnasium)
Lohr am Main
Fellowships and Awards _______________________________________________________
Fellowships
 Carson Fellow at the Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society, Munich
(winter 2015-6)
 DAAD Research Fellow at the Department of Philosophy, University of Bamberg
(summer 2015)
 Research Fellow at Internationales Forschungszentrum Kulturwissenschaften, Vienna
(IFK) (winter 2014-5)
 Kurt Hahn Trust Honorary Fellowship (2002-3)
 Visiting Fellow at Department of Comparative Literature, Harvard University (spring
semester 2002)
Awards
 Rodica C. Botoman Award for Distinguished Undergraduate Teaching and Mentoring,
College of Arts & Sciences, Ohio State University (2012)
 Travel grants from DFG (2005), ACLA (2005), Tiarks Trust, Cambridge (2005, 2006),
MLA (2005), St. John’s College, Cambridge (2003, 2004, 2005), Cambridge European
Trust (2003)
Scholarships
 ‘Chile Project’ scholarship for research in Chile on exile literature (summer 2006)
 Benefactors’ Scholarship, St. John’s College, Cambridge (2002-5)
 Arts and Humanities Research Board PhD grant (2002-5)
 Studienstiftung des Deutschen Volkes (German National Scholarship) (1995-2000)
Publications___________________________________________________________________
Monograph
The German Pícaro and Modernity: Between Underdog and Shape-Shifter. New York: Continuum
2011. (paperback 2014)
Reviews: Arcadia, Choice, German Quarterly, Monatshefte, Pacific Coast Philology,
Seminar
Edited books and journal issues
The Challenge of Ecology to the Humanities: Posthumanism or Humanism?, co-edited with
Heather Sullivan. New German Critique, special issue 115/2 (2016).
Dialectic and Paradox: Configurations of the Third in Modernity, co-edited with Ian Cooper.
Oxford: Lang 2013.
Third Agents: Secret Protagonists of the Modern Imagination, co-edited with Ian Cooper and
Ekkehard Knörer. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Press 2008.
Peer-reviewed journal articles
(under review) ‘Father Trouble: Adam and Aeneas in Saul Bellow’s Adventures of Augie March’.
(Amerikastudien/American Studies)
(forthcoming) ‘Man in the Anthropocene: Max Frisch’s Environmental History’. (PMLA, 2017)
‘The Challenge of Ecology to the Humanities: An Introduction’. (with H. Sullivan) New German
Critique, special issue 115/2 (2016), i-xvi.
‘Die Angst vor dem Anthropozän, oder Naturgeschichten vom Fisch’. Scheidewege. Jahrbuch für
skeptisches Denken 45 (2015), 183-200.
‘The Pícaro as Homo Sacer: Jerzy Kosinski’s The Painted Bird’. Shofar 30/4 (2012), 80-99.
‘Das Naturtheater des W.G. Sebald: die ökologischen Aporien eines poeta doctus’.
Gegenwartsliteratur 10 (2011), 210-33.
‘The Birth of the Pícaro out of the Spirit of Self-Reliance: Herman Melville’s Confidence-Man’.
Amerikastudien/American Studies 54/4 (2009), 603-20.
‘The Topography of Memory in Alexander Kluge’s Fiction’. New German Critique 107/3 (2009),
231-52.
‘Erinnerungskult und Vergessensethos: Die Wahlverwandtschaften’. Germanisch-Romanische
Monatsschrift 58/3 (2008), 279-98.
Entries in Handbooks
(in press) ‘Sceneries in Robert Walser’. In Samuel Frederick and Valerie Hefernan (eds.): A
Companion to Robert Walser. Evanston: Northwestern University Press 2016.
‘Jakob von Gunten’. In Lucas Marco Gisi (ed.): Robert Walser Handbuch. Stuttgart: Metzler 2015,
44-57.
Book chapters
(forthcoming) ‘Diffuse Dwelling: Landscape in Graham Swift and W.G. Sebald’. In Sabine Wilke
(ed.): Readings in the Anthropocene: The Environmental Humanities, German Studies,
and Beyond.
(in press) ‘Senses of Slovenia: Peter Handke, Stanley Cavell, and the Environmental Ethics of
Repetition’. In Caroline Schaumann and Heather Sullivan (eds.): Anthropocene:
Readings in German Literature. London: Palgrave 2016.
‘Triadic Concepts in the Humanities and Social Sciences. An Introduction’ (with I. Cooper). In
Cooper and Malkmus (eds): Dialectic and Paradox. Configurations of the Third in
Modernity. Oxford: Lang 2013, 1-21.
‘Vom Hoch- und Tiefstapeln: Der Pícaro zwischen den Systemen der Moderne’. In Thomas
Bedorf, Joachim Fischer, and Gesa Lindemann (eds): Theorien des Dritten. Innovationen
in Soziologie und Sozialphilosophie. Munich: Fink 2010, 289-315.
‘“The Third” and Modernity’ (with I. Cooper). In Cooper, Knörer, and Malkmus (eds): Third Agents.
Secret Protagonists of the Modern Imagination. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Press
2008, 1-11.
‘The Picaresque Hero and Economies of Circulation’. In Christoph Ehland and Robert Fajen
(eds): The Paradigm of the Picaresque. Heidelberg: Winter 2007, 179-200.
‘Picaresque Narratology: Lazarillo de Tormes and Edgar Hilsenrath’s Der Nazi und der Friseur’.
In David Robb (ed.): Popular Forms in Literature, Drama and Film. Amsterdam: Rodopi
2007, 211-29.
‘Ökologie als blinder Fleck der Literatur- und Kulturtheorie’. In S. Mayer and C. Gersdorf (eds):
Natur – Kultur – Text. Beiträge zu Ökologie und Literaturwissenschaft. Heidelberg: Winter
2005, 53-77.
‘“All of them Signs and Characters from the Type-Case of Forgotten Things” – Intermedia
Configurations of History in W.G. Sebald’. In Silke Arnold-de Simine (ed.): Memory
Traces: 1989 and the Question of German Cultural Identity. Oxford: Lang 2005, 211-44.
Reviews
‘Aleida Assmann: Ist die Zeit aus den Fugen? Aufstieg und Fall des Zeitregimes der Moderne’.
Modern Language Review 110/4 (2015), 1109-10.
‘Robert Macfarlane: The Old Ways’. Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment (ISLE)
2/20 (2013), 434-5.
‘Sean Ireton and Caroline Schaumann: Heights of Reflection. Mountains in the German
Imagination from the Middle Ages to the Twenty-First Century’. German Quarterly 1/86
(2013), 230-1.
‘Ursula Heise: Nach der Natur. Das Artensterben und die moderne Kultur’. Monatshefte 2/104
(2012), 263-5.
‘Joachim Radkau: Die Ära der Ökologie. Eine Weltgeschichte’. Interdisciplinary Studies in
Literature and Environment (ISLE) 1/19 (2012).
‘Volker Wehdeking: Medienkonstellationen. Literatur und Film im Kontext von Moderne und
Postmoderne’. Monatshefte 3/102 (2010), 438-40.
Interviews
‘From Ethics to Justice: The Role of the Triad in Modern Social Imagination. A Conversation with
Zygmunt Bauman’. In Cooper and Malkmus (eds): Dialectic and Paradox. Configurations
of the Third in Modernity. Oxford: Lang 2012, 25-36.
‘“Frisch von der Leber weg” – Edgar Hilsenrath wird 85: Ein Erinnerungsgespräch’. German Life
and Letters 64/2 (2011), 317-25.
Translations
‘Peter Balakian: Armenia 2015’, in Neue Rundschau 2/126 (2015), 90-104.
‘W.S. Merwin: Neun Gedichte’, in Neue Rundschau 4/123 (2012).
Journalism
Articles on cultural and social topics and book reviews in Süddeutsche Zeitung, Frankfurter
Allgemeine Zeitung; Times Literary Supplement, Neue Rundschau, Akzente; TRANS
(Architekturmagazin ETH Zürich)
Invited Lectures_______________________________________________________________
11/15
‘Diffuse Dwelling: the Anthroposcenic Fenlands’ (Rachel Carson Center, Munich)
4/15
‘Armenien in der deutschsprachigen Literatur’ (Goethe Institut, Tbilissi–Yerevan)
4/15
‘Kulturelles Gedächtnis und literarische Zeugenschaft: Franz Werfels Die vierzig Tage
des Musa Dagh’ (Stifter-Gesellschaft, Munich)
3/15
‘Arachnophilia: Metamorphosis, Ecology, and Literature’ (Radboud Universiteit,
Nijmegen)
12/14
‘Man in the Anthropocene: Max Frisch’s Environmental History’ (ELTE Budapest)
11/14
‘The Topicality of Self-Overcoming in Timothy Morton’ (University of Vienna)
10/14
‘Die Angst vor dem Anthropozän’ (IFK, Vienna)
6/14
‘Man in the Anthropocene: Max Frisch’s Eschatological Meteorology’ (LMU Munich)
10/13
‘Die jüngere Schwester der hebräischen Erde: Armenien und sein Schicksal im Werk von
Franz Werfel und Edgar Hilsenrath’ (Evangelische Akademie Berlin)
9/12
(keynote) ‘Geography and Landscape Stimmung’ (Humboldt Environmental Humanities
Network, Seattle)
7/09
‘Vom Hoch- und Tiefstapeln: Der Pícaro in den Systemen der Moderne’ (Peter-SzondiInstitut, Freie Universität Berlin)
5/06
‘Picaresque Money’ (The Sylvia Naish lecture, Institute of Germanic and Romance
Studies, London)
Conference Papers____________________________________________________________
1/14
‘Alexander von Humboldt’s Shadow in César Aira’s Pampas Paintings’ (VII International
Humboldt Conference, Santiago de Chile)
6/13
‘The Natural History of Fish, or Anthropocene Angst’ (Humboldt Environmental
Humanities Network, Rachel Carson Center, Munich)
2/13
‘Stimmungslandschaft: Peter Handke’s Landscape Aesthetics’ (Ecopoetics, Berkeley)
10/12
‘Geographic Materialism and the Humanities’ (GSA, Milwaukee)
1/12
‘The Bestiary, Imagination, Mourning’ (MLA, Seattle)
7/11
‘The Zötl Effect: The Bestiary and Modern Imagination’ (ASLE, Bloominton)
9/10
‘Kerygma and Wilderness in the Poetry of Hölderlin and Hopkins’ (GSA, Oakland)
8/10
‘Naturgeschichte der Zerstörung: ein Motiv und seine Methode in Werk W.G. Sebalds’
(XII. Internationaler Germanistenkongress, Warsaw)
3/09
‘Bare life and the Picaresque Voice in Jerzy Kosinski’s The Painted Bird’ (ACLA Harvard)
6/08
‘Intermediality in Kluge’s fiction’ (Intermediality in German Cultural Discourse, Bangor)
7/07
‘Monetary Concepts in Nietzsche and Stifter’ (BCLA London)
4/07
‘The Topography of Memory in Alexander Kluge’s Die Chronik der Gefühle’ (ACLA
Puebla, Mexico)
6/06
‘Benjamin and Berlin 1936’ (Responses to Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht’s In Praise of Athletic
Beauty, Pembroke College, Cambridge)
12/05
‘Multilingualism and the Re-writing of European History in W.G. Sebald’ (MLA
Washington/DC)
9/05
‘Circulation and the Picaresque’ (DFG, Würzburg)
4/05
‘Commerce and the Notion of Trust in Melville’ (Literature, philosophy, and Commerce
1750-1900, Stanford)
3/05
‘Excess and Suspension of Experience in Modern Picaresque Fiction’ (ACLA
Pennsylvania State University)
3/04
‘Ecology as Blind Spot of Contemporary Literary Culture’ (Positioning Ecocriticism,
Münster)
9/03
‘Photography as Suspension of Oblivion in Sebald’ (Visual Knowledges, Edinburgh)
8/03
‘The Picaresque and the Grotesque’ (Clowns, Fools and Picaros – Popular Forms in
Literature, Drama and Film, Belfast)
4/03
‘Images in W.G. Sebald’s Austerlitz and the Kindertransport experience’ (Leo Baeck
Conference on the Kindertransport, Brighton)
Teaching Experience___________________________________________________________
The Ohio State University | Assistant/Associate Professor of German (since 2007)






General Education Classes
Language classes at all levels (special focus: theory and practice of translation)
Introductory and advanced seminars on German and European literature
Introductory seminars on modern German and European culture and history
Advanced German culture seminars (special foci: environmental humanities;
contemporary visual culture; cultural memory)
Graduate seminars:
The German Picaresque Novel and its European Contexts
W.G. Sebald: German Texts, European Contexts, Global Reception
Literature and Money: Negotiating Public and Private Spheres
Cult Fiction: Identification and Literature
Memory Cultures in Contemporary Germany
Nature, Land-Scape, Culture: Concepts of Space in German Intellectual Culture
Vision and Power: A Critique of Modernity
Goldsmiths, University of London | Postdoctoral Fellow in Comparative Literature (2006-7)



Introductory seminars on American literature
Introductory seminars on European modernism
Lectures on the American Renaissance; German modernism; psychoanalysis and
literature
University of Cambridge | Lektor & Director of Studies in German, Pembroke College (2005-6)


German language classes at all levels (listening and reading comprehension, essay
composition, conversation, translation)
Administrative and pastoral duties
University of Cambridge | Teaching Assistant (2003-5)



Introductory seminars: German Key Texts 1800-2000; American Key Texts since 1830
Advanced seminars: German Literature, Thought and History since 1910; German
Literature, Thought and History from 1815 to 1914
Classic German poetry for students of English
University of Cambridge | Certificate in Humanities Computing for Languages (Computer-Aided
Language Learning, CALL) (2002-3)
Univerzita Karlova, Prague | Lecturer in German (2001-2)



Proseminar on Frühromantik
Hauptseminar on Intertextuality and Intermediality
Reading group on social and literary theory
Universität Konstanz | Teaching Assistant (1999-2001)


Tutorials on classic German literature
Tutorials on methods of research, academic writing and presentation skills
Service to the Department______________________________________________________
PhD Dissertation Advisor
Marcus Breyer (2013- )
Sarah Larson (2014- )
PhD Committee Member
Charles Vannette (2011), Associate Professor at Ferris State University, since 2011
Thomas Stefaniuk (2012), Assistant Professor at Florida Gulf Coast University, since 2012
Jesse Wood (2012), Assistant Professor, Brigham Young University, since 2013
Jennifer Magro-Algarotti (2012), Assistant Professor, George Mason University, since 2014
Simon Loesch, ABD
Seth Josephson, ABD
German Graduate Student Association, faculty advisor, OSU, 2009-10; 2013-14
Horizont. German undergraduate newspaper, The Ohio State University, 2013-14
Graduate Advisory Committee, OSU, 2008-present
Undergraduate Advisory Committee, 2012-present
Honors Advisor, 2009-2013
Minor Advisor, 2008-2013
Committee work, e.g. lecture committee, scheduling committee, awards committee
Service to the University_______________________________________________________
Since autumn 2012 Center for Ethics and Human Values | Animal Worlds in the Arts, Sciences
and Humanities
http://ethicsandhumanvalues.osu.edu/
Since autumn 2010 OSU, College of Arts and Sciences | Interdisciplinary Initiative ‘Sustainability’
Development of practical, research and teaching initiatives designed to foster environmental
citizenship at the university and beyond; coordination of course offerings on environmental topics in
the humanities; planning of lecture series on ‘The Humanities and Sustainability’ at the School of
Environment and Natural Resources
2008-11, Ohio State University | Research cluster ‘Public Sphere and Modern Social Imaginaries’
Interdisciplinary research group (social sciences and humanities): lecture series, workshops,
fundraising; since September 2009 constituted as a collaborative research group at the Humanities
Institute, OSU
Service to the Profession_______________________________________________________
Editorial Reviews: Gegenwartsliteratur; Studies in the Novel; Germanic Review; Zeitschrift für
Kulturwissenschaften
2011-14 Alexander von Humboldt Research Network | Environmental Humanities
http://environmental-humanities-network.org/
July 2007, London | ‘Folly’ (The British Comparative Literature Association XI International
Conference)
International and interdisciplinary conference with 150 delegates (co-organized with two
colleagues)
August 2005, Cambridge | ‘Configurations of the Third 1800 to the present’
International and interdisciplinary conference with ca. 100 delegates (co-organized with Ian
Cooper)
Professional Affiliations_______________________________________________________




American Comparative Literature Association (ACLA)
Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment (ASLE)
German Studies Association (GSA)
Modern Language Association (MLA)
Language Skills_______________________________________________________________







German (native)
English (near-native)
Portuguese (fluent)
Spanish (fluent)
French (working knowledge)
Ancient Greek (reading knowledge)
Latin (reading knowledge)