Dr. Olaf Berwald
Chair and Professor
Departments / Programs
Degree Information
- PHD, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (2000)
- MA, University of Tubingen (1994)
Areas of Expertise
German, Austrian, and Swiss Literatures; World Literatures; Trauma and Literature; Visual Violence and Literature; History of Rhetoric.
Publications
PEER-REVIEWED RESEARCH PUBLICATIONS
BOOKS
Thomas Bernhard’s Afterlives, eds. Stephen Dowden, Gregor Thuswaldner, and Olaf Berwald, 2nd edition (New York/London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2022, 1st ed. 2020). 255 pages.
Timescapes of Waiting: Spaces and Stasis, Delay and Deferral, eds. Christoph Singer, Robert Wirth, and Olaf Berwald (Brill Rodopi, 2019). 238 pages. <...>
Read More »PEER-REVIEWED RESEARCH PUBLICATIONS
BOOKS
Thomas Bernhard’s Afterlives, eds. Stephen Dowden, Gregor Thuswaldner, and Olaf Berwald, 2nd edition (New York/London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2022, 1st ed. 2020). 255 pages.
Timescapes of Waiting: Spaces and Stasis, Delay and Deferral, eds. Christoph Singer, Robert Wirth, and Olaf Berwald (Brill Rodopi, 2019). 238 pages.
A Companion to the Works of Max Frisch, ed. Olaf Berwald (Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2013). 240 pages.
La globalización y sus espejismos. Encuentros y desencuentros interculturales vistos desde el Sur y el Norte / Globalization and its Apparitions: Intercultural Engagements and Disengagements Seen from the South and the North, eds. Michael Handelsman and Olaf Berwald (Quito: El Conejo, 2009). 268 pages.
Der untote Gott. Religion und Ästhetik in der deutschen und österreichischen Literatur des 20. Jahrhunderts, eds. Olaf Berwald and Gregor Thuswaldner (Köln/Weimar/ Wien: Böhlau, 2007). 249 pages.
An Introduction to the Works of Peter Weiss (Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2003), Single-authored monograph. 170 pages.
Philipp Melanchthons Sicht der Rhetorik (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1994). Single-authored monograph. 172 pages.
ARTICLES AND BOOK CHAPTERS
“Mnemosyne’s Solitude in Broch and Kunitz,” Dedalus: Revista Portuguesa de Literatura Comparada, 24 (2022), 59-76.
“Immersions into Bernhard’s Works in Recent Francophone Literature,” Thomas Bernhard’s Afterlives, eds. Stephen Dowden, Gregor Thuswaldner, and Olaf Berwald (New York/London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2022, first ed. 2020), 157-67.
“Guilt and Autonomy in Geoffrey Hill’s and Hermann Broch’s Works,” Complicity and the Politics of Representation, eds. Cornelia Wächter and Robert Wirth (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2019), 75-88.
“Waiting as Resistance: Confined Spaces in Broch and Weiss,” Timescapes of Waiting: Spaces and Stasis, Delay and Deferral, eds. Christoph Singer, Robert Wirth, and Olaf Berwald (Leiden/Boston: Brill Rodopi, 2019), 140-54.
“Introduction,” co-authored with Christoph Singer and Robert Wirth, Timescapes of Waiting: Spaces and Stasis, Delay and Deferral, eds. Christoph Singer, Robert Wirth, and Olaf Berwald (Leiden/Boston: Brill Rodopi), 2019, 1-16.
“Max Frisch und Peter Weiss: Ethische und ästhetische Korrelationen.” Max Frisch: Konstellationen und Perspektiven, eds. Walter Schmitz and Klaus Schuhmacher (Dresden: Thelem, 2018), 335-45.
“Conflicting Ascents: Inscriptions, Cartographies, and Disappearance in Christoph Ransmayr’s Der fliegende Berg.” Heights of Reflection: Mountains in the German Imagination from the Middle Ages to the Present, eds. Sean Ireton and Caroline Schaumann (Camden House, second ed. 2017; first 2012), 334-48.
Maria Pohl, Elisabeth Punzi, Olaf Berwald, “The Virtues of Poetic Writing: Implications for Clinical Practice. An Interview Study.” The Humanistic Psychologist, June 2017 (http://dx.doi.org/10/1037/hum0000072).
“Against Aboutness: The Corpse that Almost Got Away.” The Scofield 1.4 (Spring 2016): Special Issue: Max Frisch & Identity, 196-97.
“The Ethics of Listening in Dana Ranga’s Wasserbuch and Terézia Mora’s Das Ungeheuer.” Envisioning Social Justice in 21st-Century German Literature and Culture, eds. Jill Twark and Axel Hildebrandt (Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2015), 275-89.
“The Ends of Blindness in Max Frisch’s Mein Name Sei Gantenbein.” A Companion to the Works of Max Frisch, ed. Olaf Berwald (Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2013), 156-71.
“Introduction: Max Frisch’s Life and Works.” A Companion to the Works of Max Frisch, ed. Olaf Berwald (Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2013), 1-9. “Hesse’s Poetry.” A Companion to the Works of Hermann Hesse, ed. Ingo Cornils (Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2nd ed. 2013, first 2009), 241-62.
“Freundschaft. Zur Praxis eines Begriffs bei Frisch und Aristoteles.” Germanica 48 (2011): 131-39.
“Irrevocable Wounds: Language Loss in Peter Weiss’s Die Ästhetik des Widerstands.” Images of Madness: An Interdisciplinary Perpective/Imagens da Loucura: Uma Perspectiva Interdisciplinar, eds. Alessandra Pires and Luciana Namorato (From the Scholars Desk), 2010, 172-82.
“Marsyas Skin Grafts: Brecht/Kafka Palimpsests in Volker Braun’s Poetics of Survival.” Journal of the Kafka Society of America 31/32 (2010): 11-17.
“Recolonizing Reason: Torture and the Globalization of Indifference.” La globalización y sus espejismos. Encuentros y desencuentros interculturales vistos desde el Sur y el Norte / Globalization and its Apparitions: Intercultural Engagements and Disengagements Seen from the South and the North, eds. Michael Handelsman and Olaf Berwald (El Conejo, 2009), 123-36.
“Mythos und Methode. Notizen zur posthumanen Idylle.” Derrida und danach? Literatur- theoretische Diskurse der Gegenwart, ed. Gregor Thuswaldner (VS Verlag, 2008), 101-110. “Polis, Solitude, and Solidarity: Soundings of Kafka in Weiss and Canetti.” Journal of the Kafka Society of America 29 (2008), 15-22.
“Unfreundliche Übernahme. Benns Nietzscherezeption.” Gottfried Benn: Studien zum Werk, eds. Walter Delabar and Ursula Kocher (Bielefeld: Aisthesis, 2007), 51-61.
“Schöpferisches Selbstopfer. Zu einer Denkfigur bei Carl Einstein.” Der untote Gott: Religion und Ästhetik in der deutschen und österreichischen Literatur des 20. Jahrhunderts, eds. Olaf Berwald and Gregor Thuswaldner (Köln/Weimar/Wien: Böhlau, 2007), 79-90.
“Vorwort” (co-authored with Gregor Thuswaldner). Der untote Gott: Religion und Ästhetik in der deutschen und österreichischen Literatur des 20. Jahrhunderts, eds. Olaf Berwald and Gregor Thuswaldner (Köln/Weimar/Wien: Böhlau, 2007), 1-5.
“Philipp Melanchthons Rhetoriklehrbücher,” Melanchthon und das Lehrbuch des 16. Jahrhunderts, ed. Jürgen Leonhardt. Rostocker Studien zur Kulturwissenschaft 1 (1997): 111-22.
Presentations
REFEREED RESEARCH PRESENTATIONS AND INVITED LECTURES
“Sympoetische Konflikte im Werk Claire Golls,” (Dis-)Harmonien: Kulturvermittelnde am Limit, virtual international conference, co-organized by Theresa Heyer (Université Strasbourg, France) and Verena Ott (Université de Lorraine, France), 9/2023.
“Elissa’s Suicide: Versions of the Unsaid from Timaeus of Tauromenium to Marilù Oliva,” Disappe...
Read More »REFEREED RESEARCH PRESENTATIONS AND INVITED LECTURES
“Sympoetische Konflikte im Werk Claire Golls,” (Dis-)Harmonien: Kulturvermittelnde am Limit, virtual international conference, co-organized by Theresa Heyer (Université Strasbourg, France) and Verena Ott (Université de Lorraine, France), 9/2023.
“Elissa’s Suicide: Versions of the Unsaid from Timaeus of Tauromenium to Marilù Oliva,” Disappearances: Suicide in Literature, Culture, and History, virtual international research symposium, co-organized by Olaf Berwald, Christoph Sringer (University of Innsbruck, Austria), Alexander Kaestner, and Cornelia Wächter (University of Dresden, Germany), 7/2023.
“‘Im Würgholz der einsamsten Leiden:’ Christine Lavant’s Poetics of Pain,” Autobiographical Writing and the Gestalt of Shame: Disability, Chronic Illness and Mental Distress in Contemporary Intersectional Life Storying, Humboldt University, Berlin, Germany, 6/2023.
“Narrating the Precariat: Social Wounds in Mora and Genazino,” Re-imagining Class: Working-Class Identity and Intersectionality in Contemporary Culture, University of Leuven, Belgium (virtual presentation), 5/2022.
“Actaeon as Prey: Devouring Male Identity in Ovid, Bruno, Klossowski, and Kling,” Flüchtige Identitäten: Jagd als Schauplatz geschlechtlicher Phantasien, University of Bremen (virtual conference), Germany, 5/2022.
“Zerinnerungen: Trauerreflexionen in der deutschen und amerikanischen Gegenwartslyrik,” Memory and Literary Theory, University of Mainz and University of Bremen, Germany, 9/2021.
“Melanchthon, Hölderlin, and the Poetics of Listening,” The Problem with God: Christianity and Literature in Tension: An International Meeting of the Conference on Christianity and Literature, Harvard Divinity School, Cambridge, MA, 3/2019.
“Specters of Thomas Bernhard in Recent French Prose,” German Studies Association Conference, Atlanta, GA, 10/2017.
“Self-Incriminations: Guilt and Autonomy in Hermann Broch’s and Geoffrey Hill’s Works,” Complicity and the Politics of Representation, Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Germany, 6/2017.
“‘A winter war: a Trakl / madhouse:’ Soundings of Trauma in Thomas Kling and Franz Wright,” Inter-Texts: Correspondences, Connections, and Fissures in Austrian Culture. Annual Conference of the Austrian Studies Association, Chicago, IL, 3/2017.
“World Literature and the Future of Reading,” invited keynote speaker, Weltliteratur: Neue Perspektiven auf ein altes Konzept, Bergische Universität Wuppertal, Germany, 12/2015.
“Disappearances: Social Exclusion and Self-Obliteration in Terézia Mora’s Novels,” German Studies Association Conference, Washington, D.C., 10/2015. “Poetry and/as Trauma.” Invited lecture, Universität Paderborn, Germany, 5/2014.
“The Poetics of Biography in Stephan Zweig’s Joseph Fouché.” German Studies Association Conference, Denver, CO, 10/2013.
“Psyche und Polis. Zur Dichtung der Nähe und Gewalt von Ovid bis Lehr.” Invited keynote lecture, Das Weite suchen – Sprachwege in Krieg und Frieden, Symposium in Honor of German novelist Thomas Lehr, Akademie Tutzing, Germany, 11/2012.
“Mourning and Visual Desire in Christoph Ransmayr’s Der fliegende Berg.” Kentucky Foreign Language Conference, University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY, 4/2012.
“Intertextuelle Konstellationen im Werk von Max Frisch und Peter Weiss.” Max Frisch – Konstellationen und Perspektiven. Technische Universität Dresden, Germany, 6/2011.
“Max Frisch und Peter Weiss: Ethisch-ästhetische Korrespondenzen.” Colloque International – Internationales Kolloquium: L’œuvre de Max Frisch dans le contexte de la littérature européenne de son temps / Max Frischs Werk im Kontext der europäischen Literatur seiner Zeit, Université de Haute-Alsace, Mulhouse, France, and ETH Zürich, Switzerland, 5/2011.
“Literary Receptions of Thomas Bernhard’s Works in France and Italy.” Modern Language Association Convention, Los Angeles, CA, 1/2011.
“Navigating Streams-of-Consciousness in Iraq and the United States: Thomas Lehr’s Novel, September.” Southern Comparative Literature Annual Conference, Baton Rouge, LA, 10/2010.
“Globalization and Pluricultural Exchanges,” with Michael Handelsman. La Globalització i els seus Miralls, Centro de Estudios y Cooperación para América Latina, Casa Amèrica Catalunya, Barçelona, Spain, 5/2010.
“Philosophical Topoi and Narrative Technique in Trojanow’s Novel, Die Welt ist groß und Rettung lauert überall.” Trojanow Symposium, Swansea University, UK, 5/2010.
“Reading as Self-Surprising Process: Hermeneutic Approaches to Religion in Schelling, Hölderlin, and Schleiermacher.” The Power of Narrative, Nashville, TN, 6/2009.
“Marsyas Skin Grafts: Brecht/Kafka Palimpsests in Volker Braun’s Poetics of Survival.” Modern Language Association Convention, San Francisco, CA, 12/2008.
“Textual Dance: Anja Utler’s Poetry as Performance.” Modern Austrian Literature and Culture Association Conference, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, 4/2008.
“The Complacent Gaze: Media Strategies of the New Right in Germany.” Popular Culture Association National Conference, Boston, MA, 4/2007.
“Trauma and Tradition: Actaeon/Heracles/Marsyas.” Ethics and Aesthetics in the Age of Globalization, University of Tennessee at Knoxville, TN, 4/2006.
“Consuming Violence: Poetry as Counter-Voice.” University of Tennessee at Knoxville, TN, 4/2006.
“Anatomies of Power: Hermann Broch’s and Elias Canetti’s Political Writings.” University of Tennessee at Knoxville, TN, 4/2006.
“Unframing Literary Theory.” University of Tennessee at Knoxville, TN, 4/2006.
“Polis, Solitude, and Solidarity: Soundings of Kafka in Weiss and Canetti.” Modern Language Association Convention, Washington, D.C., 12/2005.
“Aesthetic Containment and the Posthuman Pastoral.” Invited lecture, University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK, 4/2005.
“Was können deutsche und amerikanische Germanistik voneinander lernen?” Invited lecture, Freie Universität Berlin, Germany, 11/2004.
“Crafting Incompleteness: The Gift of Change in Brecht's Essay ‘Über das Anfertigen von Bildnissen.’” Modern Language Association Convention, San Diego, CA, 12/2003.
“Binding the Gaze: Konrad Weiss and the Poetics of Ekphrasis.” South Atlantic Modern Language Association Convention, Atlanta, GA, 11/2003.
“The Ethics of the Gaze in Thomas Lehr’s Prose.” Kentucky Foreign Languages Conference, University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY, 4/2003.
“Unborn Modernity: Negotiating Kaspar Hauser.” South Atlantic Modern Language Association Convention, Baltimore, MD, 11/2002.
“Zur Anatomie visueller Gewalt: Skopographische Strategien der Gegenwartsliteratur.” Invited lecture, Eberhard-Karls-Universität Tübingen, Germany, 6/2002.
“Violence and Containment: Anne Duden’s Poetics of Perception.” Kentucky Foreign Languages Concerence, University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY, 4/2002.
“Palinodic Ethics in Thomas Bernhard’s Lyric Poetry.” Austrian Writers Confront the Past, 1945-2000, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, 4/2002.
“Autopoiesis of Alterity: Schelling’s Theories as and of Mythology.” Modern Language Association Convention, New Orleans, LA, 12/2001.
“Black Medea: Metamorphoses of a Myth in Hans Henny Jahnn.” South Atlantic Modern Language Association Convention, Atlanta, GA, 11/2001.
“Hölderlin and the Taming of the Gaze.” Invited lecture, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, 3/2001.
“Bild-Haft, Augenlos. Zur Entindividualisierung des Blicks in Hölderlins Turmlyrik und Fichtes Wissenschaftslehre.” South Atlantic Modern Language Association Convention, Birmingham, AL, 11/2000.
“‘Clenched Staring Eyes:’ Paul Celan and the Violence of Vision.” Emory University, Atlanta, GA, 9/2000.
“The Real as Resistance: Die Ästhetik des Widerstands and Lacan,” European Memories: The Migrant Images of Peter Weiss’s Modernist Imagination, Duke University, Durham, NC, 11/1998.
“‘Meine beiden Ichs starrten sich ganz verwundert an:’ Ophthalmic Fear and Subject Deformation in Günderrode,” 1798 and its Implications, St. Mary’s University College, UK, 7/1998.
“Uscopic Desire in Celan’s Poetry,” University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA, 3/1997. “Philipp Melanchthon und die Rhetorik,” University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, NC, 2/1996.