Thomas Nolden
Professor of German Studies
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Professor of Comparative Literary Studies and Chair of German Studies at Wellesley College. Research and teaching in the fields of comparative literature, ecological writing, Jewish Studies, translation studies, media studies, and German culture and literature.
I am a comparatist who is passionate about questions of national, regional, and cultural space and ecological practices. I have directed Wellesley's comparative literature program for many years and teach courses on literature, public writing, and visual & digital media. One of my most recent courses, "The Color of Green Literature," addresses literary reflections of climate collapse against the backdrop of concerns raised by environmental ethicists. My seminar "From Farm to Table to Print," also cross-listed with Environmental Studies, is part of the Calderwood Program in Public Writing.
I have taught at the University of California at Berkeley and at the Freie Universität Berlin, and -- as visiting professor -- at Brandeis University, M.I.T. and the summer school of the University of Graz (Austria) where I offered courses on the European philosophical tradition, film, and digital media.
I have been a member of the Coordinating Committee for the Comparative History of Literatures in European Languages Series (part of International Comparative Literature Association), of the research Committee of EuropeNow (published by Council for European Studies at Columbia University) and have chaired the Mellon Dissertation Fellowship Committee of the Council of European Studies as well as their European Studies Book Award Committee. Most recently, I chaired the Council's European Studies First Article Prize (2021).
Together with Marjorie Agosín, I organized the international conference: The Work of Roberto Bolaño at Wellesley.
My most recent articles address the response of the French Antillean author Aimé Césaire to the legacies of Homer, Virgil and Plautus; Michel Bergmann's Frankfurt trilogy; Jewish life in Paris during Occupation. A list of the books that I have published can be found below.
My books include:
- In the Face of Adversity: Translating Difference and Dissent (US edition: University of Chicago Press; UK edition: University College of London Press).
- Beyond the Textual: Practices of Translation and Adaptation (Königshausen & Neumann).
- Contemporary Jewish Writing in Europe. A Guide, co-edited with Vivian Liska (Indiana University Press).
- In Lieu of Memory: Contemporary Jewish Writing in France (Syracuse University Press).
- Voices from the Diaspora. Jewish Women Writing in Contemporary Europe, co-edited with Frances Malino (Northwestern University Press).
- Junge jüdische Literatur. Konzentrisches Schreiben in der Gegenwart [Young Jewish Writing in Contemporary Austria and Germany] (Königshausen & Neumann).
- 'An einen jungen Dichter': Studien zur epistolaren Poetik ['Letters to a Young Poet': Studies in Epistolary Poetics] (Königshausen & Neumann).
Education
- Staatsexamen, Universität Tubingen
- M.A., Yale University
- Ph.D., Yale University