Professor of Comparative Literary Studies and German Studies. Research and teaching in the fields of French and European literature, public writing, Jewish Studies, translation studies, ecological writing, 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:

Thomas Nolden - Book cover for 'An einen jungen Dichter': Studien zur epistolaren Poetik ['Letters to a Young Poet': Studies in Epistolary Poetics] (Königshausen & Neumann)
Thomas Nolden - Book cover for Junge jüdische Literatur. Konzentrisches Schreiben in der Gegenwart [Young Jewish Writing in Contemporary Austria and Germany] (Königshausen & Neumann)

Thomas Nolden - Book cover for In Lieu of Memory: Contemporary Jewish Writing in France (Syracuse University Press)

Thomas Nolden - Book cover for Voices from the Diaspora. Jewish Women Writing in Contemporary Europe, co-edited with Frances Malino (Northwestern University Press)

Thomas Nolden - Book cover for Contemporary Jewish Writing in Europe. A Guide, co-edited with Vivian Liska (Indiana University Press).

Thomas Nolden - Book cover for Beyond the Textual: Practices of Translation and Adaptation (Königshausen & Neumann)


Thomas Nolden - Book cover for In the Face of Adversity: Translating Difference and Dissent (US edition: University of Chicago Press; UK edition: University College of London Press)



Education

  • Staatsexamen, Universität Tubingen
  • M.A., Yale University
  • Ph.D., Yale University