Carl A Gelderloos
Associate Professor of German; Director of Undergraduate Studies for German; TRIP Courtesy Title
German and Russian Studies; Translation Research and Instruction Program (TRIP)
Background
Carl Gelderloos’ research explores German modernism, Philosophical Anthropology, photography, science fiction, Marxism, critical theory, and the literature, culture, and thought of the Weimar Republic. His writing has appeared in German Studies Review, The German Quarterly, Monatshefte, The Germanic Review, Modernism/modernity, and Public Books, among other venues.
His first book—Biological Modernism: The New Human in Weimar Culture (Northwestern UP)—received the Honorable Mention for the 2020 DAAD/GSA book prize, and has been reviewed in Modern Language Review, The German Quarterly, The Germanic Review, Monatshefte, Modernism/modernity, and the Zeitschrift für deutsche Philologie. Biological Modernism identifies an intellectual current in the Weimar Republic that drew on biology, organicism, vitalism, and other discourses associated with living nature in order to redefine the human being for a modern, technological age. Contrary to the assumption that any turn toward the organic indicated a reactionary flight from modernity or a longing for wholeness, biology and other discourses of living nature in fact offered a nuanced way of theorizing modernity rather than fleeing from it. Organic life, instead of representing a stabilizing sense of wholeness, by the 1920s had become a scientific, philosophical, and disciplinary problem. In their work, figures such as Alfred Döblin, Ernst Jünger, Helmuth Plessner, and August Sander interrogated the relationships between technology, nature, and the human, thereby radically reconfiguring the relationship between the disciplines as well as the epistemological and political consequences for defining the human being.
Gelderloos is on the boards of The German Quarterly and the American Friends of Marbach, and serves as an academic delegate with the Binghamton chapter of United University Professions. He is currently working on a second book project on early German-language science fiction as a literary discourse that mediated between modernization and modernism.
Teaching
Gelderloos’ courses range from first-semester German to larger courses taught in English, which are frequently cross-listed in the departments of Art History, Cinema, Comparative Literature, English, and Philosophy. These courses cover diverse topics including 18th to 21st-century literature, visual culture and film, literary theory, and critical theory. Recent courses include “Learning to See: Art & Media in Weimar Germany,” “Introduction to Marx & Critical Theory,” “Staging Revolutions,” “Cold War Science Fictions,” "Intermediate German I," and "Texts and Contexts II.”
Education
- PhD, MA, Cornell University
- BA, New York University
Research Interests
- 20th-century German literature and culture
- Weimar modernism and the avant-garde
- the photography of New Objectivity
- Alfred Döblin
- Critical Theory and the Frankfurt School
- Philosophical anthropology
- Science fiction
- Marx and Marxism
Teaching Interests
- German language
- German literature
- Marx and Critical Theory
- Visual culture of the Weimar Republic
- Science fiction
Awards
- Honorable mention, DAAD/GSA Book Prize for the Best Book in Germanistik or Cultural Studies for Biological Modernism: The New Human in Weimar Culture (October 2020)
- Max Kade Prize for the Best Article in The German Quarterly, for “‘Jetzt kommt das Leben’: The Technological Body in Alfred Döblin’s Berge Meere und Giganten” (November 2016)
- Graduate Student Article Prize of the German Studies Association, for “Simply Reproducing Reality: Brecht, Benjamin, and Renger-Patzsch on Photography” (October 2013)
- Fulbright Fellowship for Doctoral Research in Berlin (2011–2012)
More Info
Select Publications
- “Humans Are Nature’s Eccentrics—Laughing and Crying Show Why.” Public Books (February 14, 2024).
- “Kracauer, Bachofen, and the ‘bedeutungsleere Naturfundament.’” The Germanic Review 98.3 (September 2023): 281–300.
- “‘Nowhere an obstacle’: Transparency, Embodied Perception, and Becoming in Paul Scheerbart’s Lesabéndio.” Modernism/modernity 7, no. 3 [Online section] (May 2, 2023).
- Biological Modernism: The New Human in Weimar Culture. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2019.
- "Alien Evolution and Dialectical Materialism in Eastern European Science Fiction." Science Fiction Circuits of the East and South, edited by Anindita Banerjee and Sonja Fritzsche, Peter Lang, 2018. 101–134.
- "Breaking Open Utopia: Science Fiction as Critique in the GDR." Monatshefte 107.3 (2015): 468–482.
- "'Jetzt kommt das Leben': The Technological Body in Alfred Döblin's Berge Meere und Giganten." The German Quarterly 88.3 (2015): 291–316.
- "Simply Reproducing Reality: Brecht, Benjamin, and Renger-Patzsch on Photography." German Studies Review 37.3 (2014): 549–573.
