Dr. John Pizer
Professor - Foreign Language and Literature
Bachelor's Degree(s): B.A. Journalism, University of Washington
Master's Degree: M.A. Comparative Literature, University of Washington, Studies in Germanics and Comparative Literature, University of Wisconsin, Madison, Wisconsin, 1978. Studies in Germanics, Universität Freiburg, Freiburg, Germany, 1977.
PhD: Ph.D. Comparative Literature, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington, Studies in Germanics and Romance Languages and Literatures, Universität Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany.
Phone: (225) 578-5172
E-mail: [email protected]
Office: 314 Hodges Hall
Area of Interest
Teaching Interests
German Language Instruction (All Levels)
18th-20th Century German Literature
Critical Theory
Comparative Literature
Research Interests
The Relationship of History to Literature
The Concept of "Origin" in German Thought
Hemeneutics
The Emergence of Literary Realism in German Literature
The Double in Literature
Literary Modernism and Postmodernism
World Literature and “Weltliteratur”
Awards & Honors
Nolte-Behrens Distinguished Speaker, University of Central Arkansas, Spring 2007.
Fulbright German Studies Seminar Fellowship, Summer 2005.
Distinguished Professor Award, Louisiana State University, 2002.
Federal Department of Education Grant to Develop the Asian component of the Introduction to World Literature course, Summer 2002.
Summer Faculty Research Stipend from the Council on Research of Louisiana State University, 1988.
The Lockwood Dissertation Fellowship, University of Washington, 1984.
Universität Tübingen Exchange Student Fellowship, 1982-1983.
Selected Publications
Books
Imagining the Age of Goethe in German Literature, 1970-2010 (2011).
The Idea of World Literature: History and Pedagogical Practice. LSU Press, 2006.
Ego-Alter Ego: Double and/as Other in the Age of German Poetic
of North Carolina Press, 1998.
Toward a Theory of Radical Origin: Essays on Modern German Thought. University of Nebraska Press, 1995.
The Historical Perspective in German Genre Theory – Its
Development from Gottsched to Hegel. Hans-Dieter Heinz Verlag
1985.
Articles & Book Chapters
“Planetary Poetics: World Literature, Goethe, Novalis, and Yoko Tawada’s Translational Writing.” The Planetary Turn: Relationality and Geoaesthetics in the Twenty-First Century, ed. Amy J. Elias and Christian Moraru (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2015): 3-24.
“Disinclination/Appropriation/Poetization: Hofmannsthal’s Evolving Engagement with Poland and Polish Galicia before, during, and after the Great War,” German Quarterly 88.2 (2015): 189-203.
“Subverting the Institutionalized Reading Tour: Rafik Schami and Daniel Kehlmann,” Oxford German Studies 43.1 (2014): 55-68.
“Herder und die Fabeltheorien Hegels und Jakob Grimms.“ Herder und seine Wirkung, ed. Michael Maurer (Heidelberg: Synchron, 2014): 265-75.
“Raabe and Dutch Colonialism.” Wilhelm Raabe: Global Themes – International Perspectives, ed. Dirk Göttsche and Florian Krobb (Oxford: Legenda, 2009): 74-86.
“The Continuation of Countermemory or Ostalgie: Emine Sevgi Özdamar’s Seltsame Sterne
starren zur Erde.” German Literature in a New Century: Trends, Traditions, Transformations, Transition, ed. Patricia Herminghouse and Katharina Gerstenberger (New York: Berghahn, 2008):
135-52.
“The German Response to Kant’s Essay on Perpetual Peace: Herder
Contra the Romantics,” Germanic Review 82 (2007): 343-67.
“Toward a Productive Interdisciplinary Relationship between Comparative Literature
and World Literature,” The Comparatist 31
(2007): 6-28.
“From Jean de la Bruyère to John Aubrey and Beyond: The Development of Elias Canetti’s
Character Sketches,” Comparative Literature Studies 44 (2007: 166-82.
“The Third Dialectic in Else Lasker-Schüler’s Die Wupper.” Monatshefte 98 (2006): 370-83.
“Cosmopolitanism and Weltliteratur.” Goethe Yearbook 13 (2005): 165-79.
“Lessing and the Fable.” A Companion to the Works of Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, ed. Barbara Fischer and Thomas C. Fox (Rochester: Camden House, 2005): 89-103.
“Navigating the Nineteenth Century: A Critical Bibliography.” Camden House History of German Literature: Volume 9, German Literature of the Nineteenth Century, 1832-1899, ed. Clayton Koelb and Eric Downing (Rochester: Camden House, 2005): 281-302.
“Moving the Divan Beyond Orientalism: Rafik Schami’s Instrumentalization of Goethe,” Seminar 41 (2005): 261-74.
"Dialektischer Zynismus in Fritz Mauthners 'Berlin W.' Trilogie." Brückenschlag zwischen den Disziplinen: Fritz Mauthner als Schriftsteller, Kritiker und Kulturtheoretiker,ed. Elisabeth Leinfellner and Jörg Thunecke (Wuppertal: Arco Verlag, 2004): 167-190.
“Jean Pauls Einfluß auf Karl Kraus als Satiriker.” Colloquia Germanica 37 (2004):227-42.
“Literature From/Without a Center: The Views of Kafka and Goethe,” Journal of the Kafka Society of America 28 (2004): 45-51.
“The Transnationalization of the Double Motif: Rafik Schami’s Sieben Doppelgänger,” Gegenwartsliteratur 3 (2004): 278-300.
“Why Silence Becomes Golden: Brecht’s Poetry on Karl Kraus,” Brecht Yearbook 28 (2003): 154-171.
“Venice as Mediator between Province and Viennese Metropolis: Themes in Rilke, Hofmannsthal, Gerhard Roth, and Kolleritsch,” Literature in Vienna at the Turn of the Centuries: Continuities and Discontinuities around 1900 and 2000, ed. Ernst Grabovszki and James Hardin (Rochester: Camden House, 2003): 117-131.
“Wilhelm Raabe and the German Colonial Experience,” A Companion to German Realism 1848-1900, ed. Todd Kontje (Rochester: Camden House, 2002): 159-181.
“Heine's Unique Relationship to Goethe's Weltliteratur Paradigm,” Heine-Jahrbuch 41(2002): 18-36.
“Narration vs. Description in Georg Lukács's 'History and Class Consciousness,'” Intertexts 6 (2002): 145-164.
“Confusion or Transcendent Illumination? Lessing and Wieland on Music and its Interface
with Poetry,” Lessing Yearbook 33 2001): 97-113.
“The Kraus/Werfel Polemic: The Double as a Sign of Modernism’s Originality Crisis,”
Colloquia Germanica 34 (2001): 41-56.
“Kleist und Stefan Zweig,” Kleist-Jahrbuch 2001: 292-304.
“'Last Austrians' in 'Turn of the Century' Works by Franz Grillparzer, Joseph Roth,and Alfred Kolleritsch,” German Quarterly 74 (2001): 8-21.
"Goethe's 'World Literature' Paradigm and Contemporary Cultural Globalization," Comparative Literature 52 (2000): 213-227.
"Vienna as the Heart of Darkness: Wilhelm Raabe's 'Lesser-Germany' Politics," Austria in Literature, ed. Donald G. Daviau,
(Riverside: Ariadne Press, 2000): 1-18.
"The Disintegration of Libussa," Germanic Review 73 (1998): 145-160.
"Auf der Suche nach der verlorenen Totalität.Raabes 'Pfisters Mühle' und Storms 'Psyche,'"Jahrbuch der Raabe-Gesellschaft 1998: 115-125.
"Mit wem ging Storm spazieren? G. E. Lessing,Erich Schmidt und Auf der Universität,"
Schriften der Theodor-Storm-Gesellschaft
46 (1997): 77-83.
"Dynamic Origin in the Poetry of Kraus, Rilke and Celan," Michigan Germanic Studies 23 (1997): 146-157.
"Reconstellating the Shards of the Text: On Walter Benjamin's German/Jewish Memory," German Studies Review 18 (1995): 275-290.
"Body and Soul: Lessing's Consistent Distinctions," Lessing Yearbook 26 (1994): 55-75.
"Modern vs. Postmodern Satire: Karl Kraus and Elfriede Jelinek," Monatshefte 86 (1994): 500-513.
"'Ursprung ist das Ziel': Karl Kraus's Concept of Origin," Modern Austrian Literature 27 (1994): 1-21.
"Double and Other: C.F. Meyer's Der Heilige," Seminar 30 (1994): 347-359.
"Realism and Utopianism in Der neue Menoza: J. M. R. Lenz's Productive Misreading of Wieland," Colloquia Germanica 27 (1994): 309-319.
"From a Death in Venice to a Death in Rome:On Wolfgang Koeppen's Critical Ironization
of Thomas Mann," Germanic Review 68 (1993):
98-107. Printing Error Correction: Germanic Review 59 (1994): 13.
"'Man schaffe ihn auf eine sanfte Manier fort': Robert Walser's Lenz as a Cipher for
the Dark Side of Modernity," Space to
Act: The Theater of J.M.R. Lenz, ed. Alan C. Leidner and Helga S. Madland (Columbia: Camden House, 1993): 141-149.
"Jameson's Adorno, or, the Persistence of the Utopian," New German Critique 58 (1993): 127-151.
"Guilt, Memory and the Motif of the Double in Storm's Aquis submersus and Ein Doppelgänger,"
German Quarterly 65 (1992): 177-191.
"Duplication, Fungibility, Dialectics and the 'Epic Naiveté' of Gottfried Keller's
Martin Salander," Colloquia Germanica 25 (1992):1-18.
“Goethe's Presence in Handke's Langsame Heimkehr Tetralogy," Michigan Germanic Studies 17 (1991): 128-145.
"Gadamer's Reading of Goethe," Philosophy and Literature 15 (1991): 268-277.
"The Disenchantment of Snow White: Robert Walser, Donald Barthelme, and the Modern/Postmodern Anti-Fairy Tale," Canadian Review of Comparative Literature 27 (1990): 330-347.
“The Use and Abuse of 'Ursprung': On Foucault's Reading of Nietzsche," Nietzsche-Studien 19 (1990): 462-478.
"Lessing's Reception of Charles Batteux," Lessing Yearbook 21 (1989): 29-43.
"Aesthetic Consciousness and Aesthetic Non-Differentiation: Gadamer, Schiller and Lukács," Philosophy Today 33 (1989): 63-72.
"Goethe's 'Urphänomen' and Benjamin's 'Ursprung': A Reconsideration," Seminar 25 (1989): 205-222.
"Phenomenological Redemption and Repressed Historical Memory: Benjamin and Handke in Paris," Monatshefte 81 (1989): 79-89.
"Diktat or Dialogue? On Gadamer's Concept of the Art Work's Claim," Philosophy and Literature 12 (1988): 272-279.
"Herder, Benjamin and the 'Ursprung' of Language," Carleton Germanic Papers 16 (1988): 31-46.
"Involution in The Great American Novel: Reflections on Williams and Walter Benjamin," The William Carlos Williams Review 13 (1987): 9-20.
“History, Genre and 'Ursprung' in Benjamin's Early Aesthetics," German Quarterly 60 (1987): 68-87.
"Der erdichtete Goethe und Goethe der Dichter - A Comparison of Thomas Mann's Critical and Fictional Views," Selecta 6 (1985): 79-85.
"Friedrich Melchior Grimm and the French Seventeeth Century," Papers on French Seventeenth Century Literature 11 (1984): 167-181.
"Friedrich Schlegel and Comparative Literature," Selecta 3 (1982): 3l-36.
“Staging Violence and Transcendence: Reading Christa Wolf through German Romanticism.” Accepted for publication by German Studies Review.
“Skewering the Enlightenment: Alexander von Humboldt and Immanuel Kant as Fictional Charactrers.” Accepted for publication by Atlantic Studies.
“Herder und die Fabeltheorien Hegels und Jakob Grimms.“ Accepted for publication in a forthcoming volume on the influence of Johann Gottfried Herder.
Encylopedia Article
“Kraus, Karl (1874-1936),” The Columbia Encyclopedia of Modern Drama, ed. Gabrielle H. Cody & Evert Sprinchorn, vol 1 (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007): 780.