Professor Interview

If you look at my American trajectory, it features exclusively private schools, which is a little bizarre, because I'm really committed to public education. But as a graduate student, it is much easier to get funded at private institutions in the United States. And for good reason, because state schools would like to financially assist with the graduate studies of citizens of their state. That’s why I ended up at Stanford. I was studying German literature, but in a comparative context, which was very important to me because I don't particularly like the constriction of cultural production to any kind of national context. The humanities at Stanford are very small, and they're part of a thoroughly tech-oriented university. But because they're incredibly well endowed financially it was a very privileged place to study. I came from a German system that was publicly funded, so you don’t have to pay for your education (directly), which is an incredible gift. Of course, systems of exclusion are in place in other ways. But financially, it’s not the same burden to individuals and their families if they want to pursue a degree. That’s a great difference to the United States. So I came from that, and at first, it was shocking to be part of a private school that is so affluent. 

And of course, I don’t think it makes sense to say – “Well, why would you come to the United States to study something like German thought and literature when you are from Germany?” – because something that is very familiar shows up differently when you switch context. I think that there is a kind of defamiliarization in terms of distance from the place itself. But also it's a different methodology. And that’s necessary; because you question your own assumptions, you question your own methodologies, you question your own blind spots. Education teaches us exactly that—how to lose our self-assuredness in what we think to be true. It's easier done when you have the option to actually switch contexts because you immediately question a lot of things you have learned to be true. I think that is something that I really cherish. The fact that you move away from something that has become very familiar is necessary because it provides intellectual discomfort, it makes us constantly question the things we think we know. But it's necessary as an intellectual pursuit, and it's almost an ethical pursuit for an examined life, right? So that’s what it has given me.  

And then I finished graduate school, and I was lucky to get a job that took me first to the American South—to Vanderbilt—and then to Hamilton College, which were very different experiences. I almost can't sum them up in a quick way. It's a geographic difference, of course — [Vanderbilt] was a very white university in the South, still reckoning in many ways with its history of racial segregation. It is also a private institution with a large endowment that prides itself on being the Harvard of the South. So you become part of this system—you get a job, you're happy, especially because you have a Ph.D. in literature, there aren’t many jobs, and you got one of them. And then you find yourself in places you don't necessarily feel comfortable in? And that’s part of it. Then you go to upstate New York, to a liberal arts college. There are very few places that are less diverse than liberal arts colleges, so in a way, you switch geographies, but you also don't. There's no easy way out of the systematic inequalities that higher education produces. And you can fight for these inequalities to change, but you still sort of sustain them with your own presence. Berkeley is different from that because it's a public institution, which is great in many ways, but we should also not be too celebratory because things could always be better. And we are responsible for making them better. 

I don't think I pondered any other possibility. And I mean, you could say, I came to the United States because there's such an accumulation of  a certain kind of academic capital, right? You associate it with exciting inquiries and top notch education, you associate it with its cutting edge knowledge. These things were interesting for me, like the advances of theory and inquiry, so I guess I was looking for that. This exposed me to different readings, different methods or theories. 

I think that it’s actually quite necessary for more people today to conceive of themselves leaving the US-American context, going abroad, and getting acquainted with other countries, their academic landscapes, and inquiries. Maybe they study the same subject, but the same subject is not the same in another country. At least in this current culture of studying, it's become so prevalent to think about the outcome of something—namely, to finish quickly, to get the degree, and then to get a job. And what has fallen by the wayside is, of course, studying abroad.. Like, you just can't squeeze it in. And in many cases, it is also a luxury to have a study abroad experience, because it is also a financial matter and a matter of having a passport that allows you to travel in the first place. When I talk to students, it’s become quite rare that people do this — they would like to, but they can't integrate it. I think that in the long run, this is a terrible development, especially for people from the United States, with its economic and cultural power. It produces many students who have never seen anything else, possibly only as tourists, if they are lucky. To be abroad as a tourist is different from the experience of being in another country in a sustained way, preferably non-English speaking ones. Monolingualism worries me greatly. Without the knowledge of other languages, students are unable to actually move into different academic systems, right? So that, I would say, worries me about the current academic landscape, especially speaking from a foreign-language department.

Wonderful question. I think that knowledge, also in the humanities, has been perceived as some kind of arcane, esoteric knowledge only for the few people who already know its value. And I think that this should be fundamentally different. I love every book club I hear about, every reading group. I don't care what they read, I don't care what they talk about, I have absolutely no preconceptions of how that should be done. But the fact that people read at all and care to come together to discuss is already something, and I don't think we can take it for granted anymore. 

I think one of the biggest obstacles for this kind of reading is media use. It is true for everyone. We have never read as much as we do today, because we read on our various devices all the time, and we produce writing almost all the time—in forms of tweets, text messages, emails etc. But of course, it is also true that we read fewer [of the] long pieces of prose, philosophical discourse, or theory. I mean, I also teach such literature, so it's not that I'm wedded to the long form, but there is something that happens in literary and philosophical discourse, complicated texts that you have to really grapple with, that gets lost in the forms of reading that we daily practice. I do think that reading is essential, so I think teaching or conversing about reading, or teaching people how to read, is already politically relevant. That is already public humanities. We don't have to go very far, but if you want to go further, I think the humanities have to produce discourses that are also publicly accessible. And the university can clearly support the humanities by putting very clear emphasis on the value that literary studies, for instance, have—and not just in English—but also in the foreign languages. People will be less inclined to go and expose themselves to other countries, other academic cultures, and systems of knowledge if they lack the linguistic means. The university has the power to de-emphasize that. But it also has the power to actually highlight the relevance thereof. It has all kinds of responsibilities in this way. And Berkeley is a leading public university that has responsibility in making the humanities, and languages other than English, more emphatically important rather than marginalizing them.

I’ve been here for six years, and I’m on the tenure track. I'm very invested in that, because I think Berkeley is an amazing place, and there's work to do! So I'm looking forward to that work.

What I want to accomplish is very pragmatic—getting tenure, keep doing my research, and keep offering courses that are relevant to students. This relevance for me often starts with—because I'm a contemporist—the contemporary, but I use the present to quickly move back in time: working with students toward a historical understanding of contemporary problems helps them gain an understanding of historical specificity, so we are not historically unaware. So yeah, to offer courses that are relevant for students, because I think [although] this is a research university, [which means] our research is of eminent importance, but being a public university also means a real investment in teaching, because, in many ways, your research will be read by way fewer people than your teaching will be accessed. Even though it's an R1 university that emphasizes research, for me, there's no research without teaching and there's no teaching without research. So those two things are really intertwined. I think good teaching changes things; 

[it] is not political organizing, but teaching people to think is nonetheless a politically relevant act

—it just moves on a different timescale. It comes to fruition but needs some time, and it is often unpredictable how long it actually takes. That’s sort of, you know, the public mission of humanities. And you just have to keep at it, no matter what.