What I'm reading, when and why

Summer 2023

Musil, Törless

Philippe Aries, Centuries of childhood

Robert Walser, Jakob von Gunten

Walter Benjamin, Berliner Kindheit

Freud, Drei Abhandlungen zur Sexualtheorie

Stifter scholarship: Stockhammer, Koschorke, Geulen, etc.

Various Kluge texts: Luftangriff auf Halberstadt, Langston's Difference and Orientation collection

Summer 2023 (May)

Kafka, Das Schloß

Various essays on the theory of Kulturtechniken: Cornelia Vismann, Sybille Krämer, Bernhard Siegert, Wolfgang Ernst, Erhard Schüttpelz, and others

Finishing up work on essays on Kluge and Stifter for publication later this summer

Spring semester 2023

For Johannes:

Affect theory: Sienne Ngai, Sarah Ahmed, Philip Fisher, Rousseau, Darwin, Aristotle, Hobbes, Locke, Adam Smith

Novels: Dickens, Hard Times

Flaubert, Sentimental Education

Stifter, Nachsommer

Additional: Sloterdijk, Zorn und Zeit

Goethe, Wilhelm Meister

For Michel:

History of critique: Kant, Schlegel, Nietzsche, Marx, Althusser, Foucault, Latour, &others.

For Ben:

Technology: Aristotle, Heidegger, Kittler, Donna Haraway, Vogl

Fall semester 2022 (first semester teaching German to undergraduates so it's a bit light):

For Teresa:

Alexander Kluge: Chronik der Gefühle, Schlachtbeschreibung, Die Kunst, Unterschiede zu Machen, Fontane-Kleist-Büchner-Deutschland: Zur Grammatik der Zeit, Geschichte und Eigensinn I

Heiner Müller: Gedichte, Der Auftrag

Elfriede Jelinek: Gier, theatertheoretische Texte, Stücke

Christoff Schlingnesief: Filme

For Fritz:

Karl Philipp Moritz: Anton Reiser, ABC

For fun:

Foucault: Archeology of knowledge

Derrida (cursorily): Grammatology, Archive Fever

Kittler: various

Summer reading, module 2:

Goethe: Dichtung & Wahrheit

Kleist: Hermannsschlacht, Prinz Friedrich von Homburg, essays

Summer reading, module 1:

Kant: Kritik der Urteilskraft

Schiller: Philosophical and theoretical writings

Goethe: Faust 1&2

Kleist: Penthesilea, Käthchen von Heilbronn

Broader project on German cameralism and natural law: Wakefield, Andre:  The Disordered Police State (not highly recommended), some of Von Justi's writings on Polizeywissenschaft, Birger Priddat: Zufall, Schicksal, Irrtum, Hegel: Die Verfassung Deutschlands (1802), Vogl: Kalkül und Leidenschaft

Spring semester 2022:

Campe, Rüdiger: Spiel der Wahrscheinlichkeit (parts, for Kleist mainly); "Zweierlei Gesetz"

Koschorke, Albrecht: Körperströme und Schriftverkehr (parts, for Fritz's class)

Vogl, Joseph: "Staatsbegehren. Zur Epoche der Polizei" (background research for summer study on German cameralism)

Vismann, Cornelia: Files. Media Technology and Law

Derrida, Jacques: Truth in Painting (Heidegger research)

Jünger, Ernst: Das abenteuerliche Herz

Serres, Michel: Parasite; "Exact and Human"

Beginning of spring semester 2022:

Puff, Helmut: 'Von den Schlüssel aller Künste / nemblich der Grammatica' Deutsch im Lateinischen Grammatikunterricht 1480-1560 (recommended by Teresa Kovacs, co-history of Latin and German before German statehood)

Siegert, Bernhard: "Vögel, Engel und Gesandte. Alteuropas Übertragungsmedien" (history of pre-technical media, always trying to read more Siegert, media in theology)

Ronell, Avital: Crack Wars: Literature, Addiction, Mania (love Ronell's work, co-histories of narcotics, literature, technology, media)

Also winter break:

Latour, Bruno: After Lockdown (Christmas present, always interested in Latour)

Latour, Bruno: "Give me a laboratory, and I will raise the world" (back-up reading for After Lockdown)

Thompson, Helen: "The Habsburg Myth and the European Union" (macrostructures in Austrian literature/political mythology, current events)

Winter break 2020-2021:

Heidegger, Martin: Sein und Zeit. (prep for Eyal Peretz's spring course)

Pias, Claus: Computer Game Worlds. (thematic interest: experimental psychology after 1860, early computer technology, media-technical developments between World Wars, war gaming)

Staley, Richard. Sensory studies, or when physics was psychophysics: Ernst Mach and physics between physiology and psychology, 1860–71. (thematic interest: relationship between experimental psychology of Wundt and Positivism of Mach, Wiener Kreis)

Pias, Claus: Wie die Arbeit zum Spiel wird: Zur informatischen Verwindung des thermodynamischen Pessimismus. (thematic interest: emergence of rule-concepts after 1900, relationship between thermodynamics and computer technology, sources of game terminology in mathematical sciences)

Vattimo, Gianni. "Verwindung": Nihilism and the Postmodern in Philosophy. (For clarification of Verwindung, obscure Heideggerian term used by Kittler and the K3 generation)

Bachmann, Ingeborg. Die Hörspiele: Ein Geschäft mit Träumen,  Die Zikaden, Der gute Gott von Manhatten. (More Bachmann reading, interested in Hörspiel after WWII)

Polanyi, Karl. For a New West. Essays, 1919-1958. (Mainly interested in this question how to make use of the social sciences)