Thomas Pfau
Mondays 1:30 p.m. - 2:30 p.m. & by appointment.
Alice Mary Baldwin Professor of English
"THOMAS PFAU (PhD 1989, SUNY Buffalo) is the Alice Mary Baldwin Professor of English, with secondary appointments in Germanic Language & Literatures and the Divinity School at Duke University. He has published some forty-five essays on literary and philosophical subjects ranging from the 18ththrough the early 20th century. In addition to two translations, of Hölderlin and Schelling (SUNY Press, 1987 and 1994), he has also edited seven essay collections and special journal issues and is the author of three monographs: Wordsworth’s Profession (Stanford UP 1997), Romantic Moods: Paranoia, Trauma, Melancholy, 1790-1840 (Johns Hopkins UP 2005), and Minding the Modern: Intellectual Traditions, Human Agency, and Responsible Knowledge (Notre Dame UP, 2013). His current book project focuses on phenomenology of image-consciousness in literature, theology, and philosophy.
Education
- Ph.D., State University of New York at Buffalo 1989
- M.A., University of California at Irvine 1985
Judgment and Action Fragments toward a History. Ed. T Pfau and V Soni. Northwestern University Press, December 15, 2017. (Collection)
Pfau, T. Minding the modern: Human agency, intellectual traditions, and responsible knowledge. January 1, 2013.
Pfau, T, and Mitchell, R. Romanticism and Modernity. Routledge, November 2011.
Romanticism and Modernity. Ed. T Pfau and R Mitchell. Routledge, 2011. (Collection)
Medium and Message in German Modernism. Ed. T Pfau. 2006.
Pfau, T. Romantic Moods: Paranoia, Trauma, and Melancholy, 1790-1840. Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005. (Monograph)
Pfau, T. Lessons of Romanticism: A Critical Companion. an anthology of twenty-one essays, Durham: Duke UP, 1998.
Pfau, T. Wordsworth’s Profession: Form, Class, and the Logic of Romantic Cultural Production. Stanford UP, 1997.
Pfau, T. Idealism and the Endgames of Theory: Three Essays by F. W. J. Schelling. State U of New York P, 1994. (Monograph)
Pfau, T, and translator, . Friedrich Hölderlin: Essays and Letters on Theory. State U of New York P, 1987.
Pages
Pfau, T. "Rational Theology and the Catholic Critique of Modernity, 1780-1830." The Oxford Handbook on European Romanticism. Ed. HKC Paul and London. October 2014.
Pfau, T. "Wagner hören im Zeitalter kultureller Überdetermination: Adorno’s Versuch über Wagner." Jenseits von Bayreuth: Richard Wagner Heute. Ed. S Boernchen and G Mein. Fink Verlag, March 2014.
Pfau, T. "’A certain mediocrity' Moral Sentiments and Early Behaviorism in A. Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments." Romanticism and the Emotions. Ed. J Faflak and R Sha. Cambridge UP, February 2014.
Pfau, T. "A certain mediocrity: Adam Smith’s moral behaviorism." Romanticism and the Emotions. January 1, 2012. 48-75. Full Text
Pfau, T. "The Appearance of Stimmung: Play as Virtual Rationality." Stimmung: zur Wiederkehr einer ästhetischen Kategorie?. Ed. A Gisbertz. Wilhelm Fink Verlag, March 2011. (Essay)
Pfau, T. "William Paley." Blackwell Encyclopedia of Romantic Literature, 4 vols. Ed. F Burwick and N Goslee. Blackwell, 2011. (Essay)
Pfau, T. "The Bildungsroman." The Blackwell Encylopedia of Romantic Literature. Ed. F Burwick, N Goslee, and D Hoeveler. London: Blackwell, 2011. 124-132. (Essay)
Pfau, T. "Between sentimentality and phantasmagoria: German lyric poetry, 1830–1890." German Literature of the Nineteenth Century, 1832-1899. January 1, 2010. 207-250.
Pfau, T. "Bildung: Etiology, Function, Structure (with some reflections on Beethoven)." Die Romantik: ein Gründungsmythos der EuropEuropäischen Moderne. Ed. U Gaier. Bonner Universitätsverlag, 2010. 123-41. (Essay)
Pfau, T. "Mourning Modernity: Classical Antiquity, Romantic Theory, and Elegiac Form." The Oxford Handbook on the Elegy. 2009.
Pages
Pfau, T. "On Attention." SALMAGUNDI-A QUARTERLY OF THE HUMANITIES AND SOCIAL SCIENCES 194 (April 2017): 145-163.
Pfau, T. "“Botched Execution” or Historical Inevitability: Conceptual Dilemmas in Brad S. Gregory's The Unintended Reformation." Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 46.3 (September 2016): 603-628. Full Text
Pfau, T. "A Modern Coleridge: Cultivation, Addiction, Habits." STUDIES IN ROMANTICISM 55.1 (2016): 134-138.
Pfau, T. "Formative Fictions: Nationalism, Cosmopolitanism, and the Bildungsroman." NOVEL-A FORUM ON FICTION 48.1 (May 2015): 136-139. Full Text
Pfau, T. "Review of Tobias Boes, Formative Fictions: Nationalism, Cosmopolitanism, and the Bildungsroman." Novel: a Forum on Fiction (March 2014). (Review)
Pfau, T. "History without Hermeneutics: Brad Gregory’s Unintended Modernity." The Immanent Frame (November 2013).
Pfau, T. "Meta language and visual experience in The Stechlin." German Quarterly 86.4 (October 1, 2013): 421-443. Full Text
Pfau, T. "Meta-Language and Picture Experience in Der Stechlin." GERMAN QUARTERLY 86.4 (October 2013): 421-443. Full Text
Pfau, T. "A Note on the pre-History of European Nihilism: Eroticism and Damaged Life in Don Giovanni." andererseits: Yearbook of Transatlantic German Studies 2 (October 2013).
Pfau, T. "review of Tilottama Rajan, Romantic Narrative (Johns Hopkins UP, 2010)." The Eighteenth Century: Theory & Interpretation (October 2013). (Review)
Pages
Selected Grants
Romancticism & Modernity (North American Society for the Study of Romanticism, 2009 Conference) awarded by Josiah Charles Trent Memorial Foundation (Principal Investigator). 2008 to 2009