Adrian Daub
Adrian Daub
Assistant Professor of German Studies
Chair of Undergraduate Studies
Contact:
Building 260, Room 212
Phone: 650 723 9079
Fax: 650 725 8421
daub@stanford.edu
OVERVIEW:
My research focuses on the long nineteenth century, in particular the intersection of literature, music and philosophy. My first book, "Zwillingshafte Gebärden": Zur kulturellen Wahrnehmung des vierhändigen Klavierspiels im neunzehnten Jahrhundert (Königshausen & Neumann, 2009), traces four-hand piano playing as both a cultural practice and a motif in literature, art and philosophy. My second book, entitled Uncivil Unions - The Metaphysics of Marriage in German Idealism and Romanticism (University of Chicago Press, 2012), explores German philosophical theories of marriage from Kant to Nietzsche. I am currently completing a book on German opera after Wagner entitled Tristan's Shadow - Sexuality and the Total Work of Art. In addition, I have published articles on topics such as fin-de-siècle German opera, the films of Hans-Jürgen Syberberg, literature and scandal, the cultural use of ballads in the nineteenth century, and writers like Novalis, Stefan George, Walter Benjamin, Theodor Adorno and W.G. Sebald.
CURRICULUM VITAE:
Download (right click and "save as")EDUCATION:
2008 Ph.D. University of Pennsylvania
2004 M.A. University of Pennsylvania
2003 B.A. Swarthmore College
Courses
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GERGEN281Aut2011-12
This course will consider G.W.F. Hegel's voluminous "Aesthetics" in its totality, while placing the work into the wider context of Hegel's mature system. Part of the course will be devoted to considering Hegel's legacy in nineteenth and twentieth century aesthetics, both within the Hegelian tradition and outside of it. All readings and class discussions in English
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GERGEN170QSpr2011-12
This course traces the history and culture of a country that disappeared not too long ago, but about which most of us tent to know very little. On February 27, 1947, the Allied Control Council issues it's decree no. 46, which dissolved Prussia "in the interest of maintaining world peace and security" and "the restoration of political life in Germany on a democratic basis." Prussia, the Council continued, "has since forever been a carrier of militarism and reaction in Germany." Many of the stereotypical images of Germany and German-ness, and certainly most negative images of Germany, from the spiked helmet to the iron cross, the Red Baron and the Blitzkrieg, are bound up with Prussia, its military and its ruling class. Prussia's militaristic culture not only brought on a series of increasingly brutal wars, while also often being a beacon of Enlightenment and religious tolerance; it brought together Germany's most traditional backwater with its most progressive metropolis. This course will focus on its flourishing cultural life, its novelists, painters, architects, composers, philosophers, economists, satirists, military and political theorists. In tracing the kingdom's history and its culture, we will draw on a number of texts ranging from the 1750s to the early 1920s. As this course fulfills the WRITE 2 requirement, we will also explore different ways to reflect on these texts in writing, to draw together and present information, and how to critique and revise presentations. All readings and writing will be in English. (WR-2)
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GERLIT272Spr2011-12
This course explores three seminal German poets of the early 20th century, Rainer Maria Rilke, Stefan George, and Georg Trakl. While focused on their work, the course will all also explore each poet's intellectual and social context, their relationship to the tradition, and their poetic politics. This course is taught entirely in German.
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GERLIT127ASpr2011-12
This course charts the history of the German ballad, from Goethe and Schiller, to Romantic and Realist poets - additional reading will attempt to contextualize the German ballad in the European context. Musical ballads and song arrangements will also be considered.
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GERGEN200Win2010-11
When Walter Benjamin committed suicide while fleeing from the Nazis in 1940, he left behind a large corpus of unpublished writing, perhaps none more famous than the immense collection of notes, fragments, and drafts that are collectively known as the "Arcades Project," which Benjamin entrusted to his friend Georges Bataille when forced to flee Paris. The "Arcades Project" undertakes nothing short of an archaeology of the nineteenth century, combining literary scholarship, sociology, Marxism, mysticism, a theory of signification and a philosophy of history. This course considers this projects in its totality, drawing on some of Benjamin's writings of the same period, and tracing some common readings and misreadings of the Project's staggering material. All readings and class discussions in English
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GERGEN170QSpr2010-11
This course traces the history and culture of a country that disappeared not too long ago, but about which most of us tent to know very little. On February 27, 1947, the Allied Control Council issues it's decree no. 46, which dissolved Prussia "in the interest of maintaining world peace and security" and "the restoration of political life in Germany on a democratic basis." Prussia, the Council continued, "has since forever been a carrier of militarism and reaction in Germany." Many of the stereotypical images of Germany and German-ness, and certainly most negative images of Germany, from the spiked helmet to the iron cross, the Red Baron and the Blitzkrieg, are bound up with Prussia, its military and its ruling class. Prussia's militaristic culture not only brought on a series of increasingly brutal wars, while also often being a beacon of Enlightenment and religious tolerance; it brought together Germany's most traditional backwater with its most progressive metropolis. This course will focus on its flourishing cultural life, its novelists, painters, architects, composers, philosophers, economists, satirists, military and political theorists. In tracing the kingdom's history and its culture, we will draw on a number of texts ranging from the 1750s to the early 1920s. As this course fulfills the WRITE 2 requirement, we will also explore different ways to reflect on these texts in writing, to draw together and present information, and how to critique and revise presentations. All readings and writing will be in English. (WR-2)
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GERLIT190Win2010-11
This course is designed to give German Studies majors, minors, and those who are especially interested in the field of change to grapple in depth with one of the central texts of the German literary tradition. For all ten weeks of the quarter, our focus will be on Goethe's two tragedies Faust I and II. We will not simply read these texts, but see them performed, listen to them, memorize and recite them. We will test out different ways of responding to them in writing. This course fulfills the WIM-requirement, and is required for undergraduate German majors wishing to take graduate seminars in future quarters. (WIM)
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GERLIT133Spr2010-11
This course is designed to provide students with a representative overview of German literature, film and music from World War I to the early twenty-first century. It draws on major texts from many of the twentieth century's great literary and artistic movements, from Expressionism and New Objectivity, via the Gruppe 47 to pop art and postmodernism. In keeping with German Studies Department's new pilot program, this course will be taught in English and in German - particular periods or literary or cultural movements will be discussed in English, while individual text will be discussed (and read) entirely in German. German language proficiency is therefore assumed, as is some familiarity with the rough outlines of German history in the 20th century
