David "Tako" Takamura is a doctoral candidate. After a BA in Liberal Arts at St. John's College and an MA in Comparative Literature at the University of Washington, he came to North Carolina to work on the Romantic period. His research focuses on German Orientalism, German Idealism, and the history of nihilism. His dissertation, entitled Egoism in the Age of Romanticism, reinterprets Romantic thought as an exhortation to life-denial responding to metaphysical threats of solipsism and nihilism throughout the long nineteenth century. He is a finalist and alternate of the 2023 Charlotte W. Newcombe Foundation Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship and a recipient of an honorable mention for Best Graduate Essay from the 2022 German Studies Association. He has articles published in The German Quarterly and the German Studies Review in addition to creative writing published in literary journals.
Carolina-Duke Graduate Program in German Studies