Joseph earned his B.A. in German Studies at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities in 2019. While there he served as Team Leader in the Language Center and eventually received the AATG Minnesota Undergraduate Student of the Year Award after working with faculty members to complete his senior capstone project, an analysis of the historiographical poetics of Ingeborg Bachmann’s Malina and its embedded fairytale. Joseph’s research explores the emergence of misanthropy in postwar German literature and film. His dissertation examines novels and films that stage the misanthrope’s fantasy of social self-extraction, most often by means of secluded or hidden places like deserts, islands, and abandoned buildings. Despite his interest in recluse curmudgeons and cynics, Joseph very happily spends time with friends and strangers at local pool halls and music events