Stefani Engelstein

Stefani Englestein

Professor of German

Office location

116C Old Chemistry

(919) 660-3173

stefani.engelstein@duke.edu

Stefani Engelstein’s (Ph.D. 2001, University of Chicago) work addresses literature and science, aesthetics, gender, political theory, critical race theory, history of knowledge, and perspectives on nature, as well as other topics from 1770 to the present, particularly in the period of Age of Goethe / Romanticism.  During the 2021-2022 academic year, she is a Visiting Scholar at the Leibniz Center for Literary and Cultural Research in Berlin working on two book projects: "Living Things, Human Beings: The Entanglements of the Organism and Reflections from Germany on Anti-Semitism, Racism," and "Difficult Pasts: An Essay in Six Cemeteries."  Engelstein has published two monographs: Sibling Action: The Genealogical Structure of Modernity (Columbia University Press, 2017) and Anxious Anatomy: The Conception of the Human Form in Literary and Naturalist Discourse (SUNY Press, 2008). She also co-edited the anthology Contemplating Violence: Critical Studies in Modern German Culture (Rodopi, 2011).  Authors to whom she returns include Goethe, Lessing, Kleist, Blake, Mary Shelley, Hoffmann, Kant, Schelling, Darwin, George Eliot, Wagner, and Kafka.

Select Recent Publications

Sibling Action: The Genealogical Structure of Modernity. New York: Columbia University Press, 2017.

Anxious Anatomy: The Conception of the Human Form in Literary and Naturalist Discourse.  Series: Studies in the Long Nineteenth Century.  SUNY Press.  Hardcover 2008.  Paperback 2009.  http://www.sunypress.edu/p-4630-anxious-anatomy.aspx

“Divisive Affect, Loyalty, and National Cohesion: Du Bois Contra Wagner.”  Forthcoming in Comparative Literature

“The Emergent Organism: Kielmeyer, Röschlaub, Schelling, and Novalis.”  Invited contribution.  Special issue on Science, Technology, and Early German Romanticism.  Ed. Leif Weatherby.  Symphilosophie 3 (2021): 1-32

 Sexual Division and the New Mythology: Goethe and Schelling.” History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences. 42.39 (2020).

“Schelling’s Uncanny Organism.” Artful Designs: The Automata and Hidden Machinery of Global Romanticism. Eds. Christopher Clason and Michael Demson. Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Press. 2020. 167-185.

“Love or Knowledge: Sexual Epistemology in Fichte and Kleist.” Germanic Review 92.4 (Fall 2017): 368-387.

Specializations
  • Eighteenth Century
  • Romanticism & Idealism
  • Nineteenth Century
  • Science & Culture
  • Aesthetics
  • Gender Studies
  • Critical Race Studies
  • Literary Theory
  • Political Theory
  • Philosophy & Literature
  • Critical Theory
  • Jewish Studies
  • Intellectual & Cultural History
  • Ancient Modern Relations
Curriculum Vitae
Download Englestein CV 2023 (pdf - 221.25 KB)