Stefani Engelstein
Professor of German
Office location
116C Old Chemistry
In her work, Stefani Engelstein (Ph.D. 2001, University of Chicago) addresses literature and science, memory culture, aesthetics, gender, political theory, critical race theory, history of knowledge, and perspectives on nature. She works on these issues from 1770 to the present, particularly in the period of Age of Goethe / Romanticism. Engelstein is currently working on two book projects: Remembering Isn’t Enough: Reflections from Germany on the Futures of Violent Pasts and The Opposite Sex: A History. Her work has been funded by fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, National Endowment for the Humanities, Fulbright Foundation, and Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. She 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, Fichte, Schelling, Darwin, George Eliot, Wagner, and Kafka. Engelstein has a secondary appointment in Gender, Sexuality, & Feminist Studies.
Select Recent Publications
Geschwister-Logik. Genealogisches Denken in der Literatur und den Wissenschaften der Moderne. Trans. André Hansen. Trans. of The Genealogical Structure of Modernity (below). De Gruyter. 2024. Link
“The Ambivalent Encounter with the Flaw in the World: Günderrode and Kleist.” Kleist-Jahrbuch. Forthcoming 2025.
“German Erinnerungskultur and the Gaza War.“ Interjekte. 15. 2025. Open access.
"Death Writes: Franz Kafka, Tubercular Soundscapes, and the Place of Literature.” New German Critique. 52:1 (2025): 31-56.
“Divisive Affect, Loyalty, and National Cohesion: Du Bois contra Wagner.” Comparative Literature. 76.3 (Fall, 2024): 336-354.
“Sketchy! Kafka’s Drawings in medias res.” Invited contribution. Special issue: Kafka’s Drawings. Ed. Carsten Strathausen. The Germanic Review. 99:2 (2024): 172-191.
“Polarisierender Affekt, Öffentlichkeit und nationaler Zusammenhalt: Du Bois contra Wagner.” Trans. Seán Allan and Christian Moser. [Trans. of “Divisive Affect, Loyalty, and National Cohesion: Du Bois contra Wagner.”] Re-Imagining the Public Sphere. Literatur, Kunst und das soziale Imaginäre. Ed. Seán Allan and Christian Moser. Bielefeld: Aisthesis, 2024. 445-471.
“Boundaries and Interdisciplines: Where Medical Humanities Meets Literature & Science in German Studies.” Forward to Health Humanities in German Studies, ed. Stephanie M. Hilger. Bloomsbury Press. 2024. xvi-xxv.
“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. Open access
“Sexual Division and the New Mythology: Goethe and Schelling.” History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences special issue: Conceiving Reproduction in German Naturphilosophie. Ed. Susanne Lettow and Gregory Rupik. 42.3 (2020): 24 pages. Open access
“Schelling’s Uncanny Organism.” Invited contribution. Artful Designs: The Automata and Hidden Machinery of Global Romanticism. Ed. Christopher Clason and Michael Demson. Bucknell University Press. 2020. 167-185.
- Short-listed for SAMLA (South Atlantic Modern Languages Association) Studies Book Award for best edited collection.
Sibling Action: The Genealogical Structure of Modernity. Columbia University Press. Hardcover 2017. Paperback 2020. Link
- Shortlisted for Kenshur Prize, Center for 18th-Century Studies, Indiana University.
Specializations
- Eighteenth Century
- Romanticism & Idealism
- Nineteenth Century
- Science & Culture
- Aesthetics
- Gender Studies
- Critical Race Studies
- Literary Theory
- Political Theory
- Philosophy & Literature
- Jewish Studies
- Intellectual & Cultural History
- Ancient Modern Relations