Tobias Wilke
Associate Professor of German
Office location
Dey Hall 438
I am a literary and media historian who trained in Germany and the US. After completing a bi-national doctoral degree (co-tutelle) at Princeton University (Ph.D.) and Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen (Dr. phil.), I held academic positions at Columbia University and the Leibniz Center for Literary and Cultural Research (ZfL) in Berlin. Additionally, I have been a NOMIS fellow at eikones—Center for the Theory and History of the Image at the Universität Basel, a visiting professor in the Research Cluster Languages of Emotion at Freie Universität Berlin, and an Alexander von Humboldt Fellow at the ZfL. I joined the faculty of the Carolina-Duke Graduate Program in German Studies in the fall of 2024.
My research and teaching centers on European modernism and the historical avant-garde movements, media history and media theory from the 19th through the 21st century, literature and the history of science, sound studies, and digital theory.
I am the author of four books, including most recently Lautbilder und Maschinenschrift: Modelle digitaler Sprachlichkeit im 20. Jahrhundert (Fink, 2026) and Sound Writing: Experimental Modernism and the Poetics of Articulation (The University of Chicago Press, 2022). Furthermore, I have co-edited a number of special issues and essay collections, including a forthcoming special issue of New German Critique on “Semiotic Machines” (2026), a special issue of The Germanic Review (2016) on “Dada 1916/2016” (2016) and a special issue of Grey Room on “Walter Benjamin’s Media Tactics” (2010).
From 2024 to 2027, I am also serving as a member and peer researcher of the scholarly network “Das Wissen der digitalen Literatur” (The Knowledge of Digital Literature) funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG).
Select Recent Publications
Books
Lautbilder und Maschinenschrift: Modelle digitaler Sprachlichkeit im 20. Jahrhundert, Paderborn: Fink, 2026.
Sound Writing: Experimental Modernism and the Poetics of Articulation, Chicago/London: The University of Chicago Press, 2022.
Einführung in die Literatur der Jahrhundertwende, Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 3rd ed. 2016 (co-authored with Dorothee Kimmich). [PDF available here].
Medien der Unmittelbarkeit: Dingkonzepte und Wahrnehmungstechniken 1918-1939, Munich: Fink, 2010.
Edited Volumes and Special Issues
New German Critique 159 (November 2026), Special Issue “Semiotic Machines” (co-edited with Sarah Pourciau and Leif Weatherby).
The Germanic Review 91:4 (Winter 2016), Special Issue “Dada 1916/2016” (co-edited with Nicola Behrmann).
Gefühl und Genauigkeit: Empirische Ästhetik um 1900, Munich: Wilhelm Fink (co-edited with Jutta Müller-Tamm and Henning Schmidgen).
Grey Room 39 (Spring 2010), Special Issue “Walter Benjamin's Media Tactics: Optics, Perception, and the Work of Art” (co-edited with Michael Jennings).
Recent Articles and Book Chapters
“‘The Birth of Poetry from the Spirit of the Machine’: On Artificial Text and Natural Language,” New German Critique 159 (2026), Special Issue “Semiotic Machines” (forthcoming).
“Literatur im frühen Informationszeitalter,” in Handbuch Literatur & Technik, eds. Bernhard Dotzler, Hans-Christian von Herrmann, Berlin: deGruyter, 2026 (forthcoming).
“Die Frau, das Meer, der Himmel: Elemente des Digitalen zwischen Turing und OpenAI,” in Das Subjekt des Schreibens, eds. Hannes Bajohr, Moritz Hiller, Munich: edition text + kritik, 2024, pp. 173-189 (co-authored with Sarah Pourciau).
“Information and the Object of Poetry: ‘Verbi-voco-visual Explorations’ between McLuhan and Bense,” Culture Theory Critique 64:4 (2023), Special Issue: “Information Aesthetics”: 404–420. DOI: 10.1080/14735784.2025.2506993.
Specializations
- Modernism and Avant-garde Studies
- Media Theory and Media History
- Sound Studies
- Literature and the History of Science
- Digital Theory
Curriculum Vitae