Kata Gellen
Associate Professor of German Studies

My main areas of research are German literary modernism, German-Jewish culture, Weimar cinema, and Austrian literature. My book, Kafka and Noise: The Discovery of Cinematic Sound in Literary Modernism , appeared with Northwestern University Press in 2019. In this intermedial study I demonstrate that the role of noise in Kafka's writings is best understood through the theory and practice of film sound. In my current project I examine the twentieth-century East European German-Jewish novel, or Galizienroman , as a modernist form. I explore the relationship of tradition and modernity, as well as questions of modernist form and style, in authors such as Joseph Roth, Soma Morgenstern, and H. W. Katz. Recent courses I have taught include Stories of Entrapment (upper-level undergraduate course in German), Surveillance & Society (first-year seminar), and "'Mensch ohne Welt': Twentieth-Century German-Jewish Literature" (graduate).

Office Hours

On leave fall 2020

Current Appointments & Affiliations

Contact Information

Some information on this profile has been compiled automatically from Duke databases and external sources. (Our About page explains how this works.) If you see a problem with the information, please write to Scholars@Duke and let us know. We will reply promptly.