Thomas Pfau | Scholars@Duke

Thomas Pfau
Alice Mary Baldwin Professor of English

"THOMAS PFAU (PhD 1989, SUNY Buffalo) is the Alice Mary Baldwin Professor of English, with secondary appointments in Germanic Language & Literatures and the Divinity School at Duke University. He has published some forty-five essays on literary and philosophical subjects ranging from the 18^th through the early 20^th century. In addition to two translations, of Hölderlin and Schelling (SUNY Press, 1987 and 1994), he has also edited seven essay collections and special journal issues and is the author of three monographs: Wordsworth’s Profession (Stanford UP 1997), Romantic Moods: Paranoia, Trauma, Melancholy, 1790-1840 (Johns Hopkins UP 2005), and Minding the Modern: Intellectual Traditions, Human Agency, and Responsible Knowledge (Notre Dame UP, 2013). His current book project focuses on phenomenology of image-consciousness in literature, theology, and philosophy.

Office Hours

Mondays 1:30 p.m. - 2:30 p.m. & by appointment.

Current Appointments & Affiliations

Alice Mary Baldwin Professor of English, English, Trinity College of Arts & Sciences 2012
Professor of English, English, Trinity College of Arts & Sciences 2005
Associate Professor of Germanic Languages and Literature, Germanic Languages, Trinity College of Arts & Sciences 1998
Professor of Historical Theology, Divinity School, Duke University 2013
Bass Fellow, English, Trinity College of Arts & Sciences 2011

Contact Information

312 Allen Bldg, Durham, NC 27708
Duke Box 90015, Durham, NC 27708-0015
pfau@duke.edu (919) 681-3098
Books by Thomas Pfau
https://duke.academia.edu/ThomasPfau

Background
Education, Training, & Certifications
- Ph.D., State University of New York at Buffalo 1989
- M.A., University of California at Irvine 1985
Duke Appointment History
- Chair in the Department of Germanic Languages and Literature, Germanic Languages, Trinity College of Arts & Sciences 2015 - 2017
- Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of English, English, Trinity College of Arts & Sciences 2013 - 2014
- Associate Professor of English, English, Trinity College of Arts & Sciences 1997 - 2005
- Assistant Professor, English, Trinity College of Arts & Sciences 1991 - 1997
Recognition
In the News
- SEP 11, 2015 the Philadelphia Inquirer
  
  Refugee Crisis Exposes Flaws in EU Fundamentals
- SEP 11, 2015 The News & Observer
  
  Thomas Pfau: How refugee crisis exposes flaws in EU fundamentals
- AUG 14, 2015 Patheos
  
  Q-and-A withThomas Pfau: Threatening naturalism’s universal authority
- AUG 11, 2014 The News & Observer
  
  Duke University forges new educational path with a new campus in China
- MAY 29, 2013
  
  The Humanities: The Next Generation
Awards & Honors
- ACLS Fellows (ACLS/SSRC/NEH International and Area Studies Fellowships and ACLS/New York Public Library Fellowships). American Council of Learned Societies. 2010
- Fellow. National Humanities Center. 2010
Expertise
Global Scholarship
- Expertise
Research
Selected Grants
- Romancticism & Modernity (North American Society for the Study of Romanticism, 2009 Conference) awarded by Josiah Charles Trent Memorial Foundation 2008 - 2009
Publications & Artistic Works
Selected Publications
- Books
  - Judgment and Action Fragments toward a History. Ed. T Pfau and V Soni. Northwestern University Press, December 15, 2017. (Collection)
  - Pfau, T. Minding the modern: Human agency, intellectual traditions, and responsible knowledge. January 1, 2013.
  - Pfau, T, and Mitchell, R. Romanticism and Modernity. Routledge, November 2011. Link to Item
  - Romanticism and Modernity. Ed. Pfau, T and Mitchell, R.: Routledge, 2011. (Collection)
  - Medium and Message in German Modernism. Ed. T Pfau. 2006.
  - Pfau, T. Romantic Moods: Paranoia, Trauma, and Melancholy, 1790-1840. Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005. (Monograph) Link to Item
  - Pfau, T. Lessons of Romanticism: A Critical Companion. an anthology of twenty-one essays, Durham: Duke UP, 1998. Link to Item
  - Pfau, T. Wordsworth’s Profession: Form, Class, and the Logic of Romantic Cultural Production. Stanford UP, 1997. Link to Item
  - Pfau, T. Idealism and the Endgames of Theory: Three Essays by F. W. J. Schelling. State U of New York P, 1994. (Monograph) Link to Item
  - Pfau, T, and translator, . Friedrich Hölderlin: Essays and Letters on Theory. State U of New York P, 1987.
  - Pfau, T. Textual and Cultural Dissolution in English Romanticism. .
- Academic Articles
  - Pfau, T. "“Superabundant being”: Disambiguating Rilke and Heidegger." Modern Theology 35.1 (January 1, 2019): 23-42. Full Text
  - Wolfe, J, and Pfau, T. "Philosophy and theology in Germany, 1918 to 1933: Editorial introduction." Modern Theology 35.1 (January 1, 2019): 3-4. Full Text
  - Pfau, T. "On Attention." SALMAGUNDI-A QUARTERLY OF THE HUMANITIES AND SOCIAL SCIENCES 194 (April 2017): 145-163. Link to Item
  - Pfau, T. "“Botched Execution” or Historical Inevitability: Conceptual Dilemmas in Brad S. Gregory's The Unintended Reformation." Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 46.3 (September 2016): 603-628. Full Text
  - Pfau, T. "A Modern Coleridge: Cultivation, Addiction, Habits." STUDIES IN ROMANTICISM 55.1 (2016): 134-138. Link to Item
  - Pfau, T. "Formative Fictions: Nationalism, Cosmopolitanism, and the Bildungsroman." NOVEL-A FORUM ON FICTION 48.1 (May 2015): 136-139. Full Text Link to Item
  - Pfau, T. "Review of Tobias Boes, Formative Fictions: Nationalism, Cosmopolitanism, and the Bildungsroman." Novel: a Forum on Fiction (March 2014). (Review)
  - Pfau, T. "Shadowing the lyric: Tilottama rajan reads romantic narrative." Eighteenth Century 54.4 (December 1, 2013): 565-569. (Review) Full Text
  - Pfau, T. "History without Hermeneutics: Brad Gregory’s Unintended Modernity." The Immanent Frame (November 2013). Link to Item
  - Pfau, T. "Metasprache und Bilderfahrung inDer Stechlin." The German Quarterly 86.4 (October 2013): 421-443. Full Text
  - Pfau, T. "Meta-Language and Picture Experience in Der Stechlin." GERMAN QUARTERLY 86.4 (October 2013): 421-443. Full Text Link to Item
  - Pfau, T. "A Note on the pre-History of European Nihilism: Eroticism and Damaged Life in Don Giovanni." andererseits: Yearbook of Transatlantic German Studies 2 (October 2013).
  - Pfau, T. "review of Tilottama Rajan, Romantic Narrative (Johns Hopkins UP, 2010)." The Eighteenth Century: Theory & Interpretation (October 2013). (Review) Link to Item
  - Pfau, T. "Epochenwandel mit metaphysischen Anklängen: Metasprache und Bilderfahrung in Der Stechlin." German Quarterly 86 (2013): 420-442. Link to Item
  - Pfau, T. "Mourning Modernity:: Classical Antiquity, Romantic Theory, and Elegiac Form." (September 18, 2012). (Chapter) Full Text
  - Pfau, T. "review of David Collings, Monstrous Society: Reciprocity, Discipline, and the Political Uncanny at the end of Early Modern England (Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell UP)." European Romantic Review 23 (March 2012): 68-73. (Review)
  - Pfau, T. "Paul H. Fry, Wordsworth and the Poetry of What We AreWordsworth and the Poetry of What We Are. Paul H. Fry . New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008. Pp. xvi+240." Modern Philology 108.3 (February 2011): E191-E194. Full Text
  - Pfau, T. "Rethinking the image: With some reflections on G. M. Hopkins." Yearbook of Comparative Literature 57 (January 1, 2011): 117-147.
  - Pfau, T. "Review of Paul Fry, Wordsworth and the Poetry of What We Are." Modern Philology 108 (2011): 191-94. (Review) Link to Item
  - Pfau, T, and Mitchell, R. "European Romantic Review: Introduction." European Romantic Review 21.5 (October 1, 2010): 545-551. Full Text
  - Pfau, T. "Bildungsspiele: Vicissitudes of socialization in Wilhelm Meister's apprenticeship." European Romantic Review 21.5 (October 1, 2010): 567-587. (Review) Full Text
  - Pfau, T. "The letter of judgment: Practical reason in Aristotle, the Stoics, and Rousseau." Eighteenth Century 51.3 (September 1, 2010): 289-316. (Review)
  - Pfau, T. ""All is leaf": Difference, metamorphosis, and Goethe's phenomenology of knowledge." Studies in Romanticism 49.1 (March 1, 2010): 3-41. (Review)
  - Mitchell, R, and Pfau, T. "“Romanticism and Form” special issue." European Romantic Review 21.5 (2010).
  - Mitchell, R, and Pfau, T. "NASSR 2009 Conference Volume." European Romantic Review 21.3 (2010).
  - Pfau, T. "Bildung: Etiology, Function, Structure (with some reflections on Beethoven)." Ed. U Gaier and E al. (2010): 123-41.
  - Pfau, T. "Review of Colin Jager The Book of God: Secularization and Design in the Romantic Era." Romanticism and Victorianism on the Net, no. 25 (2009). (Review) Link to Item
  - Pfau, T. "The Wordsworthian Enlightenment: Romantic Poetry and the Ecology of Reading." STUDIES IN ROMANTICISM 48.1 (2009): 159-165. Link to Item
  - Pfau, T. "Beyond liberal Utopia: Freedom as the problem of modernity." European Romantic Review 19.2 (April 1, 2008): 83-103. Full Text
  - Pfau, T. "Review of Leon Chai, "Romantic Theory: Forms of Reflexivity in the Revolutionary Era"." Comparative Literature 60 (2008): 290-94. (Review) Link to Item
  - Pfau, T. "'Romantic theory': Forms of reflexivity in the Romantic era." COMPARATIVE LITERATURE 60.3 (2008): 290-294. Full Text Link to Item
  - "From Autonomous Subjects to Self-Regulating Structures: Rationality and Development in German Idealism." (November 30, 2007): 101-122. (Chapter) Full Text
  - Pfau, T. "Of ends and endings: Teleological and variational models of romantic narrative." European Romantic Review 18.2 (April 1, 2007): 231-241. Full Text
  - Pfau, T. "The Melancholy Gift: Freedom in Nineteenth-Century Thought." Romantic Praxis (2007). Link to Item
  - Pfau, T. "Beyond Liberal Utopia: Freedom in the Nineteenth Century." European Romantic Review 19 (2007). Link to Item
  - Pfau, T. "Beyond the Suburbs of the Mind: The Political and Aesthetic Economy of the Body in Malthus and Wordsworth." South Atlantic Quarterly 95 (2007): 629-69. Link to Item
  - Pfau, T. "Review of George S. Williamson, The Longing for Myth in Germany: Religion and Aesthetic Culture from Romanticism to Nietzsche (Chicago: U of Chicago Press)." European Romantic Review 18 (2007): 439-44. (Review) Link to Item
  - Pfau, T. "Review of The Wordsworthian Enlightenment, ed. Helen R. Elam & Frances Ferguson (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 2005)." Romantic Circles (2007). (Review)
  - Pfau, T. "The philosophy of Shipwreck: Gnosticism, skepticism, and Coleridge's catastrophic modernity." Mln Modern Language Notes 122.5 (January 1, 2007): 949-1004. (Review) Full Text
  - Pfau, T. ""From Autonomous Subjects to Self-Regulating Structures: Rationality and Development in German Idealism"." Ed. BCT Romanticism. (2003).
  - Pfau, T. "Review of Emerson R. Marks, Taming the Chaos: English Poetic Diction Theory since the Renaissance." MLQ (2003) . 60 (2003): 265-67. (Review) Link to Item
  - Pfau, T. "Review of Ian Balfour’s The Rhetoric of Romantic Prophecy." Comparative Literature (2003). (Review) Link to Item
  - Pfau, T. "Review of Angela Esterhammer’s The Romantic Performative: Language and Action in British and German Romanticism." Criticism 44.1 (2003): 72-76 (2003). (Review) Link to Item
  - Pfau, T. "The rhetoric of Romantic prophecy." COMPARATIVE LITERATURE 55.4 (2003): 360-363. Link to Item
  - Pfau, T. "Conjuring history: Lyric cliché, conservative fantasy, and traumatic awakening in German romanticism." South Atlantic Quarterly 102.1 (January 1, 2003): 53-92. (Review) Full Text
  - Pfau, T. "The Romantic performative: Language and action in British and German Romanticism." CRITICISM-A QUARTERLY FOR LITERATURE AND THE ARTS 44.1 (2002): 72-76. Full Text Link to Item
  - Pfau, T. "The voice of critique: Aesthetic cognition after Kant." Modern Language Quarterly 60.3 (September 1, 1999): 321-352. (Review) Full Text
  - Pfau, T. "Taming the chaos: English poetic diction theory since the Renaissance." MODERN LANGUAGE QUARTERLY 60.2 (June 1999): 265-267. Full Text Link to Item
  - Pfau, T. "Review of Terence A. Hoagwood’s Politics, Philosophy, and the Production of Romantic Texts." Studies in Romanticism 38 (1999): 692-98. (Review) Link to Item
  - Pfau, T. "Politics, philosophy, and the production of romantic texts." STUDIES IN ROMANTICISM 38.4 (1999): 692-698. Full Text Link to Item
  - Pfau, T. "Reading beyond Redemption: Historicism, Irony, and the Lessons of Romanticism." Ed. T Pfau and RF Gleckner. Critical Introduction to Lessons of Romanticism, Duke UP (1998): 1-37.
  - Pfau, T. "Bringing about the Past: Prophetic Memory in Kant, Godwin, and Blake." Romantic Proxis (1997). Link to Item
  - Pfau, T. "Paranoian Historicized: Legal Fantasy, Social Change, and Satiric Meta-Commentary in the 1794 Treason Trials." Ed. SC Behrendt. (1997).
  - Pfau, T, and Kercsmar, RR. "Rhetorical and cultural dissolution in Romanticism - Introduction." SOUTH ATLANTIC QUARTERLY 95.3 (1996): 571-573. Link to Item
  - Pfau, T. "'Searching their Hearts': Romantic Pedagogy, Social Ascendancy, and the Pleasures of Surveillance in Andrew Bell and Mary Wollstonecraft." Romanticism 2 (1996): 220-46. Link to Item
  - Pfau, T. "''Beyond the suburbs of the mind'': The political and aesthetic disciplining of the Romantic body." SOUTH ATLANTIC QUARTERLY 95.3 (1996): 629-669. Link to Item
  - PFAU, T. "THE AUTHOR, ART, AND THE MARKET, REREADING THE HISTORY OF AESTHETICS - WOODMANSEE,M." STUDIES IN ROMANTICISM 34.3 (1995): 490-495. Full Text Link to Item
  - Pfau, T. "Immediacy and Dissolution: Reflections on Moral Theory and the Logic of Critical Discourse." Ed. T Rajan and D Clark. (1995).
  - Pfau, T. "Review of Martha Woodmansee’s The Author, Art, and the Market: Rereading the History of Aesthetics." Studies in Romanticism 34 (1995): 490-95. (Review) Link to Item
  - Pfau, T. ""Elementary Feelings" and "Distorted Language": The Pragmatics of Culture in Wordsworth's Preface to Lyrical Ballads." New Literary History 24.1 (1993): 125-125. Full Text
  - Pfau, T. "The Pragmatics of Genre: Moral Theory and Lyric Authorship in Hegel and Wordsworth." Cardozo Arts and Entertainment Review 10 (1992): 397-422. Link to Item
  - PFAU, T. "TROPES OF DESIRE, FIGURING THE INSUFFICIENT VOID OF SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS IN SHELLEY 'EPIPSYCHIDION'." KEATS-SHELLEY JOURNAL 40 (1991): 99-126. Link to Item
  - Pfau, T. "Immediacy and the Text: Friedrich Schleiermacher’s Theory of Style and Interpretation." Journal of the History of Ideas 51 (1990): 51-73.
  - Pfau, T. "Review of Edwin Stein’s Woodworth’s Art of Illusion." Studies in Romanticism 29 (1990): 496-99. (Review)
  - Pfau, T. "Review of Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe and Jean Luc Nancy’s The Literary Absolute." Studies in Romanticism 29 (1990): 309-13. (Review) Link to Item
  - Pfau, T. "Review of Wordsworth's Art of Allusion by Edward Stein." Studies in Romanticism 29 (1990): 496-499. (Review) Link to Item
  - Pfau, T. "Review of Winfried Menninghaus’s Unendliche Verdopplung: Die Grundlegung der fruhromantischen Kunsttheorie im Begriff absoluter Selbstreflexion." MLN (German Issue) 104 (1989): 729-33. (Review) Link to Item
  - Pfau, T. "Thinking before Totality: Kritik, Ubersetzung, and the Language of Interpretation in the early Walter Benjamin." MLN (Comparative Literature Issue) 103 (1988): 1072-97. Link to Item
  - Pfau, T. "Rhetoric and the Existential: Romantic Studies and the Question of the Subject." Studies in Romanticism 26 (1987): 487-512. Link to Item
  - Pfau, T. "Review of Andrej Warminski’s Readings in Interpretation: Holderlin, Hegel, and Heidegger." MLN (Comparative Literature Issue) 102 (1987): 1212-15. (Review) Link to Item
- Book Sections
  - Pfau, T. "Rational Theology and the Catholic Critique of Modernity, 1780-1830." The Oxford Handbook on European Romanticism. Ed. HKC Paul and London. October 2014.
  - Pfau, T. "Wagner hören im Zeitalter kultureller Überdetermination: Adorno’s Versuch über Wagner." Jenseits von Bayreuth: Richard Wagner Heute. Ed. S Boernchen and G Mein. Fink Verlag, March 2014.
  - Pfau, T. "’A certain mediocrity' Moral Sentiments and Early Behaviorism in A. Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments." Romanticism and the Emotions. Ed. J Faflak and R Sha. Cambridge UP, February 2014.
  - Pfau, T. "A certain mediocrity: Adam Smith’s moral behaviorism." Romanticism and the Emotions. January 1, 2012. 48-75. Full Text
  - Pfau, T. "The Appearance of Stimmung: Play as Virtual Rationality." Stimmung: zur Wiederkehr einer ästhetischen Kategorie?. Ed. A Gisbertz. Wilhelm Fink Verlag, March 2011. (Essay) Link to Item
  - Pfau, T. "William Paley." Blackwell Encyclopedia of Romantic Literature, 4 vols. Ed. F Burwick and N Goslee. Blackwell, 2011. (Essay) Link to Item
  - Pfau, T. "The Bildungsroman." The Blackwell Encylopedia of Romantic Literature. Ed. F Burwick, N Goslee, and D Hoeveler. London: Blackwell, 2011. 124-132. (Essay) Link to Item
  - Pfau, T. "Bildung: Etiology, Function, Structure (with some reflections on Beethoven)." Die Romantik: ein Gründungsmythos der EuropEuropäischen Moderne. Ed. U Gaier. Bonner Universitätsverlag, 2010. 123-41. (Essay) Link to Item
  - Pfau, T. "Between sentimentality and phantasmagoria: German lyric poetry, 1830–1890." German Literature of the Nineteenth Century, 1832-1899. January 1, 2010. 207-250.
  - Pfau, T. "Mourning Modernity: Classical Antiquity, Romantic Theory, and Elegiac Form." The Oxford Handbook on the Elegy. 2009. Link to Item
  - Pfau, T. "Nineteenth-Century Lyric German Poetry." Camden House History of German Literature, volume 9. Ed. C Koelb and E Downing. 2005. 201-242. (Essay) Link to Item
  - Pfau, T. "Rationality as Bewegung: From Kantian Autonomy to Hegel’s Self-Regulating System." The Blackwell Companion to European Romanticism. Ed. M Ferber. London: Blackwell, 2005. (Essay) Link to Item
  - Pfau, T. "From Autonomous Subjects to Self-Regulating Structures: Rationality and Development in German Idealism." in "A Companion to European Romanticism". Ed. M Ferber. Blackwell, 2004. (Essay)
  - Pfau, T. "Nachtigallenwahnsinn and Rabbinismus: Heine’s Literary Provocation to German-Jewish Cultural Identity." Romantic Poetry: Comparative History of Literatures in European Languages. Ed. A Esterhammer. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2002. 427-44. (Essay) Link to Item
  - Pfau, T. "Paranoian Historicized: Legal Fantasy, Social Change, and Satiric Meta-Commentary in the 1794 Treason Trials." Romanticism, Radicalism, and the Press. Ed. SC Behrendt. Detroit: Wayne State UP, 1997.
  - Pfau, T. "Paranoia Historicized: Legal Fantasy, Social Change, and Satiric Meta-Commentary in the 1794 Treason Trials." Romanticism, Radicalism, and the Press. Ed. SC Behrendt. Wayne State University Press, 1997. (Essay) Link to Item
  - Pfau, T. "Immediacy and Dissolution: Reflections on Moral Theory and the Logic of Critical Discourse." Intersections: Nineteenth-Century Philosophy and Contemporary Theory. Ed. T Rajan and D Clark. Albany: State U of New York P, 1995. (Essay) Link to Item
Teaching & Mentoring
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Education, Training, & Certifications

Duke Appointment History

In the News

Awards & Honors

Global Scholarship

Expertise

Selected Grants

Selected Publications

Books

Academic Articles

Book Sections

Recent Courses

Presentations & Appearances

Service to the Profession