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
  - Pfau, Thomas, and Vivasvan Soni, editors. Judgment and Action Fragments toward a History. Northwestern University Press, 2017.
  - Pfau, T. Minding the modern: Human agency, intellectual traditions, and responsible knowledge. January 1, 2013.
  - Pfau, Thomas, and Robert Mitchell. Romanticism and Modernity. Routledge, 2011, pp. 246–246.
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  - Romanticism and Modernity. Ed. Pfau, T and Mitchell, R.: Routledge, 2011. (Collection)
  - Pfau, Thomas, editor. Medium and Message in German Modernism. Vol. 2, 2006, pp. 250pp.-250pp.
  - Pfau, T. Romantic Moods: Paranoia, Trauma, and Melancholy, 1790-1840.. Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005.
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  - Pfau, T. Lessons of Romanticism: A Critical Companion. an anthology of twenty-one essays, Durham: Duke UP, 1998.
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  - Pfau, T. Wordsworth’s Profession: Form, Class, and the Logic of Romantic Cultural Production. Stanford UP, 1997.
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  - Pfau, T. Idealism and the Endgames of Theory: Three Essays by F. W. J. Schelling. State U of New York P, 1994, p. xiv+293-xiv+293.
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  - Pfau, T., and T. translator. Friedrich Hölderlin: Essays and Letters on Theory. State U of New York P, 1987, p. xiv+186-xiv+186.
  - Pfau, T. Textual and Cultural Dissolution in English Romanticism. Vol. 95.
- 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, Thomas. “On Attention.” Salmagundi a Quarterly of the Humanities and Social Sciences, no. 194, Apr. 2017, pp. 145–63.
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  - Pfau, T. “"Botched execution" or historical inevitability: Conceptual dilemmas in Brad S. Gregory's the unintended reformation.” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies, vol. 46, no. 3, Sept. 2016, pp. 603–28. Scopus, doi:10.1215/10829636-3644062.
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  - Pfau, Thomas. “A Modern Coleridge: Cultivation, Addiction, Habits.” Studies in Romanticism, vol. 55, no. 1, 2016, pp. 134–38.
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  - Pfau, T. “Cosmopolitan Sociality and the Bildungsroman.” Novel a Forum on Fiction, vol. 48, no. 1, Duke University Press, Jan. 2015, pp. 136–39. Crossref, doi:10.1215/00295132-2860453.
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  - Pfau, T. “Review of Tobias Boes, Formative Fictions: Nationalism, Cosmopolitanism, and the Bildungsroman.” Novel: A Forum on Fiction, Mar. 2014.
  - 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, Nov. 2013.
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  - Pfau, T. “A Note on the pre-History of European Nihilism: Eroticism and Damaged Life in Don Giovanni.” Andererseits: Yearbook of Transatlantic German Studies, vol. 2, Oct. 2013.
  - Pfau, T. “review of Tilottama Rajan, Romantic Narrative (Johns Hopkins UP, 2010).” The Eighteenth Century: Theory & Interpretation, Oct. 2013.
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  - Pfau, Thomas. “Meta-Language and Picture Experience in Der Stechlin.” German Quarterly, vol. 86, no. 4, Oct. 2013, pp. 421–43. Wos-lite, doi:10.1111/gequ.10190.
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  - Pfau, T. "Metasprache und Bilderfahrung inDer Stechlin." The German Quarterly 86.4 (October 2013): 421-443. Full Text
  - Pfau, T. “Epochenwandel mit metaphysischen Anklängen: Metasprache und Bilderfahrung in Der Stechlin.” German Quarterly, vol. 86, 2013, pp. 420–42.
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  - Pfau, T. Mourning Modernity:: Classical Antiquity, Romantic Theory, and Elegiac Form. Sept. 2012. Scopus, doi:10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199228133.013.0032.
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  - 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, vol. 23, Mar. 2012, pp. 68–73.
  - 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. “Review of Paul Fry, Wordsworth and the Poetry of What We Are.” Modern Philology, vol. 108, 2011, pp. 191–94.
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  - Pfau, T. "Rethinking the image: With some reflections on G. M. Hopkins." Yearbook of Comparative Literature 57 (January 1, 2011): 117-147.
  - 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)
  - Pfau, T. Bildung: Etiology, Function, Structure (with some reflections on Beethoven). Edited by Ulrich Gaier and et al, Bonner Universitätsverlag, 2010, pp. 123–41.
  - 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. “Review of Colin Jager The Book of God: Secularization and Design in the Romantic Era.” Romanticism and Victorianism on the Net, No. 25, Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania Press, 2007, 2009.
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  - Pfau, Thomas. “The Wordsworthian Enlightenment: Romantic Poetry and the Ecology of Reading.” Studies in Romanticism, vol. 48, no. 1, 2009, pp. 159–65.
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  - 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, vol. 60, 2008, pp. 290–94.
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  - Pfau, T. “Romantic Theory: Forms of Reflexivity in the Romantic Era.” Comparative Literature, vol. 60, no. 3, Duke University Press, Jan. 2008, pp. 290–94. Crossref, doi:10.1215/-60-3-290.
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  - "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.
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  - Pfau, T. “Beyond Liberal Utopia: Freedom in the Nineteenth Century.” European Romantic Review, vol. 19, 2007.
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  - Pfau, T. “Beyond the Suburbs of the Mind: The Political and Aesthetic Economy of the Body in Malthus and Wordsworth.” South Atlantic Quarterly, vol. 95, 2007, pp. 629–69.
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  - 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, vol. 18, 2007, pp. 439–44.
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  - Pfau, T. “Review of The Wordsworthian Enlightenment, ed. Helen R. Elam & Frances Ferguson (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 2005).” Romantic Circles, 2007.
  - 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". Edited by Blackwell Companion to Romanticism, Blackwell, 2003.
  - Pfau, T. “Review of Emerson R. Marks, Taming the Chaos: English Poetic Diction Theory since the Renaissance.” Mlq (2003) ., vol. 60, 2003, pp. 265–67.
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  - Pfau, T. “Review of Ian Balfour’s The Rhetoric of Romantic Prophecy.” Comparative Literature, Stanford: Stanford UP, 2002, 2003.
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  - Pfau, T. “Review of Angela Esterhammer’s The Romantic Performative: Language and Action in British and German Romanticism.” Criticism 44.1 (2003): 72 76, Stanford: Stanford UP, 2000, 2003.
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  - Pfau, T. “The Rhetoric of Romantic Prophecy.” Comparative Literature, vol. 55, no. 4, Duke University Press, Jan. 2003, pp. 360–63. Crossref, doi:10.1215/-55-4-360.
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  - 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 (review)." Criticism 44.1 (2002): 72-76. Full Text
  - 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. “Review of Terence A. Hoagwood’s Politics, Philosophy, and the Production of Romantic Texts.” Studies in Romanticism, vol. 38, Carbondale: Northern Illinois UP, 1996, 1999, pp. 692–98.
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  - Pfau, T. “Taming the Chaos: English Poetic Diction Theory since the Renaissance.” Modern Language Quarterly, vol. 60, no. 2, Duke University Press, Jan. 1999, pp. 265–67. Crossref, doi:10.1215/00267929-60-2-265.
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  - Pfau, Thomas, and Terence Allan Hoagwood. “Politics, Philosophy, and the Production of Romantic Texts.” Studies in Romanticism, vol. 38, no. 4, JSTOR, 1999, pp. 692–692. Crossref, doi:10.2307/25601422.
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  - Pfau, T. “Reading beyond Redemption: Historicism, Irony, and the Lessons of Romanticism.” Critical Introduction to Lessons of Romanticism, Duke Up, edited by Thomas Pfau and Robert F. Gleckner, 1998, pp. 1–37.
  - Pfau, T. Paranoian Historicized: Legal Fantasy, Social Change, and Satiric Meta-Commentary in the 1794 Treason Trials. Edited by Stephen C. Behrendt, Detroit: Wayne State UP, 1997.
  - Pfau, T. “Bringing about the Past: Prophetic Memory in Kant, Godwin, and Blake.” Romantic Proxis, 1997.
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  - Pfau, T. “'Searching their Hearts': Romantic Pedagogy, Social Ascendancy, and the Pleasures of Surveillance in Andrew Bell and Mary Wollstonecraft.” Romanticism, vol. 2, 1996, pp. 220–46.
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  - Pfau, T. “''Beyond the suburbs of the mind'': The political and aesthetic disciplining of the Romantic body.” South Atlantic Quarterly, vol. 95, no. 3, 1996, pp. 629–69.
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  - Pfau, T., and R. R. Kercsmar. “Rhetorical and cultural dissolution in Romanticism - Introduction.” South Atlantic Quarterly, vol. 95, no. 3, 1996, pp. 571–73.
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  - Pfau, T. Immediacy and Dissolution: Reflections on Moral Theory and the Logic of Critical Discourse. Edited by Tilottama Rajan and David Clark, Albany: State U of New York P, 1995.
  - Pfau, T. “Review of Martha Woodmansee’s The Author, Art, and the Market: Rereading the History of Aesthetics.” Studies in Romanticism, vol. 34, New York: Columbia UP, 1995, pp. 490–95.
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  - Pfau, Thomas, and Martha Woodmansee. “The Author, Art, and the Market: Rereading the History of Aesthetics.” Studies in Romanticism, vol. 34, no. 3, JSTOR, 1995, pp. 490–490. Crossref, doi:10.2307/25601133.
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  - 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, vol. 10, 1992, pp. 397–422.
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  - PFAU, T. “TROPES OF DESIRE, FIGURING THE INSUFFICIENT VOID OF SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS IN SHELLEY 'EPIPSYCHIDION'.” Keats Shelley Journal, vol. 40, 1991, pp. 99–126.
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  - Pfau, T. “Immediacy and the Text: Friedrich Schleiermacher’s Theory of Style and Interpretation.” Journal of the History of Ideas, vol. 51, 1990, pp. 51–73.
  - Pfau, T. “Review of Edwin Stein’s Woodworth’s Art of Illusion.” Studies in Romanticism, vol. 29, 1990, pp. 496–99.
  - Pfau, T. “Review of Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe and Jean Luc Nancy’s The Literary Absolute.” Studies in Romanticism, vol. 29, 1990, pp. 309–13.
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  - Pfau, T. “Review of Wordsworth's Art of Allusion by Edward Stein.” Studies in Romanticism, vol. 29, 1990, pp. 496–99.
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  - Pfau, T. “Review of Winfried Menninghaus’s Unendliche Verdopplung: Die Grundlegung der fruhromantischen Kunsttheorie im Begriff absoluter Selbstreflexion.” Mln (German Issue), vol. 104, 1989, pp. 729–33.
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  - Pfau, T. “Thinking before Totality: Kritik, Ubersetzung, and the Language of Interpretation in the early Walter Benjamin.” Mln (Comparative Literature Issue), vol. 103, 1988, pp. 1072–97.
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  - Pfau, T. “Rhetoric and the Existential: Romantic Studies and the Question of the Subject.” Studies in Romanticism, vol. 26, 1987, pp. 487–512.
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  - Pfau, T. “Review of Andrej Warminski’s Readings in Interpretation: Holderlin, Hegel, and Heidegger.” Mln (Comparative Literature Issue), vol. 102, 1987, pp. 1212–15.
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- Book Sections
  - Pfau, T. “Rational Theology and the Catholic Critique of Modernity, 1780-1830.” The Oxford Handbook on European Romanticism, edited by Hamilton Kings C. Paul and Hamilton Kings C. London, 2014.
  - Pfau, T. “Wagner hören im Zeitalter kultureller Überdetermination: Adorno’s Versuch über Wagner.” Jenseits von Bayreuth: Richard Wagner Heute, edited by Stefan Boernchen and Georg Mein, Fink Verlag, 2014.
  - Pfau, T. “’A certain mediocrity' Moral Sentiments and Early Behaviorism in A. Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments.” Romanticism and the Emotions, edited by Joel Faflak and Richard Sha, Cambridge UP, 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?, edited by A. Gisbertz, Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 2011.
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  - Pfau, T. “William Paley.” Blackwell Encyclopedia of Romantic Literature, 4 Vols., edited by Frederick Burwick and Nancy Goslee, Blackwell, 2011.
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  - Pfau, T. “The Bildungsroman.” The Blackwell Encylopedia of Romantic Literature, edited by F. Burwick et al., Blackwell, 2011, pp. 124–32.
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  - Pfau, T. “Bildung: Etiology, Function, Structure (with some reflections on Beethoven).” Die Romantik: Ein Gründungsmythos Der EuropEuropäischen Moderne, edited by Ulrich Gaier, Bonner Universitätsverlag, 2010, pp. 123–41.
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  - 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.
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  - Pfau, T. “Nineteenth-Century Lyric German Poetry.” Camden House History of German Literature, Volume 9, edited by Clayton Koelb and Eric Downing, 2005, pp. 201–42.
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  - Pfau, T. “Rationality as Bewegung: From Kantian Autonomy to Hegel’s Self-Regulating System.” The Blackwell Companion to European Romanticism, edited by M. Ferber, Blackwell, 2005.
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  - Pfau, T. “From Autonomous Subjects to Self-Regulating Structures: Rationality and Development in German Idealism.” In “A Companion to European Romanticism,” edited by Michael Ferber, Blackwell, 2004.
  - Pfau, T. “Nachtigallenwahnsinn and Rabbinismus: Heine’s Literary Provocation to German-Jewish Cultural Identity.” Romantic Poetry: Comparative History of Literatures in European Languages, edited by A. Esterhammer, John Benjamins, 2002, pp. 427–44.
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  - Pfau, T. “Paranoian Historicized: Legal Fantasy, Social Change, and Satiric Meta-Commentary in the 1794 Treason Trials.” Romanticism, Radicalism, and the Press, edited by Stephen C. 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, edited by Stephen C. Behrendt, Wayne State University Press, 1997.
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  - Pfau, T. “Immediacy and Dissolution: Reflections on Moral Theory and the Logic of Critical Discourse.” Intersections: Nineteenth-Century Philosophy and Contemporary Theory, edited by Tilottama Rajan and David Clark, Albany: State U of New York P, 1995.
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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