KATRIN DETTMER'S research interests include German literatures after World War II and the Holocaust, which deal with issues of trauma, memory, and remembrance, and in particular the works of W. G. Sebald, Walter Kempowski, and Alexander Kluge; British and German Modernist Fiction; Media Studies (film, photography, radio, and new media) and the intermediality of literature; Aesthetics of Presence. Katrin’s research now focuses on GDR literature and intellectual life as well as (postdramatic) theater and Performance Studies. Her dissertation investigates history and performance in the plays of Heiner Müller, and is entitled Die Berührung der Toten: Geschichte und Performanz in Heiner Müllers Dramatik.

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SILJA MAEHL is a PhD Candidate and currently working on her dissertation, in which she examines new aesthetic perspectives in contemporary German literature. She is interested in works by writers whose mother tongue is not German or who write in more that one language in parallel.

Silja’s academic interests and research so far have encompassed aesthetics, language philosophy in romanticism, the turn of the century and the 20th century, transnational writing, translation theory as well as psychoanalysis. During her studies, Silja worked as an intern at the news service Reuters, the broadcasting station ZDF, and the magazine NEON. In 2001, she spent a semester at the Université Lumière Lyon 2.

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MICHAEL POWERS'S research interests include the Frankfurt School, visual studies (especially photography), literary and critical theory, the literary movements of early German Romanticism and German modernism and in particular the works of Walter Benjamin, Immanuel Kant, Franz Kafka and Martin Heidegger. Michael is currently in Berlin on a DAAD Research grant working on his dissertation project, which investigates the relation of vision and language in modernity with a focus on the work of Walter Benjamin.

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ERIC FOSTER received his B.A. in Germanics from the University of Washington in Seattle in 2005. Eric also earned a B.A. in Linguistics from Western Washington University in 2007 and an M.A. in German Studies from the University of New Mexico in 2009. Eric’s academic interests include 18th century German aesthetics (including Winckelmann, Baumgarten, Meier, Lessing, and Herder), religious studies, hermeneutics, anthropology, and the philosophy of language (specifically works by Herder, Hamann, and Wilhelm von Humboldt). At Brown, Eric hopes to combine his interests in aesthetics, religious studies, linguistics, and anthropology to further pursue research on the interchange between religious and aesthetic experience.

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Before coming to Brown, Benjamin worked at the University of Dortmund (DE) as assistant in the German department’s office for the management of examinations (Prüfungsmanagement). He studied German, English, Politics and Journalism at the Saint Mary’s University Halifax (CA) and the University of Dortmund, where he received his M.A. in Applied Literary and Cultural Studies. Benjamin is interested in “writing” understood as the now of literary production and the material as well as the immaterial resistances that have to be overcome in the emergence of a (literary) text. In this context, Benjamin has worked on authors like Franz Kafka, Paul Auster, and Sigmund Freud. Further research interests include the Kalendergeschichten of Johann Peter Hebel and their influence on writers and thinkers such as Walter Benjamin, Martin Heidegger, and W.G. Sebald.

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SETH THORN studied philosophy, critical theory and viola performance at Northwestern, where he graduated with honors in 2007. Upon graduating he travelled to Frankfurt as a Fulbright research fellow and later completed an M.A. inpolitical theoryat Universität Frankfurt, graduating with honest honors ("mit Auszeichnung"). At Brown, Seth works on German philosophy, French theory, and the philosophy of music and sound wherever it appears in those traditions. Seth is an accomplished violist and keeps active in Brown's MEME (Multimedia & Electronic Music Experiments) program, where he can sometimes be found performing or working with other students.

JAN KUEHNEL studied Modern German Literature, Comparative Literature and Philosophy at the Eberhard-Karls Universitaet, Tuebingen, where he also worked as a Research- and Teaching Assistant at the chair for International Literatures and Modern German Literature. As an exchange student he is currently working as a Teaching Assistant at Brown while finishing his MA Thesis on “Truth in/through literature. Political realism(s) in Schiller’s plays”.

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