Christian Weber

Christian Weber is an associate professor of German. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Indiana at Bloomington. His research aims for a comprehensive phenomenological and critical investigation of the human imagination in its various manifestations, ranging from ancient mythologies and Judeo-Christian theology to the emergence of national ideologies and global world-views. C. Weber is also the German program’s graduate and graduate study-abroad adviser.

Weber’s monograph "Die Logik der Lyrik: Goethes Phänomenologie des Geistes in Gedichten" argues that Goethe’s early ‘hymns of genius’ perform as a poetic whole a thorough critique of the imagination that complements Kant’s "Critique of Judgment" and rivals Hegel’s "Phenomenology of Spirit." He currently works on a sequel that examines Goethe’s later poetry on the same trajectory. Another book-length project investigates the formative powers of biopolitical metaphors (for example “grafting,” “elective affinities,” “self-generation”) as cultural life-models for the organization of national identities and institutions.

Research Interests

German literature and philosophy from the 18th Century to the present, with a special focus on Goethe and his age (from Enlightenment to Romanticism/Idealism)

Lyric poetry

Aesthetic theory

Cultural history of nationalism

German film

Selected Courses Taught

German Cinema: (1) Demonic Men / (2) Prostitution and Corruption / (3) National History

Made in Germany: Ideas, Inventions, and Events in Modern German Culture

Goethe’s “Faust” and the Genesis of Modern Man

The Ideas of ’68: Towards a Critique of Aesthetic Judgment and Political Action

The Magic of Lyric Poetry

The Footballization (Soccer, that is) of Europe / the Globe

Critical Theory

German Cinema

Studies in a Genre

Selected Publications

Books:

• Die Logik der Lyrik: Goethes Phänomenologie des Geistes in Gedichten, Freiburg i.B.: Rombach Press, 2014 (486pp.)

Selected Articles:

• Beauty and Erotic Play: Anacreontic Poetry's Transformation of Aesthetic Philosophy, in: Edgar Landgraf, Elliott Schreiber (Eds.), Play in the Age of Goethe. Theories, Narratives, and Practices of Play around 1800. Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press 2020. (Forthcoming)
• Re-Reading Adorno's Reading of Eichendorff in the Context of 1957, in: Robin Truth Goodman (Ed.), Understanding Adorno, Understanding Modernity. New York: Bloomsbury 2020. (Forthcoming)
• Narrating (Against) the Uncanny: Goethe's Ballade versus Hoffmann's Der Sandmann, in: Goethe Yearbook XXVI (2019), pp. 79-100.
• In Defense of Humanism: Envisioning a Posthuman Future and Its Critique in Goethe's Faust, in: Edgar Landgraf, Gabriel Trop, & Leif Weatherby (Eds.), Posthumanism in the Age of Humanism. Late 18th- and Early 19th-Century Cognitive, Materialist, and Idealist Contentions. New York: Bloomsbury 2018, pp. 243-267.
• Spatial Mobilization: Kleist's Strategical Masterplan of the Berliner Abendblätter and Tactics of Displacement in the Tagesbegebenheiten, in: Goethe Yearbook XXIV (2016), pp.125-153.
• Elective Affinities / Wahlverwandtschaften: The Career of a Metaphor, in: Fact and Fiction, ed. by Christine Lehleiter, Toronto: Toronto University Press 2016, pp. 102-145.
• Beyond the Poem: Strategies of Meta-Poetical Reflections in Goethe’s Erster Weimarer Gedichtsammlung, in: Goethe Yearbook XX (2013), 25-57.
• Particular Universals - Universal Particulars: Biopolitical Metaphors and the Emergence of Nationalism in Europe (1650-1815), in: History of European Ideas 39.3 (2013), 426-448.
• Phänomenologie der visuellen Einbildungskraft in Goethes Die Metamorphose der Pflanzen, in: Zwischen Sichtbarkeit und Unsichtbarkeit, ed. by Martin Kirves, Dirk Uhlmann, Jürgen Kaufmann, München: Fink 2014, pp 97-116.
• Goethes Prometheus: Kritik der poietischen Einbildungskraft, in: Goethe Yearbook XVI (2009), 101-133.
• Goethes Ganymed und der Sündenfall der Ästhetik, in: Deutsche Vierteljahrsschrift 81.3 (2007), 317-345.