Susan Morrow second recipient of ZfL’s Carlo Barck Prize

The second recipient of the Carlo Barck Prize is Susan Morrow, lector in the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures at Yale University. Her daring and interdisciplinary dissertation, entitled “Schematism: Poetics on the Way to Kant, 1760–1790,” examines overlapping transformations in the discourses of ballet, poetry, aesthetics and epistemology in the late 18th century. Her innovative readings of Jean Georges Noverre, Klopstock and Lessing open up a new understanding of Kant's theory of schematism as an abstract, performative theory of representation.

Awarded by the ZfL for the first time in 2017, the Carlo Barck Prize honors dissertations in the field of literary and cultural studies that pose innovative questions and display original conception. The prize is awarded every two years, the prize money of 10,000 euros allocated as a six-month scholarship for a visiting stay at the ZfL.

The scholar of Romance literatures Karlheinz “Carlo” Barck (1934–2012) had a profound impact on the ZfL’s research program. Best known for his research on the history of aesthetics and imagination since the 18th century, he lead the development and publication of the Ästhetische Grundbegriffe, a historical dictionary of basic aesthetic terms.

The prize will be presented to Susan Morrow in the summer semester 2020.