Assoc. Prof. Sarah Pourciau

Visiting scholar with the project Creativity and Computation: a History of the Mathematical Sublime

CV

2023- Associate Professor of German Studies, Duke University
2020-2023 Assistant Professor of German Studies, Duke University
2018-2020 Researcher at ZfL

2015-2018 IPODI/Marie Curie Fellow in the Department of Literature at the Technische Universität Berlin2009-2017 Assistant Professor in the Department of German at Princeton University
2010-2011 Humboldt Fellow in the Department of Comparative Literature at the Freie Universität Berlin
2007-2009 Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of German Studies at Stanford University 
2004-2005 DAAD Fellow in the Department of Comparative Literature at the Freie Universität Berlin
2001-2007 Graduate Studies in the Department of German at Princeton University (PhD)
1999-2001 Graduate Studies at the Jewish Theological Seminary of New York (MA)
1994-1998 Undergraduate Studies in the Department of Comparative Literature at Princeton Univerisity

Research Interests

  • History of philosophy, 18th-20th centuries
  • Literary theory, philology, and the history of linguistics
  • History of mathematics
  • History of science
  • Digital theory
  • Gender studies
  • History of opera
  • German-Jewish intellectual history

Publications

Monographs

  • The Writing of Spirit: Soul, System, and the Roots of Language Science, New York: Fordham University Press, 2017.

Articles

  • “’The Right Despair’: Kafka’s Nihilist Technique.” Under review for a special issue of The Germanic Review..
  • “The Unpastoral: Walter Ruttmann and the Politics of Symphonic Form.” Forthcoming in Modernism/modernity (2023).
  • "On the Digital Ocean.” Critical Inquiry 48:2, 233-61.
  • "A/logos: An Anomalous Episode in the History of Number.” Modern Language Notes: German Issue 134 (2019), 616-642.  
  • "God’s Broken Medium: On Genre and Geschichtsphilosophie in Schoenberg’s Moses und Aron," in: The Opera Quarterly Nr. 33 (2017), S. 97-121.
  • "The Miracle of the Comic: Hugo von Hofmannsthal and the Transfiguration of Modern Drama," in: Deutsche Vierteljahrsschrift für Geistesgeschichte und Literaturwissenschaft Nr. 90 (2016), S. 451-85.
  • "Passing through Infinity: Kleist’s Marionettentheater, Kantian Metaphor, and the Spherical Geometry of Grace," in: Poetica. Zeitschrift für Sprach- und Literaturwissenschaft Nr. 47 (2015), S. 51-82.
  • "Heidegger’s Hyphen/Heideggers Bindestrich," in: Tan Wälchli/Laurenz Brunner (Hg.): Die Schönsten Schweizer Bücher 2007, Bern: Hermann Schmidt Verlag, 2008, S. 76-87.
  • "Infernal Poetics: Peter Weiss and the Problem of Postwar Authorship," in: The Germanic Review. Special Issue: Figurations of the Undead Nr. 82 (2007), S. 157-178.
  • "Ambiguity Intervenes: Strategies of Equivocation in Adorno’s 'Der Essay als Form,'" in: Modern Language Notes: German Issue Nr.122 (2007), S. 623-646.
  • "Istanbul, 1945: Erich Auerbachs Mimesis an der Grenze des europäischen Daseins," in: Barbara Hahn (Hg.), Im Nachvollzug des Geschriebenseins. Literaturtheorie nach 1945, Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann 2006, S. 7-32.
  • "Istanbul, 1945: Erich Auerbach’s Philology of Extremity," in: Arcadia Nr. 41 (2006), S. 433-457.
  • "Disarming the Double: Kant in Defense of Philosophy (1766)," in: The Germanic Review Nr. 81 (2006), S. 99-120.
  • "Bodily Negation: Carl Schmitt on the Meaning of Meaning," in: Modern Language Notes: Comparative Literature Nr. 120 (2005), S. 1066-1090.