Joseph D. O'Neil

Education

• 2009 - Ph.D. - Indiana University, Bloomington, Comparative Literature and Modern German Literature and Culture
  • Dissertation: The Impossible Birth of the Political: Language and Crisis in Gracián, Goethe, and Kleist.
  • Director: William Rasch
  • Readers: Fritz Breithaupt, Gilbert Chaitin, Michel Chaouli, Oscar Kenshur
• 2000 - M.A. - Indiana University, Bloomington, Comparative Literature
• 1996 - B.A. - University of Louisville, magna cum laude, French, Spanish, and German

Teaching and Research Interests

• German literature and culture, 1750-1832
• Comparative European literary and cultural studies
• Political theory
• Literature and philosophy

Courses Taught

• GER 102: Beginning German
• GER 231: Enchanted Worlds: Folk and Literary Fairy Tales
• GER 252: The German-Jewish Experiences
• GER 301: German Language Through the Media
• GER 311: Coming of Age in German Life and Thought
• GER 312: Passionate Friendships in German Literature, Film, and Culture

Selected Publications

Book

• Figures of Natality: Reading the Political in the Age of Goethe. New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2017. New Directions in German Studies. 306 pp.

Articles

• "Arendt und kein Ende? Representing the Political in Recent Work on Hannah Arendt." (Review essay.) German Quarterly 96.4 (2023): 571-585.
• “Politik als Virus: Gedanken eines amerikanischen Germanisten aus Kentucky zu Donald Trump.” literaturkritik.de, Vol. 11 (Nov. 2020) (Literary-political essay, 5,857 words)
  https://literaturkritik.de/politik-als-virus-essay-joseph-d-oneil,27347.html 
• “Selfhood, Sovereignty, and Public Space in Die italienische Reise, ‘Das Rochus-Fest zu Bingen,’ and Dichtung und Wahrheit, Book Five.” Goethe Yearbook 24 (2017): 105-124.
• “Reading the Political in or against Romantic Interdisciplinarity.” Invited contribution to Forum on Romanticism. German Quarterly 89.2 (2016): 355-7.
• Ghostly Births: The Specter of Romanticism and the Future of Capitalism.” Seminar 50.3 (2014): 232-52.
• “Meistersänger als Beruf: The Maieutics of Poetic Vocation in ‘Erklärung eines alten Holzschnittes….’” Goethe Yearbook 20 (2013), 59-78.
• “Nomos oder Medium der Erde? Zur Geopoetik der Weltliteratur” Figuren des Globalen. Weltbezug und Welterzeugung in Literatur, Kunst und Medien. Ed. Christian Moser and Linda Simonis. Göttingen: Bonn University Press bei V+R unipress, 2014. 193-205.

Presentations

• Participant in seminar: Participant in seminar: “The Duty of Art: Ethics and Empathy in Aesthetic Theory.” German Studies Association, Portland, OR, 2019.
• Commentator: Realism in the Age of Goethe and Its Legacy: Realism (GSA 2019)
• “Goethe with Sade? Principles of Republican Narratology.”
  Modern Languages Association, Chicago, January, 2019.
• Participant in seminar: “Race Theory in Classical German Thought.”
  German Studies Association, Pittsburgh, September, 2018.

Professional Organization Memberships

• German Studies Association
• Goethe Society of North America
• Lessing Society 

Languages

• English (native)
• French (oral and written proficiency)
• German (near-native)
• Latin (some reading proficiency)
• Scandinavian (for research)
• Spanish (near-native)