Angus Nicholls, QMUL

Public Lectures

Recent and Upcoming Lectures / Videos

  • “Nicholas Trübner als Vermittler der sogenannten Weltliteratur aus Asien.” Conference: Übersetzte Fremdheit. Deutsche Übersetzungen der Literatur Ostasiens und des Pazifiks im langen 19. Jahrhundert. Humboldt-Kolleg, University of Sydney, 18-20 February 2026
  • “Salvage Anthropology and Early Comparative Literature: the Acta Comparationis and the Journal of American Folklore.” Panel on Genealogies of World Comparison, American Comparative Literature Association Annual Conference, 30 May to 1 June 2025 (online)
  • “Mengajar sastra dalam era digital (Teaching Literature in the Digital Age).” Universitas Gadjah Mada, Yogyakarta, Indonesia, 18 July 2024
  • “Situated Universalisms: Keshub Chunder Sen, Friedrich Max Müller and the Sacred Books of the East.” Freie Universität Berlin, 27 May 2024.
  • Plenary Lecture: “The Relationship Between Literary Studies and Folklore Studies (Anthropology) During the Late Nineteenth Century.” ISEL English Literature Summit 2023, Pune, India, 25 June 2023 (video)
  • “Kant, Blumenberg, and the Reproductive Political Imagination,” German Research Seminar, University of Melbourne, 28 April 2023
  • “Aesthetics and Anthropology in the Early Years of Comparative Literature: The Acta Comparationis Litterarum Universarum,” Vossius Centre for the History of the Humanities and Sciences, University of Amsterdam, 30 November 2021
  • (with Felix Heidenreich), “The Original Context and Contemporary Relevance of Hans Blumenberg’s Präfiguration,”Oxford Hans Blumenberg Seminars, 2 November 2020 (online)
  • “World Religions as World Literature: On Friedrich Max Müller’s Sacred Books of the East Project”, part of a panel on Eastern Texts and Western Audiences at the American Comparative Literature Association Annual Meeting, Chicago, 19-22 March 2020 (event cancelled due to Covid-19)
  • “Blumenberg and Cassirer on Political Myth”, Hans Blumenberg. Neue Zugänge zum Werk. Internationales Symposion des Leibniz-Zentrums für Literatur- und Kulturforschung. Akademie der Künste, Berlin, 10-12 October 2019
  • “Interdisciplinarity Before the Disciplines: Biology, Philology and Anthropology in the Early History of Comparative Literature”, Der Geist der Universität, International Conference,  Universität Bielefeld, 9-10 October 2019
  • “Friedrich Max Müller and the Question of Scientific Comparison in the Humanities”, Portuguese Orientalism(s), International Conference, Faculdade de Letras da Universidade de Lisboa, 22-24 November 2018
  • Keynote: “Two Models of British-German Colonial Discourse Around 1900: The Case of Aboriginal Australia”, The Discourse of British and German Colonialism: Convergence and Competition, Queen Mary University of London, 22-23 September 2018
  • “German Anthropological Discourses Concerning Aboriginal Australians Around 1900: The Case of Hermann Klaatsch”, 2018 Beijing Humboldt Forum, University of International Business and Economics, Beijing, 15-16 September 2018
  • “Hans Blumenberg’s and Ernst Cassirer’s Theories of Political Myth in Relation to Contemporary Political Events”, Philosophisches Kolloquium, Universität Oldenburg, 16 April 2018
  • Workshop: Hans Blumenberg and the Theory of Political Myth, Institute of Modern Languages Research, London, 17 March 2018
  • “Theories of Political Myth in Relation to Contemporary Political Discourses.” Humboldt Colloquium. Moving Forward: The UK-German Research Network in a Changing World, Oxford University, 16 March 2018
  • “‘Scientific’ Literary Studies During the Late Nineteenth Century and Today: A Critical Overview.” Onderzoekschool Literatuurwetenschap (Dutch National Research Network for Literary Theory) and Vossius Centre for the History of Humanities, University of Amsterdam, 20 December 2017
  • “The ‘Science’ of Literary Studies in Late Nineteenth-Century Britain and Germany.” Colloquium Geschiedenis van de Filosofie (Colloquium for the History of Philosophy) Universiteit Utrecht, 25 October 2017
  • “Applied Blumenberg: Prefiguration and the Case of Brexit.” Blumenberg Posthum. Vermächtnis und Forschungsprogramme. Universität Leipzig, 20-22 April 2017
  • “The Reception of Goethean Morphology in Nineteenth-Century Britain”. Reception Group for German, Austrian and Swiss Literature, Institute of Modern Languages Research, School of Advanced Study, London, 19 January 2017
  • Two keynote lectures: “Hans Blumenberg as a Political Philosopher,” “Hans Blumenberg’s Theory of Political Myth.” Political Myth, Propaganda and the Politics of the Imagination (Antwerp Summer School in Philosophy and Society), University of Antwerp, 22-30 August 2016
  • “Stoicism and the Development of the Human Sciences: Wilhelm Dilthey’s Reception of Stoicism.” Stoicism and German Philosophy from Dilthey to Sloterdijk, University of Miami, 18-20 August 2016
  • “The Fate of ‘Goethe’ in the Human Sciences.” Usages de Goethe (lettres, sciences humaines), Transferts culturels / Séminaire 2015-2016, Pays Germaniques, École normale supérieure, Paris, 8 April 2016
  • “Is the Unconscious a Concept or a Metaphor?” part of a lecture series on Neuroscience and Literature: On Unconscious Memory, TORCH (The Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities), Oxford University, 26 October 2015, lecture online here
  • “Hans Blumenberg as a Political Philosopher.” Hans Blumenberg in Jerusalem: Philosophical and Literary Perspectives, Van Leer Institute, Jerusalem, 6 May 2015, lecture online here
  • Chairing of a panel discussion on German Literature from Goethe to the Grimms, to accompany the British Museum Exhibition, Germany: Memories of a Nation, 16 Jan 2015
  • “Oxford is Beautiful but one Longs for German Professors: F. Max Müller’s Encounters with British Culture and Thought.” Part of the series Germans in Britain, St. John’s College, Oxford, 28 Nov 2014