Research/Publications

Recent and In-Press (since 2022)

• “Aesthetics and Anthropology in the Early Years of Comparative Literature: The Acta Comparationis Litterarum Universarum,” research article accompanied by three translations from the Acta Comparationis Litterarum Universarum, with commentaries: “Preliminary Tasks of Comparative Literature, Part III: Decaglotism”; “Laws of Comparative Literary Research”; “Goethe’s World Literature: Nine Theses on the Fiftieth Anniversary of Goethe’s Death.”  Comparative Literature 76, no. 3 (2024), in press

• Three articles: “Texte zum Mythos,” “Begriff des Mythos,” “Mythos: Themenspezifische Rezeptionen und Debattenkontexte.” In Blumenberg-Handbuch, ed. Oliver Müller and Rüdiger Zill  (Stuttgart: Metzler, 2023), in press

• “The Persistence of Geist in the Geisteswissenschaften: Re-Reading Erich Rothacker in the Digital Age.” In: Deutsche Vierteljahrsschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Geistesgeschichte 97, no. 1 (2023), open access

• “Goethe’s Discourses on World Literature.” In: Goethe in Context, ed. Charlotte Lee (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023), in press

• “One Demigod to Another.”  Essay on a new translation of Eckermann’s Conversations with Goethe. Times Literary Supplement, 16 December 2022.

• “A Most European Dog: Reflections on Virginia Woolf’s Flush.” In: Der gute Europäer. Grenzgänge zwischen Sprachen, Künsten und Kulturen. Festschrift für Rüdiger Görner, ed. Kaltërina Latifi (Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter, Heidelberg 2022), pp. 97-112

• (with Fabienne Schopf), “Civilised Competition: The Beginnings of the English Goethe Society and its Early Relations with the Goethe-Gesellschaft in Weimar.” In: Publications of the English Goethe Society 91, no. 1 (2022): 1-26

Monographs

• Myth and the Human Sciences: Hans Blumenberg’s Theory of Myth (London and New York: Routledge, 2015; paperback edition, Sept. 2016), 278 pp.

Reviews: Germanic Review 90 (2015): 358-70; History of the Human Sciences, 17 June 2016; Iyyun: The Jerusalem Philosophical Quarterly 66 (July 2017): 281-87; Modern Language Review 113, no. 1 (2018): 276-77; Journal of Literary Theory, 2018; Goethe Yearbook 25 (2018): 310-12;  E-Journal: helden. heroes. héros (Universität Freiburg, Sonderforschungsbereich 948) 6, no. 1 (2018), online; Reading Religion (American Academy of Religion), September (2018)

• Goethe’s Concept of the Daemonic: After the Ancients (Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2006), 325 pp.

Reviews: Journal of European Studies 37, no. 2 (2007): 213-14; German Studies Review 30, no.2 (2007): 399-401; New Perspectives on the Eighteenth Century (2007):81-2; Goethe-Jahrbuch 124 (2007):285-6; Forum for Modern Language Studies 44, no. 1 (2008): 94-5; The German Quarterly 81, no. 2 (2008): 229-30; Modern Language Review 103, no. 3 (2008): 888-9; Goethe Yearbook 16 (2009): 246-7

Critical Editions

• Orig. German ed.: Hans Blumenberg, Präfiguration: Arbeit am politischen Mythos, co-edited with Felix Heidenreich, including editorial notes and a 63-page Nachwort (Berlin: Suhrkamp,2014), 146 pp.;
• French ed.: Préfiguration Quand le mythe fait l’histoire, édité par Angus Nicholls et Felix Heidenreich, traduit de l’allemand par Jean-Louis Schlegel (Paris: Seuil, 2016), 133 pp.;
• Italian ed.: Prefigurazione. Quando il mito fa la storia, a cura e Postfazione di Angus Nicholls e Felix Heidenreich (Brescia: Morcelliana, 2018), 160 pp.

Reviews of the German ed.: Zeitschrift für Kulturphilosophie (2014), vol. 2, 391-4; Die Zeit, 24 July, 2014; Süddeutsche Zeitung, 2 July, 2014; Deutschlandfunk, 3 February 2015; Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 25 March 2015; Common Knowledge 21, no. 3 (2015): 531-2; Zeitschrift für Ideengeschichte 9, no. 4 (2015): 128-31; AG Politische Theorie (2016); Journal of the History of Ideas Forum on Präfiguration (2019)

Reviews of the French ed.: Le Monde, 14 January 2016; nonfiction.fr, 3 March 2016; Slate.fr, 13 March 2016; Philosophie Magazine (2016); En attendant Nadeau (2016); Esprit (November 2016)

Edited Volumes

• (co-edited with John R. Davis), Friedrich Max Müller and the Role of Philology in Victorian Thought (London and New York: Routledge,July 2017; paperback edition, January 2019), 180 pp.; originally published as a special double issue of Publications of the English Goethe Society 85, no. 2-3 (2016)

Reviews: Aion 7 (2018): 269-72; Victorian Studies 61, no. 4 (2019): 686-88

• (co-edited with Martin Liebscher), Thinking the Unconscious: Nineteenth-Century German Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010; paperback edition, 2012), 340 pp.

Reviews: Modern Language Review 107, no. 2 (2012): 647-8; German Studies Review 35, no. 2 (2012): 403-5; Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies 1, no. 1 (2012): 16-21; Goethe Yearbook 19 (2012):299-302; HOPOS: The Journal of the International Society for the History of Science 2, no. 1 (2012): 166-9; Society, no. 49 (2012): 188-93; History of the Human Sciences 24, no. 3 (2011):133-7; Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association 59 (2011):1079-85; Psychodynamic Psychiatry 42 (2014): 143-9

• (co-edited with Rüdiger Görner), In the Embrace of the Swan: Anglo-German Mythologies in Literature, the Visual Arts and Cultural Theory (Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2010), 400pp.

Reviews: Modern Language Review 107, no. 4 (2012): 599-601; Limbus: Australian Yearbook for German Literary and Cultural Studies 5, (2012): 242-6

• (co-edited with Daniel Purdy),  essay collection on Goethe and Twentieth-Century Theory in The Goethe Yearbook 16 (2009)

Photographic Works

• Soe Tjen Marching, The End of Silence: Accounts of the 1965 Genocide in Indonesia, with photography by Angus Nicholls (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, April 2017), 214 pp. with 16 halftones

Refereed Journal Editorships

• (2013-2018), co-editor, History of the Human Sciences (London: Sage), links to journal website, first editorial of the new editors

• (2012-2018), co-editor, Publications of the English Goethe Society (London: Routledge)

• (2008-2014), co-editor,  ANGERMION: Yearbook for Anglo-German Literary Criticism, IntellectualHistory and Cultural Transfers (Berlin and New York: De Gruyter)

Editorial Boards (On-Going)

• Goethe-Lexicon of Philosophical Concepts

• History of the Human Sciences

• Legenda Studies in Comparative Literature

• Publications of the English Goethe Society

• Bithell Series of Dissertations in German Studies 

Externally Funded Research Fellowships

• (June-July 2023), Sassoon Fellow, Bodleian Library, Oxford

• (May 2023), Gilbert Fellow in the Humanities, Sydney Social Sciences and Humanities Advanced Research Centre, University of Sydney

• (March-June 2022), Alexander von Humboldt Foundation Fellowship, Centre for Interdisciplinary Research (Zentrum für interdisziplinäre Forschung) University of Bielefeld

• (2021-22), Senior Fellowship, Vossius Center for the History of Humanities and Sciences, University of Amsterdam

• (2018), Alexander von Humboldt Foundation Fellowship, Centre for Literary Research (Zentrum für Literaturforschung), Berlin

• (2017), Senior Fellowship, Descartes Centre for the History and Philosophy of the Sciences and the Humanities, University of Utrecht

• (2011-2013), Alexander von Humboldt Foundation Fellowship for Experienced Researchers, University of Stuttgart and German Literary Archive (Deutsches Literaturarchiv) Marbach am Neckar

Research Group Memberships

• (2022-) Marbacher Arbeitskreis für Geschichte der Germanistik, German Literary Archive, Marbach 

• (2014-2017) Empirisierung des Transzendentalen. Epistemologische Voraussetzungen und Erscheinungsformen der Moderne in Wissenschaft, Literatur und Kunst um 1900, funded by the German Research Foundation

• (2012-13), Teleology and History, part of the Research Project Europe, 1815-1914, funded by the European Research Council

Book Chapters and Refereed Journal Articles (selection since 2005

• “Particularism versus Universalism in the History of Comparative Literature.” In: Comparative Methods in Law, Humanities and Social Sciences, ed. Maurice Adams and Mark Van Hoecke (Cheltenham: E. Elgar, 2021), 197-220

• “Daemonic.” In: The Oxford Encyclopedia of Literary Theory, ed. John Frow, et al (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021), online

• (with Fabienne Schopf), “Zivilisierte Konkurrenz: Die Entstehung der English Goethe Society und ihr Verhältnis zur Goethe-Gesellschaft Weimar.” In: Internationales Archiv für Sozialgeschichte der deutschen Literatur 45, no. 2 (2020): 397-412

• “Stoicism and the Development of the Human Sciences: Wilhelm Dilthey’s Reception of Stoicism.” In: German Stoicisms from Hegel to Sloterdijk, ed. Andrew Benjamin and Kurt Lampe (London: Bloomsbury, 2020), 57-84

• “Theory of Myth versus Meta-Theory of Myth: On the Political Implications of a Late Twentieth-Century Distinction.” In: Explaining, Interpreting, and Theorizing Religion and Myth. Contributions in Honour of Robert A. Segal, ed. Nickolas P. Roubekas and Thomas Ryba (Leiden: Brill, 2020), 219-32

• “Radical Germans and Their Anglophone Interpreters: Exploring and Translating ‘The Unconscious’ and Psychoanalysis.” In: Transnational German Studies, ed. Rebecca Braun and Benedict Schofield (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2020), 249-68

• “Applied Blumenberg: Prefiguration and the Case of Brexit.” In: Metaphorologie, Anthropologie, Phänomenologie. Neue Forschungen zum Nachlass Hans Blumenbergs, ed. Alberto Fragio, Martina Philippi and Josefa Velasco (Freiburg im Breisgau: Karl Alber, 2019), 111-27

• “Rhetorical Naturalisation in the History of Philology: August Schleicher, Friedrich Max Müller and Their Critics.” In: Angermion: Yearbook for Anglo-German Literary Criticism, Intellectual History and Cultural Transfers 12 (2019): 87-114

• “Rhetorische Naturalisierung in der Sprachwissenschaft: August Schleicher, Friedrich Max Müller und ihre Kritiker.” In: Empirisierung des Transzendentalen. Erkenntnisbedingungen in Kunst und Wissenschaft 1850-1920, ed. Philip Ajouri and Benjamin Specht (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2019), 191-222

• “The ‘Goethean’ Discourses on Weltliteratur and the Origins of Comparative Literature: The Cases of Hugo Meltzl and Hutcheson Macaulay Posnett.” In: Seminar: A Journal of Germanic Studies (special issue on Goethe, Worlds, Literatures) 54, no. 2 (2018): 167-94

• (with John R. Davis), “Friedrich Max Müller: The Career and Intellectual Trajectory of a German Philologist in Victorian Britain.” In: Publications of the English Goethe Society 85, no. 2-3 (2016): 67-97

• (with Felicity Callard and Rhodri Hayward), New Editors’ Editorial. In: History of the Human Sciences 29, no. 3 (2016): 3-7

• “Hans Blumenberg on Political Myth: Recent Publications from the Nachlass.” In: Iyyun: The Jerusalem Philosophical Quarterly 65 (January 2016): 3-33, open access

• “Goethe the Writer.” In: The Oxford Handbook of European Romanticism, ed. Paul Hamilton (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 293-314

• “‘How to Do Nothing with Words’: Hans Blumenberg’s Reception of Plato’s Protagoras.” In: Prometheus gibt nicht auf: Antike Welt und modernes Leben in Hans Blumenbergs Philosophie, ed. Melanie Möller (Munich: Fink, 2015), 61-75

• “Against Darwin: Teleology in German Philosophical Anthropology.” In: Historical Teleologies in the Modern World, ed. Henning Trüper, Dipesh Chakrabarty and Sanjay Subrahmanyam (London: Bloomsbury, 2015), 89-113

• “Leichhardt and Voss Revisited.” In: Patrick White: Beyond the Grave, ed. Ian Henderson and Anouk Lang (London: Anthem Press, 2015), 35-63

• “Max Müller and the Comparative Method.” In: Comparative Critical Studies 12, no. 2 (2015): 213-34

• (with Felix Heidenreich), “Mythos,” trans. Daniel Weidner. In: Blumenberg lesen. Ein Glossar, ed. Robert Buch and Daniel Weidner (Berlin: Suhrkamp, 2014), 214-27

• “The Goethe Complex: Hans Blumenberg on Das Dämonische.” In: Das Dämonische. Schicksale einer Kategorie der Zweideutigkeit nach Goethe, ed. Lars Friedrich, Eva Geulen and Kirk Wetters (Munich: Fink, 2014), 97-119

• “A Germanic Reception in England: Friedrich Max Müller’s Critique of Darwin’s Descent of Man.” In: The Literary and Cultural Reception of Charles Darwin in Europe, vol. 3, ed. Thomas F. Glick and Elinor Shaffer (London: Bloomsbury, 2014), 78-100

• “The Young Leichhardt’s Diaries in the Context of his Australian Cultural Legacy.” In: The Leichhardt Papers: Reflections on His Life and Legacy, ed. Roderick J. Fensham,  Memoirs of the Queensland Museum, Culture 7, no. 2 (2013): 541-59, open access

• (with Martin Liebscher), “Rethinking the Unconscious.” In: Intellectual History Review 23, no. 2 (2013): 263-68

• “The Core of This Dark Continent: Ludwig Leichhardt’s Australian Explorations.” In: Transnational Networks: German Migrants in the British Empire, 1670-1914, ed. John R. Davis, Stefan Manz and Margrit Schulte Beerbühl (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 141-62

• “Between Natural and Human Science: Scientific Method in Goethe’s Noten und Abhandlungen zum West-östlichen Divan.”  In: Publications of the English Goethe Society 80, no. 1 (2011): 1-18

• “Scientific Literary Criticism in the Work of Wilhelm Dilthey and Matthew Arnold.” In: Comparative Critical Studies 8, no. 1 (2011): 7-31

•  “The Fremdling of Teleology: On Roger Smith’s Being Human.”  In: History of the Human Sciences 23, no. 5 (2010): 194-201

•  (with Martin Liebscher), “Introduction: Thinking the Unconscious.” In: Thinking the Unconscious: Nineteenth Century German Thought, ed. Angus Nicholls and Martin Liebscher (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 1-25

•  “The Scientific Unconscious: Goethe’s Post-Kantian Epistemology.”  In: Thinking the Unconscious: Nineteenth Century German Thought, ed. Angus Nicholls and Martin Liebscher (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 87-120

• “Das Spannungsverhältnis von Wissenschaft und Mythologie in Deutschland um 1800 und in Großbritannien um 1850-1900.”In: Wissenschaftsgeschichte als Begriffsgeschichte. Terminologische Umbrüche im Entstehungsprozess der modernen Wissenschaften, ed. Michael Eggers and Matthias Rothe (Bielefeld: Transcript, 2009), 133-56

•  “Goethe and Twentieth-Century Theory: An Introduction.” In: The Goethe Yearbook 16 (2009): 163-72

•  “The Inadequacy of Life: Observations on Adorno.” In: History of the Human Sciences 20, no. 4 (2007): 147-66

• “Anglo-German Mythologics: The Australian Aborigines and Modern Theories of Myth in the Work of Baldwin Spencer and Carl Strehlow.” In: History of the Human Sciences 20, no. 1 (2007): 83-114

•  “The Subject-Object of Wissenschaft: On Wilhelm Dilthey’s Goethebilder.”In: Colloquia Germanica: Internationale Zeitschrift für Germanistik 39, no.1 (2006): 69-86

•  “The Philosophical Concept of the Daemonic in Goethe’s Mächtiges Überraschen.” In: The Goethe Yearbook 14 (2006): 147-70

•  “The Hermeneutics of Scientific Language in Goethe’s Critique of Newton.” In: Sprachkunst. Beiträge zur Literaturwissenschaft 36, no. 2 (2005): 203-26; reprinted in: Passagen: 50 Jahre Germanistik an der Monash University, ed. Franz-Josef Deiters, Axel Fliethmann and Christiane Weller (St. Ingbert: Röhrig Universitätsverlag, 2010), 519-58

• “On Science and Subjectivity.”  In: History of the Human Sciences 18, no. 1 (2005): 143-58

 Review Essays

• “On the Cards: The Daunting Oeuvre of a Major German Philosopher.” Extended review of Kurt Flasch, Hans Blumenberg, Philosoph in Deutschland. Die Jahre 1945-1966 and Hans Blumenberg, Rigorism of Truth, trans. Joe Paul Kroll. Times Literary Supplement, 6 December 2019

• “Weltliteratur and the Crises of Comparative Literature.” Extended review of: Anne Bohnenkamp and Matías Martínez, eds., Geistiger Handelsverkehr. Komparatistische Aspekte der Goethezeit. In: IASL Online (2009)

• Jean Grondin, Hans-Georg Gadamer: A Biography. In: H-German (November, 2004)

Recent Reviews 

• The Laughter of the Thracian Woman: A Protohistory of Theory, by Hans Blumenberg, translated by Spencer Hawkins. In: Modern Language Review 113, no. 2 (2018): 444-47

• Myth: A Very Short Introduction, Second Edition, by Robert A. Segal. In: Religion 48, no. 2. April (2018): 316-21

• Melancholie und Leidenschaft. Der Bildraum des jungen Goethe, by Mauro Ponzi. In: Modern Language Review 112, no. 4 (2017): 1026-28

• Goethe’s Allegories of Identity, by Jane K. Brown. In: Modern Language Review 112, no. 4 (2017): 1028-31
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