My research is interdisciplinary, and it varies across genres, media and methods. My early work centered on the word-image relationship in literary texts from 1800 to the present, and I published The Look of Things: Poetry and Vision around 1900 with the University of North Carolina Press in 2003 Since then, I have published on diverse topics that range from political philosophy and literary theory to film, photography, and visual culture. Over the last decade, I have become increasingly interested in the history of science, in particular the influence of evolutionary theory on Western culture and aesthetics.
My second monograph Bioaesthetics. Making Sense of Science and the Arts was published in 2017 by the University of Minnesota Press. In collaboration with Dr. Verena Kick from Georgetown University, we are currently working on Adapting Kafka, a digital humanities project that analyzes editions, translations, and adaptations of Kafka’s novel The Trial (1925) over the last 100 years. Our database both catalogs the novel’s various transformations across the globe and offers detailed information about these works including excerpts, commentaries, and critical analyses. I am also working on my third monography entitled Kafka’s Adaptations: Evolution, Media, Aesthetics.
In the German department, I typically teach graduate seminars on specific genres and/or 20th century literature, including Kafka. As a member of the English Department, I teach a required course for graduate students on Contemporary Literary Theory as well as seminars on Posthumanism, Media and Film Theory, and Digital Humanities. At the undergraduate level, I have taught a broad variety of (writing-intensive) classes on interdisciplinary topics offered through the MU Honors College and other departments. I also engage and mentor undergraduate and graduate students as part of my digital humanities research.
Adapting Kofka
Humanities researcher Carsten Strathausen seeks to compile the ultimate database of Franz Kafka adaptations.
Books
Adapting Kafka. (Digital Humanities Scholarly Project with Dr. Verena Kick; ongoing)
Kafka’s Drawings. Special journal issue in The Germanic Review 99/2 (Spring 2024), ed. Carsten Strathausen.
(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2017). 305 pages
Trans. and intro. by Carsten Strathausen (New York: Columbia UP, 2012). 183 pages. 2012.
Ed. and intro. by Carsten Strathausen. Preface by William E. Connolly (University of Minnesota Press). 283 pages. 2009.
The Look of Things: Poetry and Vision around 1900 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003).
Articles
“Introduction.” Kafka’s Drawings. Special issue, ed. Carsten Strathausen. The Germanic Review 99/2 (Spring 2024): 135-43.
“Adapting Kafka.” Word & Image 40/1 (2024): 15-24.
“Repetition, not Replication: Notes Towards a Theory of Cultural Adaptation,” in Evolutionary Thinking Across the Disciplines. Problems and Perspectives in Generalized Darwinism, ed. Agathe du Crest, André Ariew, Martina Valkovic, Philippe Huneman & Thomas A.C. Reydon (New York: Springer, 2023). 61-75.
“Kafka’s Drawings.” Monatshefte 114/2 (Summer 2022): 276-93.
“Aesthetics, Autopoiesis and Posthumanism,” in Palgrave Handbook of Critical Posthumanism, ed. Stefan Herbrechter et. al. (London: Palgrave, 2022). 645-73.
“Kant and Posthumanism.” Posthumanism in the Age of Humanism. Mind, Matter, and the Life Sciences after Kant, ed. Edgar Landgraf, Gabriel Trop, and Leif Weatherby (New York: Bloomsbury, 2018). 105-26.
“Thing-Politics and Science,” in Law in Ruins, ed. Klaus Mladek and George Edmondson (Durham: Duke University Press, 2017). 292-317.
“Geheimes Deutschland: George’s Biopoetics.” Telos 176 (Fall 2016): 51–76.
“The Space of Subjectivity in Berlin School Cinema,” in The Place of Politics in German Film, ed. Martin Blumenthal-Barby (Bielefeld: Aisthesis, 2014). 223-41.
“Surveillance,” in Berlin School Glossary, ed. Roger Cook, Lutz Koepnick, Kristin Kopp, and Brad Pager (Intellect Press, 2013). 255-62.
“Interiority,” in Berlin School Glossary, ed. Roger Cook, Lutz Koepnick, Kristin Kopp, and Brad Pager (Intellect Press, 2013). 165-72.
“Dead Man Thinking: The Philosophy of Boris Groys,” in Boris Groys, Under Suspicion, trans. and intro. Carsten Strathausen (New York: Columbia UP, 2012). vii-xxviii.
"Der Ort des Denkens: Peter Risthause' Onto-Topologie." Zeitschrift für deutsche Philologie 129, (2012).
"Epistemological Reflections on Minor Points in Deleuze." Theory & Event 13.4, (December 2010). 18 pages. Online
"Myth or Knowledge: On Carl Schmitt's Hamlet or Hekuba." Telos 153, (Winter 2010). 1-23.
"The Philosopher's Body. Derrida and Teletechnologies." The New Centennial Review 9/2, (2009). 139-64.
"New Media Aesthetics." After the Digital Divide. German Aesthetic Theory in the Age of Globalization, ed. Lutz Koepnick and Erin McGlothlin (Rochester: Camden House, 2009). 52-68.
"Introduction: Thinking Outside In." A Leftist Ontology, ed. ed. and intro. by Carsten Strathausen (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2009). 18-35. xix-xlvi.
"Patrick Süskind’s Perfume: The Relationship Between Literature and Film." Gegenwartsliteratur 7 (2009). 1-29.
"Adorno, Nietzche, and Metaphysics." New Essays on the Frankfort School of Critical Theory ed. Alfred J. Drake co-author Bradley Butterfield (Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2008). 18-35.
"Riefenstahl and the Face of Fascism." Riefenstahl Screened: An Anthology of New Criticism, ed.Neil Christian Pages, Ingeborg Majer-O'Sickey and Mary Rhiel (New York: Continuum Press, 2008). 30-51.
"Going Nowhere: Sebald's Rhizomatic Travels." Searching For Sebald. Photography After W. G. Sebald, ed. Lise Patt (Los Angeles, 2007). 472-91.
“A Critique of Neo-Left Ontology.” Postmodern Culture 16.3 (Fall 2006).
“A Rebel Against Hermeneutics: On the Presence of Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht.” Theory & Event 9.1 (2006).
“Moving On: Phil Goldstein’s Post-Marxist Theory.” The Minnesota Review 65-66 (Fall / Spring 2006): 177-84.
“Adorno, or, The End of Aesthetics.” Globalizing Critical Theory, ed. Max Pensky (Rowman & Littlefield, 2005). 221-40.
“The Badiou-Event.” Polygraph 17 (2005); special edition on "The Philosophy of Alain Badiou," ed. Matthew Wilkens. 239-57.
“Brecht’s Corpus.” Communications 34 (Summer 2005): 52-4.
“Facing Žižek.” The Minnesota Review 61-62 (2004): 239-46.
“Against Marxist Doxa.” theory@buffalo 9 (2004): 121-56.
“The Lost Gaze: Reflections on the Photography of Andreas Gursky.” Genre 36, ¾ (Fall/Winter 2003): 341-64.
“Of Circles and Riddles: Stefan George and the Language-Crisis around 1900.” The German Quarterly 76/4 (Fall 2003): 411-25.
“Uncanny Spaces: The City in Ruttmann and Vertov,” Screening the City, ed. Mark Shiel and Tony Fitzmaurice (Verso, 2003). 15-40.
“The Image as Abyss: The Cinematic Sublime in the Mountain Film,” Peripheral Visions. The Hidden Stages of Weimar Cinema, ed. Kenneth S. Calhoon (Detroit: Wayne State, 2001). 171-189.
“Benjamin’s Aura, or: the Broken Heart of Modernity,” The Institute of Cultural Inquiry; special edition on Benjamin’s Blind Spot, ed. Lise Patt (2001). 1-14.
“The Return of the Gaze: Stereoscopic Vision in Jünger and Benjamin,” New German Critique 80 (Spring/Summer 2000): 125-48.
“Eichendorff's Das Marmorbild and the Demise of Romanticism,” New Readings in Romanticism, ed. Martha Helfer (Amsterdam: Amsterdamer Beiträge zur Germanistik, 2000) 367-88.
“Nazi Aesthetics,” Renaissance and Modern Studies 42 (1999); special issue on Fascist Aesthetics, ed. Greg Hainge. 5-19.
“Brechts Kleinbürgerhochzeit: Ein Beispiel für Drama in DaF,” co-authored with Gerd Bräuer, Zielsprache Deutsch 2/95 (June 1995) 94-100.
“Althusser's Mirror,” Studies in Twentieth Century Literature 18/1 (Winter 1994) 58-71.