Esther Bauer

Esther Bauer, Associate Professor of German

_{Department of Modern and Classical Languages and Literatures

330 Major Williams Hall

220 Stanger Street

Blacksburg, VA 24061

540-231-5361 | bauere@vt.edu}

Current research concentrates on images of masculinity in times of crisis, including World War I and the interwar years, and on non-hegemonic masculinities, especially homosexual masculinities. A new book-length project explores depictions of aging men and male midlife crisis in prose texts since 1900, including Thomas Mann’s “Tod in Venedig,” Max Frisch’s Homo faber, Hermann Hesse’s Steppenwolf, and Ingeborg Bachmann’s “Das dreißigste Jahr.”

Principal Areas of Research Focus

Weimar Republic
Literature, Visual Arts, and Culture of the 20th and 21st Centuries
Post-War and Contemporary German-Language Literature
History of Subjectivity: Gender, Sexuality, Aging, the Body
Desire

Education

PhD, Yale University
MPhil, Yale University
MA, Yale University
MA, Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg, Germany
Erstes Staatsexamen Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freibug, Germany

Professional Roles

Director, German Program

Awards and Honors

Certificate of Teaching Excellence, 2014

Publications

Books

Bodily Desire, Desired Bodies: Gender and Desire in Early Twentieth-Century German and Austrian Novels and Paintings.Evanston, IL: Northwestern UP, 2014.

Journal Articles

“Not so Happily ever after: Romantic Love in Novels by Alain Claude Sulzer,” Edinburgh German Yearbook 11 (2017): 25-46.

“Ausbruch aus dem Krieg: Das Individuum in Kriegsszenen von Otto Dix und Thomas Mann,” Weimarer Beiträge 62.2 (2016): 179-98.

“Mired in Perfection: Male Images, Forbidden Desire, and ‘Bad Faith’ in Novels by Alain Claude Sulzer.” German Life and Letters 69.1 (2016): 105-22.

“Masculinity in Crisis: Aging Men in Thomas Mann’s ‘Der Tod in Venedig’ and Max Frisch’s Homo faber,” German Quarterly 88.1 (2015): 22-42.

"The Power of the Look: Franz Kafka’s ‘The Cares of a Family Man.’” Kafka’s Creatures: Animals, Hybrids, and Other Fantastic Beings. Eds. Marc Lucht and Donna Yarri. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2010. 157-73.

“Narratives of Femininity in Judith Hermann’s Summerhouse, Later.’” Women in German Yearbook 25 (2009): 50-75.

“Female Sexuality and Corporeal Agency in Christian Schad’s Zwei Mädchen,” Feminist German Studies 35 (2019): 53-84.

“’Queere’ Romanzen bei Alain Claude Sulzer,” Liebesgeschichte(n): Identität und Diversität vom 18. bis zum 21. Jahrhundert, ed. Frank Becker and Elke Reinhardt-Becker, Frankfurt: Campus, 2019. 253-77.

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