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Ulrich Baer
University Professor of Comparative Literature, German, and English; Affiliated Faculty, Department of Photography and Imaging, Tisch School of the Arts
Ph.D. 1995 (Comparative Literature), Yale; B.A. 1991 (Literature), Harvard
Poetry (especially 19th and 20th century European and American); photography; literary theory; continental philosophy; visual culture; trauma and witnessing; what constitutes a "great" book; the liberal arts
Modern Language Association; Narrative Society; College Art Association; American Comparative Literature Association; German Studies Association
John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship 2006 - 2007; Alexander-von-Humboldt Fellowship 2007 - 2008; Golden Dozen Teaching Award 2004; Getty Research Fellowship, 2001 - 2002; Remarque Institute Faculty Fellow, Spring 1999; DAAD Research Fellowship 1998; Golden Dozen Teaching Award 1998
Books - Single Author
What Snowflakes Get Right: Free Speech, Truth and Equality on Campus. New York: Oxford University Press, 2019.
We Are But A Moment (novel). New York: Warbler Press, 2017.
The Rilke Alphabet. New York: Fordham University Press, 2014.
Beggar's Chicken: Stories From Shanghai. Hong Kong: Earnshaw Publishers, 2013.
Das Rilke Alphabet. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp Verlag, 2006.
Spectral Evidence: The Photography of Trauma. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2002.
Traumadeutung: Erfahrung der Moderne bei Charles Baudelaire und Paul Celan. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 2002.
Remnants of Song: Trauma and the Experience of Modernity in Charles Baudelaire and Paul Celan. Stanford University Press, 2000.
Books - Edited/Translated
New editions with introduction:
Mary Shelley, Frankenstein. New York: Warbler Press, 2019.
Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness. New York: Warbler Press, 2020.
Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter. New York: Warbler Press, 2020.
Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray. New York: Warbler Press, 2020.
Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest. New York: Warbler Press.
James Weldon Johnson, The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man. New York: Warbler Press, 2020.
Jack London, Call of the Wild. New York: Warbler Press, 2020.
Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet. New York: Warbler Press, 2019.
Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre. New York: Warbler Press, 2020.
Jean Toomer, Cane. New York: Warbler Press (forthcoming).
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, The Sorrows of Young Werther. New York: Warbler Press (forthcoming).
Oscar Wilde on Love. New York: Warbler Press, 2020.
Friedrich Nietzsche on Love. New York: Warbler Press, 2020.
Emily Dickinson on Love. New York: Warbler Press, 2020.
Rainer Maria Rilke on Love. New York: Warbler Press, 2020.
William Shakespeare on Love. New York: Warbler Press, 2020.
The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Mrs. Dalloway, by Virginia Woolf
The Essential Poe, by E. A. Poe
A Journal of the Plague Year, by Daniel Defoe
Edited and/or translated:
With Smaran Dayal, Fictions of America: The Book of Firsts. New York: Warbler Press, 2020.
Rainer Maria Rilke, The Dark Interval: Letters on Loss, Grief and Transformation. New York: Random House 2018.
Hannah Arendt zwischen den Disziplinen. Göttingen: Eshel Wallstein Verlag, 2014. Ed with Amir Eshel, with contributions by Fred Moten, Vivian Liska, Stephan Braese, Barbara Hahn, Christine Ivanovic, Martin Klebes, Sigrid Weigel, Liliane Weissberg, and Thomas Wild.
The Claims of Reading: The Shoshana Felman Reader. Ed. with Emily Sun and Eyal Peretz. New York: Fordham University Press, 2007.
Rilke, Letters on Life: The Wisdom of Rainer Maria Rilke. New York: Random House/Modern Library, 2005.
Editor: 110 Stories: New York Writes After September 11. New York: New York University Press, 2002.
Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet, Berlin: Insel 2018.
Rainer Maria Rilke, Die Prosa, Berlin: Insel, 2017.
Rainer Maria Rilke, Jeder Tag ist der Anfang des Lebens - Worte des Trostes. Berlin: Suhrkamp Verlag, 2017.
Rilke, Du mußt Dein Leben ändern: Über das Leben. Berlin: Insel, 2014.
Rilke, Denn Bleiben ist nirgends: Über Alter und Verlust. Frankfurt: Insel, 2008.
Rilke, Die Verwandlung der Welt ins Herrliche. Über das Glück. Frankfurt: Insel, 2008.
Rilke, Es gibt nur – die Liebe. Frankfurt: Insel, 2008.
Niemand zeugt für den Zeugen: Zeugenschaft und historische Verantwortung nach der Shoah. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1999.
Essays:
" Ernest Cole's House of Bondage: The Photography of Witnessing." Grey Art Gallery Gazette 15.1 (fall 2014).
"To Give Memory a Place," in The Spectralities Reader. Ghosts and Haunting in Contemporary Cultural Theory, eds. María del Pilar Blanco and Esther Peeren (London: Bloomsbury, 2013).
"Seeing in the Future in an Image from the Past: Hannah Arendt, Garry Winogrand, and Photographing the World," Yearbook of Comparative Literature, 2009 (volume 55).
"Bring the Outside In: On Diti Almog," in Studio 173, May-June 2008, Tel Aviv.
"The Reluctant Modernism of Thomas Struth," in "Struth," Madre Museum, Naples, 2008, 85-97.
"End of a World: On Thomas Demand's Photographs," in: L'Esprit d'escalier," IMMA (Irish Museum of Modern Art), Dublin, Ireland and Walter Koenig, Cologne: 2007. 82-112.
"Paul Celan's Stars: Teaching 'Todesfuge' as a Canonical Holocaust Poem," in Marianne Hirsch and Irene Kacandes, eds. Teaching the Representation of the Holocaust, New York: MLA, 2005.
"'Learning to Speak Like a Victim': Media and Authenticity in Marcel Beyer's Flughunde" in Gegenwartsliteratur. Contemporary Holocaust Images. South Atlantic Quarterly. 1997.
"Sign and History in Baudelaire." Semiotics. 1995.
"Photography and Hysteria: Toward a Poetics of the Flash." The Yale Journal of Criticism. 1994.
Talks and Presentations:
Invited Panel Discussion, "Globalizing Today's University: The Case of New York University," Joint Conference, Max Weber Foundation and German Historians' Association, Geisteswissenschaften International, Hamburg, Germany. July 16, 2015.
Invited Lecture: "What is American About American Higher Education," National Tsing Hua University, Taiwan. April 17, 2015.
"Remembering the Fall of the Berlin Wall: Alexander Osang and Ulrich Baer," Deutsches Haus, NYU, October 30, 2014.
"Berlin Now: A Reading and Conversation with Peter Schneider and Ulrich Baer," Deutsches Haus, NYU, October 13, 2014.
Keynote Address: "The Image of Globalization: Photography and New Media," "Vision": 13th Annual Graduate Conference at SUNY Albany, NY. March 27-28, 2014.