mailto:dlp14@psu.edu
Born in Berlin and raised bilingually in New York City, I graduated from the Bronx High School of Science in 1981, earned a B.A. in German and Philosophy from Wake Forest University in 1985 and then attended Cornell University where in 1992 I received my Ph.D. In German Studies. For nine years I taught in a non-tenure track line at Columbia University, first as an assistant professor, then as an associate professor. In 2000 I moved to the German department at Penn State University.
My scholarly research combines contemporary theory about material culture (fashion, consumer goods, architecture) with canonical philosophy in order to demonstrate the historical interplay between systematic thought and the everyday life. My teaching and writing considers German culture in a global context.
My first book, The Tyranny of Elegance: Consumer Cosmopolitanism in the Era of Goethe (Johns Hopkins UP, 1998), discusses the emergence of a bourgeois consumer culture in eighteenth century Germany, connected to Liberal economic thought and media innovations. The argument moves from fashion journals to famous novels to ordinary objects of use. I integrate economic developments with gender transformations. My analysis of eighteenth century German masculinity is based on extensive archival sources, as well as the works of Foucault, feminist theory and psychoanalytic film analysis. The Tyranny of Elegance received very positive reviews. The first chapter has just been reprinted in a new Routledge anthology covering the most important scholarship on fashion culture.
My second work, an edited anthology, The Rise of Fashion (Minnesota UP, 2004), grew out of the first. I wanted to make the German, French, Italian sources I used for my research available to American undergraduates. In addition to individual commentaries on the historical entries, The Rise of Fashion includes a comprehensive introduction that shows how fashion came to represent a gendered image of modernity in constant flux, evoking desire and generating economic demand.
My most recent book, On the Ruins of Babel: Architectural Metaphor in German Thought (Cornell UP, 2011) was conceived as a Habilitionsschrift—a second dissertation in the German academic tradition, written on a substantial topic unrelated to the first book. On the Ruins of Babel is the product of ten years training and research into architectural theory and history, which included a Humboldt fellowship to work at Berlin’s Technical University with the theorist Fritz Neumeyer, and other faculty members of the TU’s architecture department. The book provides a detailed history of architectural discourse in Germany during the Enlightenment in order to set the background for close interpretations of Kant and Goethe’s major writings on architecture. The later chapters engage the architectural aesthetics of Hegel and Benjamin as they respond to the epistemological and aesthetic models Kant and Goethe proposed. On the Ruins of Babel argues that German theory derives crucial categories from Renaissance and medieval architecture, which are then elaborated into modern accounts of subjectivity.
Additionally, I am currently serving a five-year term as the sole editor for the Goethe Yearbook, the most important journal for eighteenth-century German Studies in the United States—a job comparable to publishing an edited book annually.
Currently, I am pursuing two separate book projects. The first concerns contemporary architecture and debates about preserving historic city centers in northern Europe. I analyze current efforts to redesign and restore old urban districts (Berlin, Ghent, London, Strasbourg) within European worries about their own global competitiveness.
My second project, The Ideal Emperor: China and the Development of German Social Theory, links the European importation of Asian luxuries with a long-standing political discourse on Oriental Despotism. Scholarship about the European reception of China tends to focus either on commodity exchanges (tea, porcelain, silk) or on philosophical and theological debates. This book will demonstrate the interconnections between the material and theoretical responses to Chinese culture in Europe.
My scholarly research combines contemporary theory about material culture (fashion, consumer goods, architecture) with canonical philosophy in order to demonstrate the historical interplay between systematic thought and the everyday life. My teaching and writing considers German culture in a global context.
My first book, The Tyranny of Elegance: Consumer Cosmopolitanism in the Era of Goethe (Johns Hopkins UP, 1998), discusses the emergence of a bourgeois consumer culture in eighteenth century Germany, connected to Liberal economic thought and media innovations. The argument moves from fashion journals to famous novels to ordinary objects of use. I integrate economic developments with gender transformations. My analysis of eighteenth century German masculinity is based on extensive archival sources, as well as the works of Foucault, feminist theory and psychoanalytic film analysis. The Tyranny of Elegance received very positive reviews. The first chapter has just been reprinted in a new Routledge anthology covering the most important scholarship on fashion culture.
My second work, an edited anthology, The Rise of Fashion (Minnesota UP, 2004), grew out of the first. I wanted to make the German, French, Italian sources I used for my research available to American undergraduates. In addition to individual commentaries on the historical entries, The Rise of Fashion includes a comprehensive introduction that shows how fashion came to represent a gendered image of modernity in constant flux, evoking desire and generating economic demand.
My most recent book, On the Ruins of Babel: Architectural Metaphor in German Thought (Cornell UP, 2011) was conceived as a Habilitionsschrift—a second dissertation in the German academic tradition, written on a substantial topic unrelated to the first book. On the Ruins of Babel is the product of ten years training and research into architectural theory and history, which included a Humboldt fellowship to work at Berlin’s Technical University with the theorist Fritz Neumeyer, and other faculty members of the TU’s architecture department. The book provides a detailed history of architectural discourse in Germany during the Enlightenment in order to set the background for close interpretations of Kant and Goethe’s major writings on architecture. The later chapters engage the architectural aesthetics of Hegel and Benjamin as they respond to the epistemological and aesthetic models Kant and Goethe proposed. On the Ruins of Babel argues that German theory derives crucial categories from Renaissance and medieval architecture, which are then elaborated into modern accounts of subjectivity.
Additionally, I am currently serving a five-year term as the sole editor for the Goethe Yearbook, the most important journal for eighteenth-century German Studies in the United States—a job comparable to publishing an edited book annually.
Currently, I am pursuing two separate book projects. The first concerns contemporary architecture and debates about preserving historic city centers in northern Europe. I analyze current efforts to redesign and restore old urban districts (Berlin, Ghent, London, Strasbourg) within European worries about their own global competitiveness.
My second project, The Ideal Emperor: China and the Development of German Social Theory, links the European importation of Asian luxuries with a long-standing political discourse on Oriental Despotism. Scholarship about the European reception of China tends to focus either on commodity exchanges (tea, porcelain, silk) or on philosophical and theological debates. This book will demonstrate the interconnections between the material and theoretical responses to Chinese culture in Europe.
