Associate Professor of German

About

  • Office Hours:

    Mondays/Wednesdays/Fridays, 4-5 pm; or by appt.

  • Role:

    Faculty

  • Position:

    • Associate Professor of German
    • Director of International Studies

  • Concentration:

    • Eighteenth, Nineteenth, and Twentieth Century German Literature, Art History, Religious Studies

  • Department:

    • International Studies and Languages, Literatures and Culture

  • Education:

    • Phd, University of Chicago

  • Curriculum Vitae:

Biography

Peter Erickson is a tenured Associate Professor of German and the Director of the International Studies program at Colorado State University.  His research focuses on the intersection of literature, art, and religion in the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries.  For his dissertation at the University of Chicago, “Religious Conversion in the Late German Enlightenment: Goethe, Schiller, Wieland,” he used archival research to show how narratives of religious conversion helped shape the development of the modern novel.

More recently, he has published on colonialism, French Romantic painting, German architecture theory, and the history of gift-giving.

Prior to joining Colorado State, he served as Visiting Assistant Professor of German at Oakland University in Michigan (2014-2016).

His research has been supported by the Franke Institute for the Humanities, the CU Boulder Center for the Study of Origins, the Ann Gill Faculty Development Award, the Martin Marty Center for the Advanced Study of Religion, the Fritz Thyssen Foundation, the Klassik Stiftung Weimar, and the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD).

Recent courses include:

LGER 251: "The Holocaust in Literature and Film"
LGER 310: "Dangerous Minds: Criminal Narrators in German Literature"
LGER 313: "Introduction to German Translation"
LGER 454: "Race and Empire: Colonial Encounters in German Literature"
LGER 454: "Andere Welten, Other Worlds: An Introduction to German Science Fiction"
LGER 492: "The City and Modern Life"

Publications

- "From Trump to Trudeau, the escalator is favorite symbol of political campaigns." The Conversation (Published: October 30, 2020) Free online access here.

- “Vergiftete Gaben: Violating the Laws of Hospitality in ETA Hoffmann’s Das Fräulein von Scuderi,” In Christopher Clason (Ed.), Transgressive Romanticism: Liverpool University Press, pp. 45-64 (Published: December 2018). Link here.

-"The Primitive Hut: Hegel and the Origins of Architecture." Seminar: A Journal of German Studies, 55(3), pp. 229-250. (Published: September 2019) Link here.

- "Uncanny Prosthetics: Wounded Bodies in the Lithographs of Théodore Géricault." In Christopher Clason and Michael Demson (Ed.), Romantic Automata: Exhibitions, Figures, Organisms.: Rutgers University Press, pp. 51-86. (Published: April 2020) Link here.

- "Performing Empire: Theater and Colonialism in Caroline Link’s Nirgendwo in Afrika." TRANSIT: A Journal of Travel, Migration, and Multiculturalism in the German-Speaking World, 12(2).  Free online access here.

- "Die Inszenierung von Konversion: Friedrich Schillers Der Geisterseher." In Figuren der Konversion, ed. Winfried Eckel and Niklas Wegmann (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh Verlag, 2014). Link here.

- "Proselytenmacherey durch Aberglauben: Religiöse Bekehrung und Empirische Psychologie in den Schriften Jakob Friedrich Abels." In Edward Gibbon im deutschen Sprachraum: Spurenlesen und Bausteine einer Rezeptionsgeschichte, ed. Till Kinzel and Cord-Friedrich Berghahn. (Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag, 2015). Special issue, Germanisch-Romanische Monatsschrift.

- “Adapting Christian Tragedy for the Enlightenment Stage: Lessing’s Hamburgische Dramaturgie (1767-1769).” Lessing Yearbook 42 (2015): 125-150.

- "'Ist es rathsam Missethäter durch Geistliche [...] zur Hinrichtung begleiten zu lassen?' Gotthilf Samuel Steinbart’s Critique of Pietist Conversion." In Religion und Aufklärung, ed. Albrecht Beutel (Tübingen: Verlag Mohr Siebeck, 2016), 243-253.