Ross Gillum Shields
Germanist/comparatist, research associate with the project “Formation is Life”. Organicism and Aesthetic Modernism
CV
- 2020-2021: Leibniz Center for Literary and Cultural Research, Berlin, research associate for the project "Formation is Life": Organicism and Aesthetic Modernism
- 2018-2019: Leibniz Center for Literary and Cultural Research, Berlin, research associate for the project Forms and Functions of Relations to the World
- 2018: Columbia University, New York, Ph.D., Department of Germanic Languages. Dissertation: "Hanging-Together: Kant, Goethe, and the Theory of Aesthetic Modernism"
- 2015: Columbia University, New York, M.Phil., Department of Germanic Languages
- 2014: Columbia University, New York, M.A., Department of Germanic Languages
- 2010: Humboldt University of Berlin: DAAD-Stipendiat, Institut für deutsche Literatur und Kulturwissenschaft
Research Interests
- Literary modernism
- Aesthetics around 1800
- Pictorial and musical theories of form
- Philosophy of language
- History of science and philosophy
Publications
Articles and Book Chapters
- “ZUSAMMENHANG (Nexus).” Goethe-Lexicon of Philosophical Concepts. Ed. Clark S. Muenzer and John H. Smith. Forthcoming. 35pp.
- “Morphology and Music Theory: Variations on a Theme by Goethe.” In Aus dem Leben der Form: Studien zum Nachleben von Goethes Morphologie in der Theoriebildung des 20. Jahrhunderts. Göttingen: Wallstein, forthcoming. 26pp.
- “Aggregat.” Formen des Ganzen. Ed. Eva Geulen and Claude Haas. Göttingen: Wallstein, forthcoming. 7pp.
- “‘Nonsense, wherein there is Method’: Wittgenstein on Music and Language.” The Germanic Review. 93.4 (2018): 394-413.
- “The Beauty and Ethics of The Trial: Kafka’s Circumscription of Failure.” Freedom and Confinement in Modernity: Kafka’s Cages. Ed. A. Kiarina Kordela and Dimitris Vardoulakis. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011. 159-175.
Translations
- Klee, Paul. Contributions to a Theory of Pictorial Form. Ross Shields and Stefan Lamm, trans. Madrid: Fundación Juan March / Pro Helvetia, 2016.
Lectures
- “Goethe’s Nexus Concept.” Goethe as a Heterodox Thinker (German Studies Association, Portland, OR, October 2019).
- “The Resistance of Aesthetics: Weiss and Adorno." The Crisis of Politics and the Challenge to Marxist Theory (Institute for the Radical Imagination, Kasos, July 2019).
- “Seeing the Connections: Synthetic Comments on Baumgarten, Goethe, and Wittgenstein.” Literary Morphology: Theories of Dynamic Form before and after Goethe (German Studies Association, Pittsburgh, September 2018).
- “Der Primat des Zusammenhangs: From Helmholtz to Webern.” German Studies Graduate Student Conference (Yale University, Ithaca, April 2016).
- “Sound Figures, Thought Forms: Toward a Drastic Reading of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus.” Klangfiguren: Sonic Effects in Art and Science since the 18th Century (Workshop, Columbia University, March 2016).
- “Time and the Work of Melancholy.” Time in/and Psychoanalysis (Psychoanalysis Reading Group [PARG] at Cornell University, Ithaca, March 2015).
- “Money, etc.///…. in Pound.” Waste and Time (American Comparative Literature Association [ACLA], New York, March 2014).
- “Editors [sic] Cut: The Literary Execution of Kafka’s Corpus.” German & Romance Language and Literatures [GRLL] Graduate Student Conference (John Hopkins, Baltimore, September 2012).
- “Writing on the Edge: Kafka in the Margins of ‘The Great Wall of China.’” Comparative Literature Graduate Student Conference (New York University, New York, March 2012).
Courses
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Spring 2021: Joyce's Ulysses, A Modernist Epic
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Fall 2020: The Modernist Fringe, Bard College Berlin
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Spring 2020: Early Modern Science, Bard College Berlin
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Fall 2019: Modernism and the Interarts, Bard College Berlin
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2014 – 2018: Elementary Intensive Reading I & II, Columbia U (5 sems.)
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2012 – 2016: Elementary German I & II, Columbia U (5 sems.)