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Sabine Wilke’s research and teaching interests include modern German literature and culture, intellectual history and theory, and cultural and visual studies. She has written books and articles on body constructions in modern German literature and culture, German unification, the history of German film and theater, contemporary German and Austrian authors and filmmakers including Christa Wolf, Heiner Müller, Botho Strauss, Ingeborg Bachmann, Elfriede Jelinek, Monika Treut, and others. Most recently, Wilke was involved in a larger project about German colonialism and postcolonialism and the question of comparative colonialisms, especially with regard to how Germany related differently to Africa and the South Pacific. With assistance from the Alexander von Humboldt foundation, she is now directing a transatlantic research network on the environmental humanities. Wilke is working on a new project on environmental criticism, in particular on the overlapping concerns of postcolonialism and ecocriticism. She is professor of German, and is associated with and teaches in the European Studies Program, and the doctoral Theory and Criticism program.
RCC Research Project: Re-Thinking Landscape through the German Aesthetic Tradition: Extreme Shapes and Transformations (pdf, 13 KB)
Film Interview with Sabine Wilke
Selected Publications:
- (Ed.). “The Environmental Humanities.” Special Issue, Pacific Coast Philology (2011).
- “Spectacular Views versus Dangerous Descents: Narrating Mountainous Ascents in Tahiti.” In Heights of Reflection: Mountains in the German Imagination from the Middle Ages to the Twenty-First Century. Edited by Sean Ireton and Caroline Schaumann, 134–152. Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2011.
- “From ‘natura naturata’ to ‘natura naturans’: ‘Naturphilosophie’ and the Concept of a Performing Nature.” Interculture 4 (2008): 1–23.
- “The Sound of a Robin After a Rain Shower: Aesthetic Experiences of Nature in Dialectical Conceptions of Nature.” ISLE 16 (2009): 91–117.
- “Ecology Goes to the Museum: Alexander von Humboldt and the Aesthetics of Wildlife Art.” International Journal of Humanistic Studies and Literature/Cuaderno International de Estudios Humanisticos y Literatura (2009): 89–112.