Matthew D. Miller

BA, Swarthmore College
PhD, Columbia University

• Literature and film in German-speaking Europe (20th century-present)
• Theater in German-speaking Europe (18th century-present)
• Critical and aesthetic theory
• European cultural histories

Books

• "Dreaming through Endtimes: Literature and Politics in the First Austrian Republic, 1918-1934" (under construction)
• The German Epic in the Cold War: Peter Weiss, Uwe Johnson, and Alexander Kluge. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2018.
  • Book Interview: The German Epic in the Cold War at New Books Network: New Books in German Studies, with Craig Sorvillo, April 2020
  • Reviews
    • Martin Brady, Monatshefte 112, no. 2 (2020): 360-362.
    • Mareike Gronich, Johnson-Jahrbuch 26 (2019): 217-225.
    • Xan Holt, Germanic Review 95, no. 1 (2020): 72-75.
    • Christoph Schmitz, Alexander Kluge-Jahrbuch: The Poetic Power of Theory, edited by Richard Langston et al. 6 (2019): 425-430.
    • Nicole Thesz, German Studies Review 43, no. 1 (2020): 208-210.
    • J. O. Wipplinger, CHOICE: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries 56, no. 8 (2019): 1003.
• Co-edited volume (with Marijeta Bozovic): Watersheds: The Poetics and Politics of the Danube River. Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2016.
  • Review
    • Christiane Fischer, German Studies Review 41, no. 3 (2018): 639-642. 

Articles and Book Chapters

• “Epische Donau? Der Fluss als Fluchtweg und gegenhegemonialer Erinnerungsstrom in Reinhard Federmanns Das Himmelreich der Lügner." In Arne Ziegler, Christian Braun, Johanna Fanta-Jende, Rebecca Karrer, Elisabeth Scherr (Hrsg.), Sprache und Literatur in Krisenzeiten. Herausforderungen, Aufgaben und Chancen der internationalen Germanistik. Beiträge des XV. IVG-Kongresses in Graz 2025 (Publikationen der Internationalen Vereinigung für Germanistik (IVG)). Graz University Library Publishing 2026.
• "Resistance Archives: Bertolt Brecht in Peter Weiss’s The Aesthetics of Resistance,” Overcoming the Present: Peter Weiss’s Aesthetics of Resistance (1975-1981) in and beyond the Cold War World, edited by Kai Evers, Julia Hell, and Seth Howes (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2025) (under review)
• "For Europe, from Interwar Vienna: Austrian Social Democracy’s Modernist Multinational." In Österreich-Studien im 21. Jahrhundert. Teil 2:  Sozial- und geschichtswissenschaftliche Perspektiven, edited by Michael Burri, Christian Karner, and Slawomir Piontek, 189-220. BRILL/V&R unipress, 2025.
• "Post-1945 Realisms: Uwe Johnson’s Anniversaries: From a Year in the Life of Gesine Cresspahl." In Realism and the Novel: A Literary History, edited by Paul Stasi, 86-104 Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2025.
• "Inner Periphery? The Rhine from Borderland to Interzone." In Spatiality at the Periphery in European Literatures and Visual Arts, edited by Kathryn Everly, Stefano Giannini, and Karina von Tippelskirch, 57-86. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2023.
• "Renewing Resistance at Sea and on Isles: Peter Weiss’ Aesthetics’ Volume II for the Twenty-First Century." New German Critique: Special Issue on Peter Weiss 147, 49, no. 3 (2022): 135-157.
• "In a Europe of Waters." EuropeNow: Special Feature on Rethinking the Human in a Multispecies World, edited by Hélène B. Ducros, 45 (2021).
• "Europe Fluvial: Multilingual Cultural Studies on Site." Die Unterrichtspraxis / Teaching German 53, no. 2 (2020).
• "Shedding Waters: Cinematic Mediations of European Multiculture." EuropeNow: Special Feature on United in Diversity, edited by Gisela Brinker-Gabler and Randall Halle, 26 (2019).
• "Divided Berlin and Cold War Aesthetics: Mediating the Wall in Literature and Film." Seminar: A Journal of Germanic Studies 55, no. 3 (2019): 266-295.
• "An Epic's Hydropoetics: On the Waters of Uwe Johnson's Jahrestage." Germanic Review 93, no. 2 (2018): 109-129.
• "Bottled Messages for Europe’s Future? The Danube in Contemporary Transnational Cinema." In Crossing Central Europe: Continuities and Transformations, 1900–2000, edited by Helga Mitterbauer and Carrie Smith-Prei, 312-348. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2017.
• "Atlantic Transfers of Critical Theory: Alexander Kluge and the U.S. in Fiction." In Different Germanies--New Transatlantic Perspectives, edited by Konrad H. Jarausch, Harald Wenzel, and Karin Goihl, 278-297. New York: Berghahn Books, 2017.
• "Uwe Johnson, Peter Weiss, und die Möglichkeiten des modernen Epos." Johnson-Jahrbuch 23 (2016): 183-206.
• "Eigensinn in Transit: Reexamining a Concept for the Twenty-First Century." Glass Shards: Alexander Kluge-Jahrbuch 2 (2015): 83-102.
• "Zu einem Europa der Flüsse: Die Donau im transnationalen Film der Gegenwart." In Europa? Zur Kulturgeschichte einer Idee, edited by Tomislav Zelic, Zaneta Sambunjakm and Anita Pavic, 265-284. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2015.
• "Facts of Migration, Demands on Identity: Christian Petzold’s Yella and Jerichow in Comparison." The German Quarterly: Special Issue: German Film Studies 85, no. 1 (2012): 55-76.
• "Critical Storytelling and Diabolical Dialectics: Alexander Kluge and the Devil’s Blind Spots." Germanic Review 85, no. 4 (2010): 318-339.
• "Literarische Zwischenöffentlichkeit: Alexander Kluges Erzählerische Reaktionen auf die deutsche Wendezeit." In SUBversionen: Zum Verhältnis von Politik und Ästhetik in der Gegenwart, edited by Thomas Ernst, Patricia Gozalbez Cantó, Sebastian Richter, Nadja Sennewald and Julia Tieke, 129-146. Bielefeld: transcript Verlag, 2008.
• "Der Auftrag des Chiasmus im Revolutionsdrama: Heiner Müller mit Georg Büchner Lesen." Theater der Zeit: Theaterwissenschaftliche Beiträge 2006 – Beilage zum Heft 5 (2006): 8-11.

Book Reviews

• Salvatore Pappalardo: Modernism in Trieste: The Habsburg Mediterranean and the Literary Invention of Europe, 1870-1945. New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2021. Symposium: A Quarterly Journal in Modern Literatures 76, no. 3 (2022): 176-9.
• Caroline Rupprecht: Asian Fusion: New Encounters in the Asian-German Avant-Garde. New York: Peter Lang, 2020. Symposium: A Quarterly Journal in Modern Literatures 75, no. 4 (2021): 266-69.
• Julia Hell: The Conquest of Ruins: The Third Reich and the Fall of Rome. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2019. The Germanic Review 95, no. 1 (2020): 65-69.
• Leslie A. Adelson: Cosmic Miniatures and the Future Sense: Alexander Kluge’s 21st-Century Literary Experiments in German Culture and Narrative Form. De Gruyter, 2017. The German Quarterly 92, no. 2 (2019): 305-308.
• Matt Cornish: Performing Unification: History and Nation in German Theater after 1989. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2017. Symposium: A Quarterly Journal in Modern Literatures 73, no. 1 (2019): 68-70.
• Friederike Eigler: Heimat, Space, Narrative: Toward a Transnational Approach to Flight and Expulsion. Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2014. Symposium: A Quarterly Journal in Modern Literatures 70, no. 4 (2016): 219-221.
• Elisabeth Herrmann, Carrie Smith-Prei, Stuart Taberner, eds.: Transnationalism in Contemporary German-Language Literature. Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2015. Modern Language Review 111, no. 3 (2016): 907-908.
• Kefei Qian: Die Donau von 1740 bis 1875. Eine kulturwissenschaftliche Untersuchung. Berlin: Logos Verlag für wissenschaftliche Publikationen, 2014. The German Quarterly 88, no. 1 (2015): 139-141.
• Amir Eshel: Futurity: Contemporary Literature and the Quest for the Past. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013. The German Quarterly 86, no. 4 (2013): 513-515.

• FSEM 159: Transnational Culture in Europe Today
• Core 151: Legacies of the Ancient World
• Core 152: Challenges of Modernity
• Core 184: The Danube (Core Communities)
• German 121 and 122: Beginning German I and II
• German 201 and 202: Intermediate German I and II
• German 325: Transnationalism in Contemporary German Culture
• German 341: Advanced Conversation and Composition
• German 351: Introduction to German Literary Studies
• German 352: Crisis and Critique in Germanophone Europe
• German 353: Proseminar in German Studies: Borderlands of European Multiculture (Focus: Alsace/Elsaß)
• German 353: Proseminar in German Studies: In a Europe of Waters (Focus: Rhine, Danube, Oder and Baltic)
• German 390: Freiburg Study Group Preparation
• German 457: German Literature and Culture on Site: The Freiburg Seminar
• German 477: Central European Modernity: Austria-Hungary and after
• German 479: 20th Century Literature: Modernity and Migration in German Culture
• German 479: 20th Century Literature and Film: Post-1945 Cinema and Life in Fascism's Wake
• German 485: German Drama: History, Theory, Practice
• Adviser to independent studies and honors theses in German
• Freiburg Study Group director

• Visiting Assistant Professor of German, Bowdoin College, 2009-10
• Postdoctoral Teaching Fellow, Columbia University, 2007-2009