Nicole A. Sütterlin

Nicole A. Sütterlin

On leave Spring 2024
Associate Professor of Germanic Languages and Literatures
Headshot of Nicole Sütterlin

Nicole Sütterlin studied German Philology and English Philology in Basel, Freiburg i.Br., and Leeds, UK. She earned a double MA and PhD from the University of Basel. Before joining Harvard’s German Department in 2014, she taught at the University of Basel and at Middlebury College, VT.

Her research and teaching interests include literature and aesthetics around 1800; Romanticism; contemporary literature; trauma and memory studies; posthumanism; poetics and politics of the body; ecocriticism; literature and science; literature and social justice.

She is the recipient of numerous awards, such as a DAAD Research Fellowship for Faculty, and a Marion and Jasper Whiting Foundation Fellowship for Higher Education. In spring 2018, these grants took her to the Ludwig-Maximilian-University of Munich and to the Derrida-archive at the University of California, Irvine.

Nicole Sütterlin is the author of Poetik der Wunde: Zur Entdeckung des Traumas in der Literatur der Romantik (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2019; Engl. “Poetics of the Wound: The Discovery of Trauma in German Romantic Literature”). Challenging current histories of the concept of psychological trauma, Sütterlin argues that Clemens Brentano, E.T.A. Hoffmann, and other early 19th-century authors discovered traumatic processes such as dissociation and intrusion ahead of psychiatrists such as Janet and Freud. Her study shows how Romantic texts perform these processes in what she calls a “poetics of the wound.”

Her publications include articles on Goethe, Kleist, Ulrike Draesner, Marcel Beyer, Jacques Derrida, and the Iranian geophilosopher Reza Negarestani, among others. She has published in peer-reviewed journals such as Gegenwartsliteratur: A Contemporary German Yearbook, and in acclaimed textbooks such as Reclam's Zugänge zur Literaturtheorie: 17 Modellanalysen zu E.T.A. Hoffmann's 'Der Sandmann' and The Routledge Companion to Literature and Trauma (2020).

Her current book project, titled Bodies of the Posthuman Age: The Microbiome in the Literary Imagination, explores how literature advances our understanding of the microbiome, a paradigm-changing concept in the life sciences that is crucially under-researched in literary studies. A fast-growing body of bioscientific research shows that microbial diversity is declining rapidly in our bodies and environments – with dire consequences for human and planetary health. Bodies of the Posthuman Age examines how scarcely known contemporary Austrian, German, and Swiss writers creatively reimagine germs as symbionts, envisioning bodies, selves, and societies as multispecies endeavors.

In the classroom, Prof. Sütterlin’s biggest passion is using education to promote a more equal society and ethical citizenry. She teaches various courses on social justice, most recently a new freshman seminar that explores how German, South African, and American literature help us address the lingering legacy of the Holocaust, apartheid, and slavery, respectively. These courses are committed to creating an inclusive community and expanding the bounds of the classroom, for example through a workshop with Boston Mobilization, a student-led non-profit organization promoting social justice.

Nicole Sütterlin is also committed to promoting professional development and scholarly exchange for graduate students, for example through a bi-annual graduate student conference jointly organized by the German Departments of Brown, Harvard, NYU, and Yale Universities, initiated by her in 2016.

List of Publications on academia.edu.

Courses in Fall 2023

Freshman Seminar 63L. Memory Wars: Cultural Trauma and the Power of Literature

German 291/AAAS 205/ROM-STD 201. Questions of Theory (co-taught with Prof. Doris Sommer)

 

 

Contact Information

Nicole Suetterlin

Barker Center 353

nsuetterlin@fas.harvard.edu

p: (617) 496-4924

Office Hours: T: 10:45–11:45am and by appointment

 

 

Contact Information

Barker Center 353
p: (617) 496-4924
Office Hours: T: 10:45–11:45am and by appointment