Mercer Greenwald's research focuses on the the intersections of literature, psychoanalysis, and philosophy from the Age of Goethe to the present. Other academic interests include poetics of the body, issues of maternality, rhythm and repetition, music and opera, and the philosophy of language. Mercer's undergraduate thesis, titled “Fort! Da!: Thinking Death in Freud and Faust,” examines the incursions of the literary in Freud’s Jenseits des Lustprinzips and on the language of blood in Goethe’s Faust. In the 2022-2023 academic year, Mercer will work on a Fulbright research project in Vienna that puts the work of Ingeborg Bachmann into dialogue with the work of Clarice Lispector. Mercer has also received extensive training as a violist at the Bard College Conservatory of Music, where she received a B.M. and B.A. in 2022.