Peter J. Burgard

Professor Burgard, who joined the Harvard Faculty 37 years ago, studied at The Johns Hopkins University (B.A.) and at the Universities of Cologne, Bonn, and Virginia (M.A., Ph.D.). He writes on poetry, drama, narrative, and the essay, on painting, sculpture, and architecture, and on intellectual history, ranging from the 16th to the 20th century. His publications include studies of Luther, Caravaggio, Bernini, Opitz, Gryphius, Grimmelshausen, Goethe, Herder, Lessing, Nietzsche, Ibsen, Mann, Kafka, Adorno, Miller, and Warhol. 

Burgard teaches courses on German and Austrian Modernism in architecture, painting, and literature; German Poetry 1770–1990; the Age of Goethe; the Ethics of Atheism in Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud; a survey of German theoretical writing from the Enlightenment to Poststructuralism; and a First-Year Seminar on Literal Looking: What We See in Art. In addition, in his course on Advanced Grammar and Reading, he teaches undergraduates and graduate students how to read sophisticated German literary and philosophical texts with precision.