German Studies
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Uwe Steiner

Professor, Department Chair

Uwe Steiner

Email: ustein@rice.edu Phone: x3243 Office: 331 Rayzor Hall

Education

  • Habilitation, Freie Universität Berlin, Germany, 1998
  • PhD, Freie Universität Berlin, Germany, 1987

Areas of Interest

  • philosophical thought and poetical representation in German literature since 1700
  • German and European Enlightenment
  • theories of modernity: Walter Benjamin and early twentieth-century philosophy

Personal Statement

Uwe Steiner came to Rice University in the summer of 2001. Trained in the German university system, his teaching encompasses German literature and culture from the seventeenth century to the present. He was an Assistant Professor at the Free University in Berlin, Germany, a Fellow at the Research Center European Enlightenment in Potsdam, Germany, and held two Max Kade Distinguished Visiting Professorships in the United States. He has published extensively on eighteenth- and twentieth-century German and European Literature.

In his book Poetische Theodizee: Philosophie und Poesie in der lehrhaften Dichtung im achtzehnten Jahrhundert (2000), he deals with the largely neglected form of didactic poetry in the early eighteenth century. Focusing on the problem of theodicy, Professor Steiner examines poetic and philosophical texts ranging from Leibniz to Voltaire as well as visual material. His research on twentieth-century literature and thought is dedicated, albeit not restricted, to Walter Benjamin. Among his publications on the German-Jewish intellectual, cultural critic, and philosopher are two books, of which the latest, a comprehensive account of Benjamin’s life, work, and thought, is currently being translated into English for University of Chicago Press.

Most recently, Professor Steiner finished his edition of Benjamin’s dissertation as part of the new annotated complete edition of his works for the prestigious Suhrkamp publishing house. With particular attention to Benjamin’s intellectual sources and the cultural-historical context of his work, Profesor Steiner’s scholarly interests embrace early twentieth-century cultural theory and philosophy as well as critical theory and the Frankfurt School. For his research not only on Benjamin, he has adopted Benjamin’s conviction that a text represents an unrestricted expression of the religious, political, social, and economic tendencies of an epoch.

Selected Publications

  • Walter Benjamin (Stuttgart-Weimar: J.B. Metzler, 2004).
  • Poetische Theodizee: Philosophie und Poesie in der lehrhaften Dichtung im achtzehnten Jahrhundert (Munich: Wilhelm Fink, 2000).
  • “Die Geburt der Kritik aus dem Geiste der Kunst”: Untersuchungen zum Begriff der Kritik in den frühen Schriften Walter Benjamins (Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 1989).
  • Walter Benjamin, Der Begriff der Kunstkritik in der deutschen Romantik, ed. Uwe Steiner, in Werke und Nachlaß, ed. Christoph Gödde and Henri Lonitz, vol. III (Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp, 2008).
  • Ed. with Günther Lottes, Immanuel Kant: German Professor and World-Philosopher / Deutscher Professor und Weltphilosoph (Hannover: Wehrhahn, 2007).
  • Ed. with Gérard Raulet, Walter Benjamin: Ästhetik und Geschichtsphilosophie / Esthétique et philosophie de l’histoire (Bern: Peter Lang, 1998).
  • “Kant and Benjamin: The Experience of Modernity,” in Günther Lottes and Uwe Steiner (eds.), Immanuel Kant: German Professor and World-Philosopher / Deutscher Professor und Weltphilosoph (Hannover: Wehrhan, 2007), 187-207.
  • “Über Sprache überhaupt und über die Sprache des Menschen,” in Burkhardt Lindner (ed.), Benjamin Handbuch: Leben—Werk—Wirkung (Stuttgart-Weimar: J.B. Metzler, 2006), 592-603.
  • “Die Sprache der Gefühle: Der Literaturbegriff Friedrichs des Großen im historischen Kontext,” in Brunhilde Wehinger (ed.), Geist und Macht: Friedrich der Große im Kontext der europäischen Kulturgeschichte (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 2005), 23-49.
  • “Die Grenzen des Kapitalismus: Kapitalismus, Religion und Politik in Benjamins Fragment ‘Kapitalismus als Religion’,” in Dirk Baecker (ed.), Kapitalismus als Religion (Berlin: Kulturverlag Kadmos, 2003), 35-59.
  • “‘The True Politician’: Walter Benjamin’s Concept of the Political,” New German Critique 83 (2001), 43-88.
  • “Von Bern nach Muri: Vier unveröffentlichte Briefe Walter Benjamins an Paul Häberlin im Kontext,” Deutsche Vierteljahrsschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Geistesgeschichte 75 (2001), 463-90.
  • “Das ‘Handwerk des Erzählens’ in Uwe Johnsons Jahrestagen,” Poetica 32 (2000), 169-202.