LESLIE CENTER NEWSLETTER SPRING 2012
THE CENTER IN THE NEWS - The Dartmouth May 2, 2012
I was introduced to medieval literature and critical theory at roughly the same time, and now I can’t seem to separate the two: My readings in one continue to inform my readings in the other. In particular, I find that psychoanalysis opens up new ways of understanding not only the relations in and among medieval texts but also our relation, as modern subjects, to the remainders of premodernity existing on the contemporary scene. Also of great interest to me are the rituals surrounding death — mourning, funerary rites, tomb-building — and the various ways in which poetics intersects with those rituals. Ideally, all of these interests will converge in my current project, Troilus and Criseyde Between Two Deaths: Ethics and Interment in Literary Tradition.
Klaus Mladek studied German and comparative literature, philosophy, theology, and law in Frankfurt am Main, where he was awarded a Magister Artium in 1993. He continued his studies at the University of California at Santa Barbara, receiving his M.A. in 1995 and Ph.D. in 2000. Before coming to Dartmouth, he taught at the University of Cincinnati from 2000-2004. He has been a fellow of the Studienstiftung des Deutschen Volkes (1990-1998) and of the Humboldt-Foundation (2002-2004). His research focuses on 19th- and 20th-century literature and literary theory, psychoanalysis, law, and politics. Recent articles are on the American jury system, the state of exception in contemporary politics, Kafka's lawyers, and W.G. Sebald's politics of literature, including a study on a "politics of melancholia." He is the editor of Police Forces: A Cultural History of an Institution (Palgrave 2007), a volume on the representation of police in literature, film and culture in the 16th-20th centuries. His book Theater of Justice: Kant, Schiller, Kleist, Nietzsche, Kafka is forthcoming. His current book project is entitled Criminal Subjects: Politics and Police in German Literature and Thought (1800/1900).
