Kirk Wetters

Research Areas

Kirk Wetters is a Professor of German, who joined the Yale German department in 2004. Starting from his dissertation, which was published as The Opinion System: Impasses of the Public Sphere from Hobbes to Habermas (Fordham 2008), his work has focused on the overlapping conceptual and metaphorical foundations of modern literature and critical theory. His first book argues that the often overlooked or maligned concept of opinion played a defining role in the many divergent strands of post-Enlightenment literature and theory (philosophical epistemology, political and social theory, rhetoric, aesthetics, critique). Literary and critical authors of the German late 18^th century (especially Lichtenberg, Mendelssohn, Wieland, Forster, and Goethe), he argues, offer articulations of opinion which anticipate many theoretical claims of the 20^th century with regard to the key institutions of modern society, the possibility of democracy, and changing conditions of media, communication, and information.

His second book, Demonic History from Goethe to the Present (Northwestern 2014), investigates the preoccupation with demons and demonic forces in the mental household of post-Enlightenment, supposedly secular societies. This is notably the case in modern literature (prototypically in the Faust tradition), but, perhaps more surprisingly, also in philosophy and theory. The latter, though premised on critical reason, tended to “demonize” everything that could not be rationally understood. The ambiguity between the historical and the supernatural, a foundational trope of modern narrative, is at the same time a theoretical figure governing the conceptual dualisms of individual and society, nature and nurture, destiny and history. This thesis is demonstrated, starting from Goethe, in a range of figures from the first half of the 20^th century (especially Friedrich Gundolf, Oswald Spengler, Georg Lukács, Walter Benjamin, and the Austrian novelist Heimito von Doderer). The edited collection with Lars Friedrich and Eva Geulen, Das Dämonische: Schicksale einer Kategorie der Zweideutigkeit nach Goethe (Fink 2014), traces the legacies of the demonic in a wider range of literary and theoretical framings.

In addition to the two monographs, he has pursued many spinoffs and side projects: 20^th-century Austrian literature (especially Stefan Zweig, Hermann Broch, and Heimito von Doderer); Hans Blumenberg (his concepts of illegitimacy and myth); theories of matriarchy and patriarchy in Nicolaus Sombart; theories of crowds and masses from Le Bon and Freud to Hermann Broch’s Massenwahntheorie (“theory of mass delusion”) and The Authoritarian Personality; the question of literary form (in Georg Lukács) and the afterlives of Goethe’s morphological writings (in the Austrian biologist Paul Kammerer); theories of reception, with emphasis on the dynamics of popularization, canonization and literary adaptation; the history of criticism in relation to present-day critical practices.

In teaching, whether on literature, theory or other areas, he understands himself emphatically as a literature professor, which means close analysis of individual works, with attention to their genre, and the dynamics their production and reception. His courses challenge the canons and conventions of what is thought to be “teachable,” often feature interdisciplinary topics, and combine literary classics with less-frequently-taught works (“Illegitimacy,” “The Short Spring of German Theory,” “Historical Fiction,” “Living Form: Organicism in Society and Aesthetics,” “Visions of the End and Representations of Transcendence,” “Fakes, Frauds and Counterfeits”). He regularly devotes seminars to the careful study of longer literary texts, such as Goethe’s Faust and Wilhelm Meister, Hermann Broch’s The Sleepwalkers, George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire, Heimito von Doderer’s The Strudlhof Steps, and (in Spring 2027) Ingeborg Bachmann’s Todesarten cycle.

His current research project, provisionally titled “The Theory Show,” seeks to historically disentangle the forms and genres of academic publication and communication, to produce a clearer conception of the academic and public discourses that came to be known collectively as “critique” and “theory.” The focus of the project is the West German 1960s, out of which interdisciplinary networks and “schools” emerged from the interface and contestation between philosophy and sociology. Case studies include the Positivismusstreit (“positivist dispute”) in German sociology, the research group Poetik und Hermeneutik, and the 1962 Congress of the German Philosophical Society in Münster (“Philosophy and the Question of Progress”). Such offshoots of established disciplinary frameworks also produced new forms of academic publication, especially the academic Sammelband (or “edited collection”) as the leading genre of interdisciplinary research.

CV

Highlighted Research Activities

May 1 to July 31, 2023 – Alexander von Humboldt Fellowship to the German Literature Archive Marbach (Deutsches Literaturarchiv Marbach), cosponsored by the Center for Literary and Cultural Research, Berlin (Zentrum für Literatur- und Kulturforschung Berlin)

May-July, 2025 – Fellow at the Center for Advanced Studies at the Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich

December 11, 2026, to January 15, 2027 – Fellowship at the Erich Auerbach Institute at the University of Cologne

2023-2026 publications: 

“The Prehistory of the Edited Collection.” Theory as Event. Eds. Matthew Erlin and André Fischer. Forthcoming 2026.

“Das Raunen der Theorie.” Theoriestile. Eds. Michael Gamper and Oliver Simons. Berlin: Edition AVL 2025. Forthcoming 2026.

“‘Nachahmung und Illusion’: Functions and Dysfunctions of the Protocol as a Medium of Humanities Research Based on the Example of Adorno’s Seminars and ‘Poetik und Hermeneutik I.’ Eds. Christoph König and Anna Kinder. Geschichte der Philologien 67/68 (2025), 67-80.

“Afterlives of the Academic Conference: Paratexts and Parabases of the First ‘Soziologentag’ (Frankfurt am Main, 1910).” Paratexte der Theorie. Eds. Michael Gamper and Wolfgang Hottner. Berlin: Edition AVL 2025, 29-58.

Review essay of Prosa: Geschichte, Poetik, Theorie (eds. Svetlana Efimova and Michael Gamper) and Grundlagen einer Theorie der Prosa (Ralf Simon). Arbitrium 42:1 (2024), 1-10. https://doi.org/10.1515/arb-2024-0028. 

“Sources and Methods: Theory of Canon and the Possibilities of Disciplinary Practice in German Studies.” Eds. Willi Goetschel and Tanvi Solanki. The Germanic Review  99:1 (2024), 5-16. https://doi.org/10.1080/00168890.2023.2289191.

“Hermann Broch’s Massenwahntheorie Today.” Massenwahntheorie und Friedenspoetik: Hermann Broch und die bedrohte Demokratie des 20. Jahrhunderts. Eds. Sarah McGaughey, Elisa Risi, Daniel Weidner, und Doren Wohlleben. Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter 2023, 9-32.

“Criteria of Tragic Form: Toward a Reconstruction of Georg Lukács’s Earliest Critical Theory.” New German Critique 149 (50/2, August 2023), 9-35. https://doi.org/10.1215/0094033X-10459912.

“Gewalttheorie/Theoriegewalt: Nicolaus Sombart und die Theoriegeschichte.” In Große Gegenwart: Zur Erinnerung an Nicolaus Sombart (1923 2008). Eds. Gerhard Wagner and Peter Gostmann. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz 2023, 177-206.

“The Short Spring of German Theory (I): Positivismusstreit vs. Poetik und Hermeneutik,” ZfL Blog (Feb. 28, 2023): https://www.zflprojekte.de/zfl-blog/2023/02/28/kirk-wetters-the-short-spring-of-german-theory-i-positivismusstreit-vs-poetik-und-hermeneutik/.

“The Short Spring of German Theory (II): We Have Always Been Postcritical” ZfL Blog (March 7, 2023): https://www.zflprojekte.de/zfl-blog/2023/03/07/kirk-wetters-the-short-spring-of-german-theory-ii-we-have-always-been-postcritical/.

2023-2026 lectures:

July 16, 2026: “Editing (Lektorat) as Scrupulous Reading: Karl Markus Michel and the Suhrkamp Verlag,” at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich Workshop, “Scrupulous Reading: Reading Closely Before Close Reading,” organized by Carlos Spoerhase and Beer Albers.

May 1, 2026: “Intellectual Speech and Speechlessness After the End of Ideology,” invited lecture at the Columbia University Deutsches Haus workshop, “The Political Imaginary,” organized by Nicola Gess.

February 18, 2026: “Blumenberg’s Claims,” invited lecture at Johns Hopkins University German Department.

November 20, 2025: “Metaphern der (Nicht-)Öffentlichkeit in Wielands Gesprächen unter Vier Augen,” invited lecture at the conference in Halle, “Jenseits des Gerichtshofes: Alternative Imaginationen der modernen Öffentlichkeit,” organized by Theo Jung and Daniel Weidner.

September 27, 2025: “Intellectual Speech and Speechlessness After the End of Ideology,” paper for the panel series “Bad Solidarities” (organized by Daniel Hoffmann-Schwarz und Barbara Natalie Nagel) at the 2025 German Studies Association Conference (Washington, DC).

June 25, 2025: “The Prehistory of the Edited Collection,” invited research presentation at the LMU Munich.

June 19, 2025: “Das Raunen der Theorie” (The Murmur of Theory), invited participation at Freie Universität Berlin workshop on “Theoriestile” (Styles of Theory), organized by Michale Gamper and Oliver Simons.

June 4, 2025: “The Intellectual Outsider: Karl Markus Michel and the Voice of Critique,” invited YouTube lecture at the University of Haifa.

March 19, 2025: “Hermeneutic Keywords: Rezeption, Wirkung, Applikation, Verstehen,” hybrid workshop at Yale on “Hans Blumenberg’s Hermeneutics,” co-organized with Petra Gehring (TU Darmstadt) and Johannes Bungenstab (TU Darmstadt).

November 8, 2024: “Island Getaways: Heinse’s Ardinghello und die glückseligen Inseln,” paper for the panel “From Tahiti to Taurus: Island Texts Around 1800” at the Atkins Goethe Society of North America Conference in San Antonio, Texas.

November 7, 2024: “The Chariot of Plutus: Plutocracy and Power in Sokurov’s Faust,” paper for the panel series, “The Worlds of Faust II” at the Atkins Goethe Society of North America Conference in San Antonio, Texas.

October 1, 2024: “Progress Unto the End: Debates on History and Eschatology in Münster 1962,” invited lecture at the KU Leuven Institute of Philosophy.

October 21, 2023: “The Afterlife of the Academic Conference,” invited lecture at the workshop, “The Afterness of Living On: Toward a Politics and Poetics of Survival,” at Brown University.

October 7, 2023: “The Philosophische Rundschau and the Academic Book Review,” paper on the panel, “Re-Viewing the Rezension,” at the German Studies Association conference in Montreal.

September 22, 2023: “Hermeneutic Keywords: Rezeption, Wirkung, Applikation, Verstehen,” invited talk at the workshop, “Re-Interpretation: Hermeneutics in the Age of AI,” at New York University.

September 16, 2023: “The Prehistory of the Edited Collection,” invited talk at the conference, “Theory as Event,” at the University of Washington, St. Louis.

July 20, 2023: “Die Vorgeschichte des Sammelbands,” Wednesday Seminar at the Literaturarchiv Marbach.

July 10, 2023: “Die Vorgeschichte des Sammelbands,” invited lecture at the LMU Munich.

July 5, 2023: “Die Vorgeschichte des Sammelbands,” invited lecture at the University of Jena.

June 13, 2023: “The Short Spring of German Theory,” invited colloquium at the Center for Literary and Cultural Research Berlin.

March 29-April 1: “Academia and Democracy in the German Post-War” at “Writing Democracy: Literature and Democratic History,” international conference at Yale, co-organized with Jennifer Allen (History), Tilman Venzl (Munich).

March 16-18, 2023: “Sokurov’s Faust and Putin’s Cultural Politics” at “Warring Memories: (Im)Possibility of Speaking About the Past,” American Comparative Literature Association Seminar in Chicago, organized by Irina Kogan and Nikon Kovalev.