Max Phillips

Areas of Interest

18th to 20th-century German literature; literature and the history of knowledge; medieval lyric; Austrian literature

Bio

Max Phillips joined the German department in 2021. His research and teaching put literary texts in conversation with heterogeneous fields of knowledge to address methodological and theoretical questions in and between the humanities and natural sciences from a historical perspective. His dissertation, provisionally titled “Absolute Accident: Randomness Between Literature and Thermodynamics in the German Tradition,” examines chance as an instrument of representation and theorization between literary and theoretical texts in the 18th and 19th centuries. Alongside a primary focus on literature and the history of knowledge, especially “around 1800,” Max has active research interests in medieval lyric, literature and music, and Austrian literature. His article on the lost melodies of classical Minnesang was recently published in the DVjs.

Before coming to Yale, Max earned an M.A. from the LMU Munich with a thesis on Echo and echoes in Hölderlin’s later Pindar reception. Also a classical musician, Max has studied music and German literature at Harvard (B.A. 2015), composition at the Kunstuni Graz, and double bass at the Juilliard School.