Theresa Kauder

Theresa Naomi Kauder is a PhD Candidate in German and Film & Media Studies at Yale. Her research focuses on the intersection of Critical Theory, German Literature, Visual Art and Film Theory & History. Her dissertation, “Allegories of Seeing,” examines figurations of (post-)romanticism in relation to the aesthetic and epistemological paradigm of visuality emerging around 1800 through the lens of film studies. Authors and directors include Kant, Goethe, Schiller, Novalis, F. Schlegel, E.T.A. Hoffmann, Benjamin, Lang, Schroeder, Fassbinder, Wenders, Herzog, Handke, Malick. Theresa holds a B.A. in Art History and an M.A. in Cultural History and Theory (Kulturwissenschaft) with Distinction from the Humboldt University of Berlin. She wrote her Bachelor’s thesis on Roland Barthes’ theory of autofiction and her master’s thesis on the later works of Michel Foucault. She received the Humboldt University Society (HUG) Prize for organizing the lecture series “Subversion and Political Difference: Discourses and Perspectives between Political Emancipation and Post-Sovereignty.” She published papers (peer-reviewed) on contemporary literature and gender theory (such as on Hélène Cixous’s oneiric writing).

Besides her research and teaching, she regularly presents her research at national and international conferences, and has worked as an assistant curator at the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library as well as being a curatorial intern of photography at the Guggenheim Museum of New York City. 

Academic Talks:

2020 “Love is Colder than Death. Rainer Werner Fassbinder and René Pollesch between Theater and Film.” Northeast Modern Language Association (NeMLA) 2020, Boston.

2019 “Poetry Beyond Words: Carlfriedrich Claus’ Sprachblätter, Denklandschaften and Vibrationstexte.” The Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, New Haven (Yale University).  

2019 “The Celluloid Axis between Berlin and Tokyo: Distorted Reflection in Christian Kracht’s The Dead.” Asian German Studies Conference (AGT 2019 Sapporo, Japan).

2017 “Ethopoetics and Vulnerability: Hélène Cixous’ écriture de soi (writing the self) read with Michel Foucault and Judith Butler.” Conference: “Politics of the Sensate Subject: Judith Butler” (SciencePo, Paris).

2016 “Ethopoetic as Critique: On the later Michel Foucault.” Conference: “Foucault revisited” (Vienna University, Austria).

2014 “From Mirror to Stage: Roland Barthes par Roland Barthes.” Conference: “Barthes@100” (Cardiff University, Ireland).

Areas of Interest:

Modernism, Postwar Cultures, Avant-garde, Contemporary Art, German Pop Literature, the German Bourgeois Novel and Postwar Poetry, New Wave Cinema, Critical Theory, Post-structuralism, Theories and Ethics of the Self, Gender Studies, Environmental Humanities, Curatorial Studies.