Fellow at DHC

May – August, 2010

Disruptive Relics: Investigations of the Intersection of History, Memory, and Language in Sebald and Benjamin

Robert McCulloch studied Comparative Literature and German at Emory University and is currently a graduate student at The Johns Hopkins University. His project concerns the prose works of W.G. Sebald (Schwindel. Gefühle, Die Ausgewanderten, Die Ringe des Saturn, Austerlitz), focusing specifically on Sebald's narration and representations of historical events. Drawing on twentieth-century and contemporary memory theory (Halbwachs, Assmann, M. Hirsch), he examines the role that literary representation has in shaping and preserving memory. Walter Benjamin’s historical and theoretical writings ("Das Kunstwerk im Zeitalter seiner technischen Reproduzierbarkeit," "Über den Begriff der Geschichte") inform this research based on their ideas for addressing the past in a way that is productive for the present.