Lisa Marie Anderson

(she/her/sie)

Professor & Chair of German, Hunter College

My work focuses on German literature and intellectual history of the 18th-20th centuries. I’m interested in intersections between literature, philosophy, religion, history and politics, and also in translation studies. I’m a co-founder of Hunter’s Academic Center for Excellence in Research and Teaching (ACERT).

Contact

Education

PhD University of Pennsylvania (2004)

MA University of Pennsylvania (2000)

BA Rutgers University (1998)

Positions

Professor & Chair, German, Hunter College

Publications

Books and Edited Volumes

Co-Editor with Christiane Schönfeld, A Youth in Germany by Ernst Toller, translated by Eoin and Eva Bourke, Broadview Press, 2024

Co-Editor with Christiane Schönfeld, “Ernst Toller in Exile,” German Life & Letters Vol. LV, No. 2, April 2022

Editor, Hamann and the Tradition, Northwestern University Press, 2012

German Expressionism and the Messianism of a Generation, Editions Rodopi, 2011

Hegel on Hamann, Northwestern University Press, 2008

Selected Articles and Chapters

“Unheimliche Heimkehr: Alteritäts- und Rassifizierungsdiskurse in Hinkemann und Trommeln in der Nacht,” Bertolt Brecht und Ernst Toller, J.B. Metzler, under review

“Ernst Toller’s Eine Jugend in Deutschland and the German Avant-Garde,” Journal of Avant Garde Studies 3, December 2023, 31-51.

“Antifascism and Free Speech on Campus: Ernst Toller’s Queens College Affair,” German Life & Letters LV.2, April 2022, 298-309.

“Speech in a Low Dishonest Decade,” The Wilson Quarterly, Winter 2020.

“Countering Catastrophe: Goethe’s Novelle in the Aftershock of Heinrich von Kleist,” The Goethe Yearbook 2019, 65-78.

“The Meaning of Failure and the Failure of Meaning: Ernst Toller on Pacifist Language and Literature in Interwar Germany,” Pacifist and Anti-Militarist Writing in German 1892-1928, Iudicium Verlag, 2018, 136-148.

“The Pacifism of Ernst Toller,” Germanistik in Ireland 12 (2017), 129-143.

“From Abstraction to Documentary: Ernst Toller’s Plays as War Dramas,” Studies in Twentieth and Twenty-First Century Literature 41.2 (Summer 2017).

“‘Sehenden Auges und mitfühlenden Herzens’: Ernst Toller’s Witness to the First World War,” Yearbook of the Simon Dubnow Institute XIII (2014), 411-34.

“Of Theory, Aesthetics, and Politics: Configuring the Messianic in Early Twentieth Century Europe,” Messianic Thought Outside Theology, Fordham UP, 2014, 15-27.

“Margarete Susman: The ‘Meisterin des deutenden Essais’ on the First World War and the German Revolution,” Discovering Women’s History: German-Speaking Journalists (1900-1950), Peter Lang, 2014, 93-120.

“Toward Professional Integration in the Humanities: One Teacher-Researcher’s Experience with Portraiture,” Arts & Humanities in Higher Education 10.1 (2011), 103-119.

“Der Herr Etatsrat: Theodor Storm’s Critical Reflection on Ersatzreligion,” Seminar: A Journal of Germanic Studies 45.1 (2009), 18-30.

“Adam’s Return to the Garden: The Political Messianic in German Expressionism and Activism,” On the Outlook: Figures of the Messianic, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2007, 71-81.

“Redemption and the Aesthetic Imagination: The Messianism of German Expressionism,” Messianism, Apocalypse, Redemption: 20th-Century German Thought, Australian Theological Forum, 2006, 127-137.


Selected Translations

Kurt Hiller, “Anti-Cain,” in Toward the Critique of Violence: A Critical Edition, ed. Peter Fenves and Julia NG, Stanford UP, 2021, 179-193.

Peter Sloterdijk, “Voices for Animals: A Fantasy on Animal Representation,” in Strangers to Nature: Animal Lives and Human Ethics, Lexington Books, 2012, 263-269.

“Else Lasker-Schüler’s ‘An Old Tibetan Rug’: A New Translation,” Translation 2 (2007), 149-151.


Book Reviews

Ernst Toller, Sämtliche Werke: Kritische Ausgabe, ed. Dieter Distl et al, Germanistik in Ireland 12 (2017).

Robert Ellis, Ernst Toller and German Society: Intellectuals as Leaders and Critics, 1914-1939, The German Studies Review 39.1 (2016): 184-186.

Johann Gottfried Herder, Shakespeare, trans. and ed. Gregory Moore, The European Legacy: Towards New Paradigms 14.4 (2009): 473.

selected presentations

“Unheimliche Heimkehr: Alteritäts- und Rassifizierungsdiskurse in Hinkemann und Trommeln in der Nacht,” Bertolt Brecht und Ernst Toller, Magdeburg, Germany, July 2022

Roundtable on “Walter Benjamin’s Toward the Critique of Violence,” Institute for the Humanities, Simon Fraser University, May 2022

“Antifascist Activism and Free Speech on Campus: Toller’s Queens College Affair,” Remembering Ernst Toller (1893-1939): Exiles and Refugees between Europe and the US, New York, 2019

Post-reading discussion of “Three Suitcases” by Richard Byrne, Leo Baeck Institute, New York, 2019

“Countering Catastrophe: Goethe’s Novelle in the Aftershock of Kleist,” Modern Language Association, New York, 2018

“‘The incurable side of nature’: Urban and rural vistas in the early German novella,” Nineteenth-Century Studies Association, Philadelphia, 2018

“Rescue, Recovery, and Restoration in Goethe’s Novelle,” Northeast Modern Language Association, Pittsburgh, 2018

“Immigration and Blackness in Amerika: Some Thoughts on Teaching Kafka’s Der Verschollene,” Diversity, Decolonialization, and the German Curriculum, University of North Carolina at Asheville, 2017

“The Quest for Salvation in the Age (and Aftermath) of German Expressionism,” European Network for Avant-garde and Modernism Studies Fifth International Conference, Rennes, 2016

“Names Are What We Make Them: Margarete Susman on the November Revolution, Messianism, and the Call to Palestine,” Northeast Modern Language Association, Toronto, 2015

“How (not) to think the future now,” keynote lecture, Mormon Scholars in the Humanities annual conference, Berkeley, 2015

“From ‘Inwardness’ to ‘Bloody Rift’: Margarete Susman on the Causes of the First World War,” Perspectives on the “Great” War, London, 2014

“To Celebrate Myself: The Early Poems of Rainer Maria Rilke,” Northeast Modern Language Association, Boston, 2013

“What We Teach When We Teach Translation: How to Teach German Majors to Translate, and Why,” Binghamton University German Studies Colloquium, 2012

“On the Use of Role-Play in Upper-Level Language and Literature Courses,” Midwest Modern Language Association, St. Louis, 2011

“The Child is the Savior of the Man: Pregnancy, Nativity, and Delivery on the Expressionist Stage,” German Studies Association, Oakland, 2010

“Of Theory, Aesthetics, and Politics: Configuring the Messianic in Early Twentieth-Century Europe,” American Comparative Literature Association, Long Beach, 2008

“Negotiating the Sacred and the Secular: Parables and the Teaching of World Literature,” Modern Language Association, Chicago, 2007

“Telling Stories with Our Research: Possibilities for Portraiture in German Studies Today,” Women in German, Utah, 2007

“Adam’s Return to the Garden: Expressionist Aesthetics versus Activist Politics,” Modern Language Association, Philadelphia, 2006

“From Plato to the Death of God: Teaching Heinrich Heine’s ‘Immanuel Kant’ in the Undergraduate Classroom,” American Association of Teachers of German, Nashville, 2006

“The Political Messianic in Early Twentieth-Century German Thought,” On the Outlook: Figures of the Messianic, Institute for Jewish Studies, University of Antwerp, 2006

“Messianism and Secularization in the Ethos of German Expressionism,” 34th Annual 20th-Century Literature and Culture Conference, University of Louisville, 2006