John Zilcosky

I received a BA from Harvard, an MA from Stanford, a PhD in Comparative Literature and Literary Theory from the University of Pennsylvania, and also studied in Germany ( Heidelberg, Münster, Tübingen, Berlin) and France ( Paris, Avignon). I teach and write about German and European literature and culture from 1750 to the present—concentrating on modernism, exoticism, theories of travel and tourism, postcolonialism, psychoanalysis, popular culture, and the intersections of aesthetics and politics. My first book, Kafka’s Travels: Exoticism, Colonialism, and the Traffic of Writing (2003), examines Franz Kafka’s surprising love of adventure literature and argues that this biographical eccentricity forces us to reconsider his oeuvre. Making use of travel diaries, train schedules, tour guides, and colonial novels, Kafka’s Travels reveals how Kafka’s modern metaphorics of alienation emerged out of his encounter with the utopian fantasies of his day. Kafka’s Travels won the MLA’s 2003-2004 Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize, awarded biennially to one book in Germanic languages or literatures. This work piqued my curiosity about other travel writings, leading me to write essays on the “art” of getting lost, on W.G. Sebald’s and Goethe’s travels, and to edit a book about European voyages from the Enlightenment through today: Writing Travel: The Poetics and Politics of the Modern Journey (2008). In addition to my research on German literature and European travel, I maintain strong intellectual investments in comparative literature, philosophy, and literary theory (articles on Kant, Nietzsche, T.S. Eliot, Freud, Adorno, Celan, Botho Strauss, Paul Auster). An Alexander von Humboldt Research Grant allowed me recently to spend a year in Berlin researching my present book— Uncanny Encounters—which investigates European anxieties about the disappearance of the “other” during the swansong of fin de siècle imperialism.

Recent Publications (2002-present; complete publication list; c.v.):

Writing Travel: The Poetics and Politics of the Modern Journey (ed.). Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008.

Kafka’s Travels: Exoticism, Colonialism, and the Traffic of Writing . New York: Palgrave, 2003; paperback edition, 2004.

“Learning How to Get Lost: Goethe in Italy.” In Cosmopolitanism and Colonialism. Ed. John K. Noyes. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2009. Forthcoming (27 pp. ms.) .

“Uncanny Encounters: Adventure Literature, Psychoanalysis, and Ethnographic Exhibitions.” In Literature and Science / Literatur und Wissenschaft. Ed. Monika Schmitz-Emans and Manfred Schmeling. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2008. 139-157.

“Writing Travel.” Introduction to Writing Travel: The Poetics and Politics of the Modern Journey. Ed. John Zilcosky. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008. 1-22.

“Inventing Reception: Genius and Judgement in Kant’s Critique of Judgement.” Neohelicon XXXIV (2007) 1: 93-99.

“ Von Zuckerbaronen und Landvermessern: Koloniale Visionen in Schaffsteins Grüne Bändchen und Kafkas Das Schloss .” In Kafkas Institutionen. Ed. Arne Höcker and Oliver Simons. Bielefeld: Transcript Verlag, 2007. 119-144.

“Verirrt und wieder zurechtgefunden: Orientierungslosigkeit und Nostalgie in Sebalds ‘Austerlitz.’” Text+Kritik (Sonderband 2006): 120-30.

“Lost and Found: Disorientation, Nostalgia, and Holocaust Melodrama in W. G. Sebald’s Austerlitz.” Modern Language Notes (MLN) 121.3 (April 2006): 679-98.

“Poetry after Auschwitz?: Celan and Adorno Revisited.” Deutsche Vierteljahrsschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Geistesgeschichte 79.4 (December 2005): 670-91.

“Modern Monuments: Nietzsche, T.S. Eliot, and the Problem of History.” Journal of Modern Literature 29.1 (Fall 2005): 21-33.

“The Writer as Nomad?: The Art of Getting Lost.” Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies 6 (2004): 229-41.

“Sebald’s Uncanny Travels.” In W.G. Sebald: A Critical Companion. Ed. Jonathan Long and Anne Whitehead. Edinburgh: Edinburgh Univ. Press, 2004. 102-20.

“Wildes Reisen: Kolonialer Sadismus und Masochismus in Kafkas ‘Strafkolonie.’” Weimarer Beiträge 50.1 (January 2004): 33-54.

“Lost in America.” The New Republic 229 (29 September 2003): 38-41.

“The Ends of the Exotic: Franz Kafka, Modernist Inwardness, and the Travel Novel, Richard and Samuel.” In La Porta D’Oriente: Viaggi e Poesia. Ed. Paola Mildonian, Maria Alzira Seixo, Lourdes Câncio Martins. Lisbon: Edições Cosmos, 2002. 165-76.

“Surveying the Castle: Kafka’s Colonial Visions.” In A Companion to the Works of Franz Kafka. Ed. James Rolleston. Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2002. 281-324.

“Kafka’s Remains.” Lost in the Archives. Ed. Rebecca Comay. Toronto: Alphabet City Media, 2002. 630-43.

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