2023—2024

Davide Giuriato

Modern German Literature, University of Zurich

Davide Giuriato is professor for Modern German Literature at University of Zurich, where since 2017 he is also part of the board of directors at the center of research “Arts and Culture Theory”. He received his PhD from University of Basel in 2005 and his habilitation from Goethe University Frankfurt/M. in 2013. He also taught at University of Salzburg and University of Vienna and had visiting professorships at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, University of Münster and Dortmund University. He has been awarded the DFG Heisenberg Fellowship for his research.

Giuriato’s main research is the rhetoric, poetics, and aesthetics of German-language literature from the 18th to the 20th century. In addition to media studies research on the cultural technique of writing and on an aesthetics of clarity, the focus is on the interweaving of literary discourse with other forms of cultural knowledge. The relationship between literature, pedagogy and developmental psychology, for example, is analyzed in his latest monograph Infinitely Determinable. Children and Childhood in Modern German Literature (Zurich: Diaphanes 2021).

At HIAS, Davide Giuriato will work on his new book Empire of Flies, which is at the intersection of literature, philosophy and scientific animal research. In the center will be an insect that, unlike the so-called ‘social’ insects, has drawn comparatively little attention from Western culture. While ants and bees have become popular in cultural studies research in recent years as reflective models for human societies, the aim is to show that the seemingly insignificant fly has been equally relevant for a ‘political zoology’ in literature since antiquity.

Davide Giuriato’s tandem partner is Martin Jörg Schäfer, professor for Modern German Literature and Theatre Studies at Universität Hamburg.

His HIAS fellowship is provided by the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg and the federal and state funds acquired by Universität Hamburg in the framework of its Excellence Strategy.

Website

Davide Giuriato 

Funding

Universität Hamburg

Tandem

Martin Jörg Schäfer, professor for Modern German Literature and Theatre Studies, Universität Hamburg.

Publications in the Fellows Library