headshot of Nicola Gess (grey background)
Alumni

Nicola Gess

Visiting Scholar (Nov 2016-Jan 2017)

PhD, Professor of German Literature, Basel University

Nicola Gess is a literary scholar and musicologist and Professor of German Literature at Basel University, Switzerland. Her research focuses on themes at the crossroads of literary studies and music/sound studies—such as the literary history of listening; the sonic dimension of literature; and the intertwinement of literary, philosophical, and scientific research on acoustic phenomena—and themes at the crossroads of literary studies and the history of psychology and ethnology, such as the discourse on “primitive thought” in the early twentieth century. She is a member of the NCCR Iconic Criticism (Basel), a co-director of Sinergia Poetics and Aesthetics of Amazement (Zurich), and a co-founder of the research network Auditory Knowledge in Transition (Berlin). She is currently finishing the book-length essay Thaumaturgia Poetica: Poetics of Amazement in the 18th Century and Beyond. In the spring of 2017, she will be a fellow at the Morphomata International Center for Advanced Studies at Cologne University.

Selected Publications

Gess, N., & Honold, A. (Eds.). (2016). Handbuch Literatur & Musik. Berlin: De Gruyter.

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Gess, N. (2016). Musikalische Figurationen des Politischen in Ernst Blochs "Geist der Utopie". In M. Doll, & O. Kohns (Eds.), Die zwei Körper der Nation (pp. 119-150). Munich: Wilhelm Fink.

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Gess, N. (2015). "Geistersehen" in der "Schallwelt": Anti-Theatralität und Meta-Theater in Wagners Schriften und im "Parsival". Das Bildliche und das Unbildliche. Nietzsche, Wagner und das Musikdrama, 95-116.

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Gess, N., Hartmann, T., & Hens, D. (Eds.). (2015). Barocktheater als Spektakel: Maschine, Blick und Bewegung auf der Opernbühne des Ancien Régime. Munich: Wilhelm Fink.

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Gess, N. (2015). Ideologies of sound: longing for presence from the eighteenth century until today. Journal of Sonic Studies, 10.

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Gess, N. (2013). Primitives Denken: Wilde, Kinder und Wahnsinnige in der literarischen Moderne (Müller, Musil, Benn, Benjamin). Munich: Wilhelm Fink.

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Gess, N. (2011). Gewalt der Musik: Literatur und Musikkritik um 1800. Freiburg: Rombach.

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Gess, N., Schreiner, F., & Schulz, M. (Eds.). (2005). Hörstürze. Akustik und Gewalt im 20. Jahrhundert. Würzburg: Könighausen & Neumann.

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