BENESCH, Klaus (T.) 1958-

PERSONAL:

Born February 21, 1958, in Karlsruhe, Germany. Education: University of Munich, M.A., Ph.D.; University of Freiburg, D.Phil.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Agnesstrasse 57, Munich 80797, Germany. Office—Department of English, University of Bayreuth, Universitätsstrasse 30, D-95447 Bayreuth, Germany. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

University of Freiburg, Freiburg, Germany, assistant professor of English; University of Massachusetts—Amherst, Amherst, MA, adjunct professor of English; University of Bayreuth, Bayreuth, Germany, professor of English and chair of American studies.

MEMBER:

Modern Language Association of America, Poe Studies Association, Bavarian American Academy, SLS, CAAR, EAAS, DGFA.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Publication award, America Institute, Munich, Germany.

WRITINGS:

The Threat of History: Narrative Discourse and Historical Consciousness in Contemporary African-American Fiction, Blaue Eule (Essen, Germany), 1990.

Romantic Cyborgs: Authorship and Technology in the American Renaissance, University of Massachusetts Press (Amherst, MA), 2002.

(Editor) African Diasporas in the Old and the New World, Rodopi (Amsterdam, Netherlands), 2003.

Work represented in anthologies. Contributor to periodicals, including Callaloo, Contemporary Literary Criticism, Weber Studies, Compar(a)ison: International Journal of Comparative Literature, and Arbeiten aus Anglistik und Amerikanistik. Guest editor, Amerikastudien/American Studies, 1996.

WORK IN PROGRESS:

Leaping down Niagara Rapids: The Aesthetics of Speed in Modern American Literature and Culture, a monograph on literary responses to social and technological change in the twentieth century.

SIDELIGHTS:

Klaus Benesch told CA: "If, as Friedrich Nietzsche put it, there are no facts prior to what we call 'interpretation,' then writing, academic and otherwise, is an important means to participate in and contribute to the processes of turning mere events into meaningful experiences. The glimmering hope that my reading of literary texts might eventually, if only on a very small scale, influence the perception and understanding of those texts by other readers has always been an important incentive for my own work. By the same token, I never found critical writing a tedious chore; rather, to give voice to your thoughts and ideas so as to allow other people to share, argue with you, and occasionally dismiss these ideas has always been extremely gratifying for me."