Rate My Professor Peter Barton

Dr Peter A. Barton serves as a Teaching Fellow in the German Programme within the Department of Languages and Cultures, School of Arts, Division of Humanities at the University of Otago. He holds a BA (Hons) and PhD from the University of Otago, along with an MA from the University of London. Barton's academic career at Otago has focused on German studies, contributing significantly to the preservation and analysis of German-language historical documents and literature. As co-editor of the Otago German Studies series since 2017, alongside Dr August Obermayer and Dr Cecilia Novero, he helps sustain this long-standing publication initiative founded in 1980, which has produced over 30 volumes advancing Germanistik in New Zealand and beyond. The series features scholarly works on German literature, culture, and history.

Barton's research specializations include ecocriticism, German Democratic Republic narratives, and antifascist personal histories. He co-edited Volume 28, Of Rocks, Mushrooms and Animals: Material Ecocriticism in German-speaking Cultures (2017), which explores material agency in literature through essays on authors like Annette von Droste-Hülshoff, Peter Handke, W.G. Sebald, and others addressing geological, fungal, and animal themes. In Volume 31 (2023), he edited transcriptions, translations, and commentaries for the Letters of an antifascist series, documenting Marianne Angermann-Beutler's correspondence from 1936, 1938, 1943, and 1945, drawn from Hocken Collections manuscripts. These works reveal personal antifascist resistance during the Spanish Civil War, Nazi era, and post-war period. Additional publications include the chapter East Germany, March 1990: Eine Schubladenreportage in Volume 30, Imperfect Recall: Re-collecting the GDR, and a bibliography in Volume 31. Barton also contributes to the editorial board of the Cultures, Histories and Identities in Visual Studies Research Network, enhancing interdisciplinary dialogues on visual culture and German studies. His meticulous editorial and scholarly efforts underscore his impact on archival recovery and environmental literary criticism within German studies.