Susan Bernstein

Susan Bernstein is a Professor of Comparative Literature and Professor of German Studies at Brown University, positions she has held since 2007, having joined the faculty in 1989 as an instructor in the Department of Comparative Literature. She received her Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from The Johns Hopkins University in 1991 with a dissertation titled "Virtuosity of the Nineteenth Century: Music and Language in Heine, Liszt and Baudelaire," her M.A. in Comparative Literature from the University of California, Berkeley in 1983, and her B.A. cum laude with honors in German and Philosophy from Yale University in 1979. Bernstein's research focuses on German, French, English, and American literature of the 18th through 20th centuries, with particular interests in literary theory, literature and the arts including music and architecture, Romanticism, philosophy, and poetry. She has also addressed the history of reading and writing technologies and topics such as the uncanny, irony, and Romantic genre theory.

Her major publications include the monographs Virtuosity of the Nineteenth Century: Performing Music and Language in Heine, Liszt and Baudelaire (Stanford University Press, 1998), Housing Problems: Writing and Architecture in Goethe, Walpole, Freud, and Heidegger (Stanford University Press, 2008), and The Other Synaesthesia (State University of New York Press, 2023), as well as the co-edited and translated volume On Goethe by Walter Benjamin (Stanford University Press, 2024). She has published articles in journals including MLN, differences, Novel, and October on authors and thinkers such as Nietzsche, Kant, Heine, Shelley, Derrida, and Heidegger. Bernstein's career features visiting appointments as Professor at New York University (2003) and Technische Universität Berlin (2005), Visiting Scholar at Université de Paris Est-Créteil (2012) and the American Academy in Rome (2000). At Brown, she chaired the Department of Comparative Literature (2008–2011 and 2021–2023), served as Director of Graduate Studies for German Studies (2018–2020), and held roles on promotion, search, and graduate committees. Awards include Pembroke Center Faculty Fellow (2019–2020 and 2014–2015), Cogut Center Faculty Fellow (2017), John Rowe Workman Award for Excellence in Teaching in the Humanities (2013), Fulbright Senior Scholar Award (2005), and Salomon Research Award (1998).

Professional Email: Susan_Bernstein@brown.edu