Paola Mayer

Education

• B.A. University of Toronto
• M.A. Princeton University
• Ph.D. Princeton University

Fields of Specialization

• German Romantic literature and thought
• Early 20th Century German-Jewish literature
• Myth and fairy tales in German culture
• The uncanny and fantastic in German literature and theory

Research

• Working Title: Myth and Identity in 20th Century German-Jewish Literature (with Ruediger Mueller

Publications

• The Aesthetics of Fear in German Romanticism. Kingston & Montreal: McGill-Queen's UP, 2020.
• Jena Romanticism and its Appropriation of Jacob Böhme: Theosophy – Hagiography – Literature. Kingston & Montreal: McGill-Queen’s UP, 1999.

• Anthology (co-edited with Ruediger Mueller): Alexander Moritz Frey, Der Mensch und anderen Erzählungen. Elsinor Verlag, 2021
• Special issue of Oxford German Studies 46.1 (2017): Satires of Dehumanization 1918-1945. Co-edited with Ruediger Mueller and Helena Tomko.
• Traditions in German Literature: Romanticism, Humanism, Judaism. Essays in Memory of Hans Eichner. Co-edited with Hartwig Mayer and Jean Wilson. Bern: Lang, 2012.
• Benedikte Naubert. Neue Volksmärchen der Deutschen. Edited, with commentary and afterword by Marianne Henn, Paola Mayer & Anita Runge. 4 vols. Göttingen: Wallstein Verlag, 2001.

• "Robinsonade against Colonialism and National Socialism: Alexander Moritz Frey's Der Mensch (1940." Zeitschrift für interkulturellen Germanistik 14 (2023): 41-56
• “Transgressive Science in E.T.A. Hoffmann's Fantastic Tales.” Christopher R. Clason (ed.). E.T.A. Hoffmann: Transgressive Romanticism. Liverpool: University of Liverpool Press, 2018. pp. 65-81.
• co-authored with Ruediger Mueller: “Fascism as Dehumanization: Alexander Moritz Frey's Political Fables.” Oxford German Studies 46:1 (2017): 58-74.
• “Jean Paul, E.T.A. Hoffmann and the Definition of the Romantic.” Hartwig Mayer, Paola Mayer, Jean Wilson (eds). Romanticism, Humanism, Judaism: The Legacy of Hans Eichner. Bern: Peter Lang, 2012. pp. 115-138.
• “The Veiled Goddess and the Naked Truth: Revisiting Schiller’s and Novalis’s Adaptations of the Sais Myth.” Germanisch-romanische Monatsschrift 61 (2011): 145-164.
• “Religious Conversion and the Dark Side of Music: Kleist’s Die Heilige Cäcilie oder die Gewalt der Musik and Hoffmann’s Das Sanctus.” Colloquia Germanica 40 (2009): 237-258.
• “Variations on a Romantic Theme: The Education of the Artist in E.T.A. Hoffmann’s Der Kampf der Sänger and Der Feind.” Seminar 43:3 (2007): 280-300.
• Reflections on Mythology: Eichendorff’s Response to Schiller and Novalis.” Euphorion 101:2 (2007): 197-225.
• “Melusine: The Romantic Appropriation of a Medieval Tale,” Germanisch-Romanische Monatsschrift 52.2 (2002): 289-302.
• “Das Unheimliche als Strafe und Warnung: Zu einem Aspekt von E.T.A. Hoffmanns Kritik an der Frühromantik.” E.T.A. Hoffmann Jahrbuch 8 (2000). 56-68.
• “Reinventing the Sacred: The Romantic Myth of Jakob Böhme.” German Quarterly 69.3 (1996): 247-59.
• “Die unheimliche Landschaft: Ein Aspekt von Eichendorffs lyrischer Dichtung.” Athenaeum 5 (1995): 169-96.