Underwood International College

Associate professor of German and Comparative Literature

The University of Chicago
B.A. Comparative Literature and Germanic Studies with High Honors, June 2008
Honors Thesis: “Veiled Beauty: Living Pictures in Goethe’s Elective Affinities.”

Profile

I am Assistant Professor of German and Comparative Literature at Underwood International College since Fall 2018. I specialize in eighteenth- and early-nineteenth century German literature and philosophy, with an approach informed by media theory and intellectual and cultural history. I have a particular interest in the German and French receptions of classical antiquity in this period.

A guiding concern of my work is an interest in the sensory and embodied dimensions of literature, philosophy, and media particularly that of classical antiquity and the European Enlightenment.  Emerging from my dissertation on Herder’s “cultural acoustics,” a major strand of my research concerns the role that listening practices and imaginative conceptions of sound played in formative concepts of cultural difference and human diversity in eighteenth-century Germany and its impact on contemporary media theory.

My work has been recognized by the Andrew W. Mellon foundation, the DAAD, Princeton’s Hyde Fellowship, Yonsei University’s Future Leading Fund, and the Goethe Society of North America. I have additionally been offered fellowships by the Volkswagen Stiftung and the Fritz Thyssen Stiftung.

Visiting Fellowships

•  School of Advanced Study, University of London Visiting Fellow, Institute of Classical Studies (June-August 2022)
• Justus-Liebig-Universität Gießen, Visiting Fellow, International Graduate Center for the Study of Culture, June 2018
• Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Visiting Postdoctoral Associate, Research Group “Epistemes of Modern Acoustics,” May 2017-August 2017
• Humboldt University of Berlin, Visiting Faculty Scholar, Thematic Network “Literature – Knowledge – Media” May 2017 – August 2017; Visiting Scholar and DAAD Research Fellow, PhD-Network “Wissen der Literatur,” October 2012-July 2013
• University of Konstanz, Visiting Researcher at the Research Cluster, “Kulturelle Grundlagen von Integration,” June 2010

Courses and Current Research Areas

Underwood International College, Yonsei University (Self-Designed Courses)
1. Topics in Aesthetics
2. Topics in Cultural Studies
3. Topics in Modern European Literature
4. Introduction to Sound Studies
5. Introduction to Media Studies
6. Politics and Culture of the Senses
7. Introduction to Literary Theory and Criticism
8. Cultural Acoustics
9. Introduction to Classical Literature: Ancient Greek Tragedies and their Adaptations
10. Introduction to German Romanticism
11. Introduction to Goethe
12. What is World Literature? Practices, Institutions, Definitions
13. Converting Cultures: Classical and Early Modern European Travel Narratives
14. Languages of Nature: Lucretius and Goethe’s Poetic Science
15. Literature and Media Theory
16. Literary Pathologies

Cornell University (Self-Designed Courses)
1. Technologies of Verse, cross-listed in Comparative Literature, German Studies, Romance Studies and
Visual Studies. Fall 2017. Upper-Level Undergraduate and Graduate.
2. The Sound of Literature, cross-listed in German Studies and Comparative Literature. Undergraduate
and Graduate.
3. Cult of the Silent Woman: Male Fantasies in 18th Century German Thought cross-listed in German
Studies and Feminist, Gender and Sexuality Studies. Readings and Discussions in German.

Princeton University
1. Precepted Wendy Belcher’s “Growing up Global: Novels and Memoirs of Transnational Childhoods”
Writing-intensive course, African American Studies and Comparative Literature.
2. German Language at all levels (Beginners – Advanced)

Selected Publications

 PUBLICATIONS

Journal Articles
1. “German Romanticism, Indology, and its Sensory Repurposing in India” in Special Issue: “Sensing
Migrant Romanticism” Comparative Literature (June 2025), eds. Carlos Abreu Mendoza and Tanvi
Solanki. Forthcoming.
2. Introduction to “Sensing Migrant Romanticism,” with Carlos Abreu Mendoza, Comparative Literature
(June 2025), eds. Carlos Abreu Mendoza and Tanvi Solanki. Forthcoming.
3. “Who Sounds most Worthy of Human Rights? Aural Cultural Diversity, the Concept of Humanity, and
their Religious Investments in German Language Ideologies” in Special Issue: “Endowed by their
Creator: Human Rights and Religion in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries” German Life and
Letters (2025), ed. Claudia Nitzschke. Forthcoming.
4. “A Reading of Friedrich Kittler’s Reading of E.T.A. Hoffmann’s ‘Der Goldene Topf’ (The Golden Pot)
in Aufschreibesysteme 1800/1900 (Discourse Networks 1800/1900)” in Special Issue: “Canonical
Pressures.” Germanic Review 99.1 (2024): 49-62, eds. Willi Goetschel and Tanvi Solanki.
5. Introduction, “Canonical Pressure: German Literature and its Voices of Difference.” Germanic Review
99.1 (2024): 1-4, eds. Willi Goetschel and Tanvi Solanki
6. “Poesis, God, and the Connectedness of all Beings: Herder’s Comparative Method,” Historical
Reflections / Réflexions Historique 50.1 (2024): 1-21.
7. "Listening to the Cultural Acoustics of Migrant Voices: The Archived Conversations of the BBC and
the British Library’s ‘Listening Project,’” European Journal of Cultural Studies 27.1 (2024): 17-35.
8. “Listening to Difference: Herder’s Aural Theory of Cultural Diversity in ‘The Treatise on the Origin of
Language’ (1772),” History of European Ideas 48.7 (2022): 930-947.
9. “Mediating the Universal and Particular: Herder’s Tone in Pastoral Performance,” Germanic Review
96.1 (2021): 1-22.
10. “Aural Philology: Herder Hears Homer Singing,” Classical Receptions Journal 12.4 (2020): 401-424.
11. “Cultural Hierarchies and Vital Tones: The Making of Herder’s ‘Mother Tongue’” Special Issue: “The
Rise and Fall of Monolingualism.” German Studies Review 41.3 (2018): 551-565, eds. David Gramling
and Bethany Wiggin.
12. “Une culture par l’ouïe depuis la chaire,” Special Issue: “L’ouïe dans la pensée européenne au 18c
siècle.” Revue Germanique Internationale 27 (2018): 151-162, ed. Clémence Couturier-Heinrich.
13. “A Book of Living Paintings: Tableaux Vivants in Goethe’s Die Wahlverwandtschaften (1809)” in
Special Issue: “Goethe and the Visual Arts.” Goethe Yearbook 23 (2016): 245-270.

Edited Special Issues
1. (with Willi Goetschel) Canonical Pressures: German Literature and its Voices of difference, special
issue in Germanic Review (2024)
2. (with Carlos Abreu Mendoza) Sensing Migrant Romanticism, special issue in Comparative
Literature (2025; In Preparation)

Book Chapters
1. “The Romantic Poet as Aural Philologist: Listening to the Multilingual Difference of the Languages of Nature.”  in Literature and Sound Studies, eds. Yasser Elhariry and Liesl Yamaguchi. Bloomsbury, 2025. In
preparation.
2. “Colonial Philology and its Erotic Imaginaries: Kalidasa’s Sakuntala in Germany” in Gender and
German Colonialism, eds. Elisabeth Krimmer and Chunjie Zhang, 207-225. London: Routledge,
2024.
3. “The Media-Archaeological Ear and its Difference that Goes Unheard,” in Coming to Know, vol. 2
of the series An Archaeology of Listening, eds. Nida Ghouse and Brooke Holmes, 22-39, 67-
68. Berlin: Archive Books, 2022.
4. “Rhythmus gegen den Fluss: Herder, die Oralität der Griechen und das ‘Meer der Gelehrsamkeit.’"
In Materialitätsdiskurse der Aufklärung. Bilder - Dinge – Praxen, ed. Thomas Bremer, 81-92. Halle:
Universitätsverlag Halle-Wittenberg, 2016.

Reviews, Short Essays, Edited Symposia
1. Efraim Pokosik, ed. Doing Humanities in Nineteenth-Century Germany in Journal for the History
of Rhetoric 26.3 (2023): 413–417.
2. Tobias Wilke, Sound Writing: Experimental Modernism and the Poetics of
Articulation, in Germanic Review 98.3 (2023): 352-254.
3. “The Silent Whale Song and its Audible-Inaudible H,” Response to Silent Whale Letters, eds. Ella
Finer and Vibeke Mascini, Thyssen-Bornemisza Art (TBA) Contemporary Academy’s “Ocean
Archive,” (October 15, 2022)
4. “Introduction,” and Editor of a Syndicate Network Book Symposium for Yael Almog’s Secularism
and Hermeneutics. Featured in “The Chronicle of Higher Education: The Review” (2021). With
commentaries by Ilit Ferber, Jonathan Fine, John Hamilton, and Chad Wellmon.
5. Sarah V. Eldridge and C. Allen Speight, eds. Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship and
Philosophy in German Studies Review 46.1 (2023): 155-157.
6. Bettina Brandt and Daniel Purdy, eds. China in the German Enlightenment in Goethe Yearbook 28
(2021): 374-376.
7. Susan Stewart, Ruins Lesson: Meaning and Material in Western Culture in EuropeNow, Journal of
the Council for European Studies at Columbia University (December 2020).
8. Seán Williams, Pretexts for Writing: German Romantic Prefaces, Literature and Philosophy in
German Quarterly 93.2 (2020): 287-290.
9. Remigius Bunia, Metrik und Kulturpolitik (Berlin: Ripperberger & Kremer, 2014), Monatshefte
109.1 (2017): 140-142.

Translations
Excerpts from Goethe, J.W.’s “My Life: Poetry as Truth” with Stanley Corngold and Ruth Gross in The
Sufferings of Young Werther, ed. Stanley Corngold, 108-120. New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2012.

More Information

 For more information, see 
https://yonsei.academia.edu/TanviSolanki
 www.tanvisolanki.com