Meryem Deniz
Assistant Professor
Appointments
Assistant Professor of German Studies
Area of Expertise
German literary, cultural, and intellectual history; German Romanticism; environmental humanities; materialism; history of science; sound studies; classical reception studies; Turkish German literature and culture; migration and postcolonial studies
Biography
Meryem Deniz is an Assistant Professor of German Studies at Dartmouth College. Previously, Deniz worked as an Acting Assistant Professor at Stanford University, where she earned her Ph.D. in German Studies and her Ph.D. Minor in Classics. She is the recipient of the GSNA Best Essay Prize in 2023, the Stanford Humanities Center Dissertation Prize, the Ric Weiland Graduate Fellowships, and the Stanford Centennial Teaching Assistant Award. Her research focuses on eighteenth- and nineteenth-century German literature and poetics, contemporary transnational literature, and migration studies, with an emphasis on their intersection with environmental humanities, (new) materialisms, posthumanism, sound studies, and postcolonial studies. She is currently working on her monograph, titled The Experimental Fluid: The Matter of Romantic Science, Literature, and Environment. Drawing on the history of science, environmental humanities, classical reception studies, and new materialist theories, this project examines how literary and scientific experiments with various fluid phenomena enabled Romantic writers to explore new aesthetic forms and ecopoetic modes of writing. Her teaching experience and interests include German language courses at all levels, as well as courses on a broad range of topics, including the environment, sustainability, migration, and transnationalism in literature, music, film, theater, and the performative arts.
Education
Ph.D. Stanford University
ALB, Extension Studies, Harvard University
GSASP, Harvard University
Taught Courses
Publications
"New Approaches to Old Topics in Recent Romantic Scholarship," Monatshefte, 2025 Volume 117 (2): 289-306 (Review Article).
"Tragedy as an Open Network: Antigone in Ferguson and The Nurse Antigone," Reception Studies: New Challenges in a Changing World, ed. by Anastasia Bakogianni and Luis Unceta, De Gruyter, 2024, 307-328.
"The Entanglements of Matter, Mind, and Meaning: Novalis's 'Elastic Mode of Thinking,'" The Germanic Review: Literature, Culture, Theory, 2023, Vol. 98 (3): 249-263 (GSNA Essay Prize Winner, 2023).
"Jean Paul's Acoustic Romanticism and Aeolian Soundscapes in Vorschule der Ästhetik and Titan," Monatshefte, 2022, Volume 114 (2): 220-241 (Monatshefte, The Most Read Article of 2022).
"Lessing's Critical Hermeneutics and Elliptical Reading of Aristotle's Poetics," Lessing Yearbook, 2020, Vol. 47: 53-71.
Book Reviews:
Romantic Empiricism: Nature, Art, and Ecology from Herder to Humboldt (Dalia Nassar, Oxford University Press, 2022), Monatshefte, 2023, Volume 115 (4): 679-681.
Turkish Guest Workers in Germany: Hidden Lives and Contested Borders, 1960s to 1980s (Jennifer A. Miller, University of Toronto Press, 2018), Focus on German Studies, 2019, Vol. 25/26: 141-145.
Speaking Engagements
Selected Presentations and Talks:
"Rethinking Romantic Ecologies and the Empedoclean Elements in Hölderlin," EDGES (Engaged Digital German Environmental Studies Symposium), July 20-21, 2026.
"The Performative Agency of the Rings in Lessing's Minna von Barnhelm (1767)," ASECS Panel "Lessing's Matter/Materialities," April 9-12, 2026.
"Bildungsroman in the Anthropocene: Trans-corporeality in Deniz Ohde's Streulicht (2020)," GSA Panel "Animals, Elements, and Technologies - Decentering Anthropos through Imagining Intimate Otherness in German Literature," September 27, 2025.
"Subterranean Entanglements and the Anthropocene in Hölderlin's The Death of Empedocles," MLA Panel "Underworlds and Undergrounds: Poetic Extractions, January 9, 2025.
"Association of Vibrant Objects: A Narrative Strategy in Sharon Dodua Otoo's Adas Raum," ACLA Seminar "Inhuman Voices: Writing and the Non-Human," March 16, 2023.
"Two ecopoetic readings in Novalis's Die Lehrlinge zu Sais," Re-Thinking Agency: Non-Anthropocentric Approaches at the University of Warsaw, February 4, 2022.
"Sounding stones and embodying tones: Jean Paul's inversion of Goethe's 'plastic form' around 1800," MLA Panel "Goethe's Forms: Whole," January 6, 2022.
Works in Progress
Book Manuscript: The Experimental Fluid: The Matter of Romantic Science, Literature, and Environment (In progress)
Peer-reviewed article: "Soundscapes in Alexander von Humboldt's Views of Nature and Cosmos" (In progress)
Affiliation and Membership
Program in Women's, Gender, & Sexuality Studies, Dartmouth College
American Society for 18th Century Studies
American Comparative Language Association
German Studies Association
Goethe Society of North America
Lessing Society
Modern Language Association
The Umwelt Center at The Ohio State University
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