David Tse-Chien PanAssociate Professor of German, German |
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Research Interests |
nineteenth-and early twentieth-century German literature and intellectual history | |
| URL | Curriculum Vitae | |
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Research Abstract |
David Pan received his Ph.D. in 1995 from Columbia University and has since taught at Washington University (St. Louis), Stanford University, and Penn State University before coming to UC Irvine in 2006. He also worked for two years as a management consultant at McKinsey and Company in Los Angeles and has been an editorial associate and is currently the book review editor at Telos. His first book, Primitive Renaissance: Rethinking German Expressionism (University of Nebraska Press, 2001), describes the ways in which German expressionist writers and artists were inspired by art forms from so-called “primitive” cultures in Africa, the South Seas, and the Americas. This book establishes the outlines of a primitivist aesthetic that understands the modernist European return to myth and the primitive neither as a regression nor a purely imperialist gesture, but rather as part of broader trends in which artists and writers such as Friedrich Nietzsche, Wassily Kandinsky, and Carl Einstein were driven by a sense that social structures based on rational discourse and scientific analysis might be unable to replace adequately the myths and rituals of traditional culture. Since completing this book, his research has continued to focus on issues of aesthetics and tradition. He has just finished a book project about sacrifice as a trope in German literature, entitled Economies of Sacrifice: Violence and Culture in Modern Germany. This manuscript argues that while a model of sacrifice lies at the foundation of every culture and serves to develop a human relationship to violence, every particular model of sacrifice functions differently and marks the society of which it is a part. Within this framework, the book characterizes modern German literary culture in terms of a basic opposition between 1) a traditionalist insistence on the subordination of the individual to community ideals through sacrifice, exemplified in Heinrich von Kleist and Franz Kafka, and 2) an Enlightenment defense of the individual, evident in Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Wilhelm von Humboldt and Ernst Jünger, leading to a mobilization of violence for the sake of the individual. His next project moves back toward the 18th century in order to develop a theoretical framework that can help explain the functioning of tradition in the modern world. While Enlightenment thinkers promoted reason against tradition as the best authority for guiding human understanding and attempted to establish a universal culture based on rational argument and philosophical reflection, anti-Enlightenment thought in Germany rejected this stance and turned to religious frameworks and traditions as the foundation of human society. Future work in this project will consider anti-Enlightenment thought in Germany, concentrating on the work of Johann Gottfried Herder, Friedrich Jacobi, and Johann Georg Hamann, but also analyzing later developers of this tradition such as Arnold Gehlen and Carl Schmitt, in order to investigate its particular understanding of the role of traditions in determining the structure of human consciousness. Recent courses he has taught include: Enlightenment and Anti-Enlightenment in 18th Century German Culture, Sacrifice in Modern German Literature, The German Realist Novel, Carl Schmitt and the Frankfurt School, The Myth of Faust and the Devil’s Pact, The Origin of Language, and Understanding Political Violence. |
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BOOKS Economies of Sacrifice: Violence and Culture in Modern Germany. Manuscript completed. Under consideration with University of Nebraska Press. Kleists Erzählungen und Dramen: Neue Studien. Edited with Paul Michael Lützeler. Würzburg: Königshausen und Neumann, 2001. 263 pp. Primitive Renaissance: Rethinking German Expressionism. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2001. 239 pp. Reviews: Marion F. Deshmukh, Central European History 36.4 (2003): 605-607. Katharina Gerstenberger, Journal of English and Germanic Philology 102.3 (July 2003): 415-417. Ingo R. Stoehr, Seminar: A Journal of Germanic Studies 39 (2003): 367-68. Andrew C. Wisely, Monatshefte 95:4 (2003). G. P. Knapp, German Studies Review 25.1 (2002): 154-155. Joshua Gunn, Telos: A Quarterly Journal of Critical Thought 122(Winter 2002): 178-183. R. F. Krummel, Germanic Notes and Reviews 32.2 (2001): 201. |
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ARTICLES “Sacrifice as Political Representation in Bertolt Brecht’s Der Jasager and Der Neinsager.” Germanic Review: forthcoming. “Against Biopolitics: Walter Benjamin, Giorgio Agamben, and Carl Schmitt on Political Sovereignty and Symbolic Order.” The German Quarterly: forthcoming. “The Sovereignty of the Individual in Ernst Jünger’s The Worker.” Telos 144 (Fall 2008): 66-74. “Carl Schmitt on Culture and Violence in the Political Decision.” Telos 142 (Spring 2008): 49-72. “J.G. Herder, the Origin of Language, and the Possibility of Transcultural Narrative.” Language and Intercultural Communication 4: 1-2 (2004): 1-10. "Revising the Dialectic of Enlightenment: Alfred Baeumler and the Nazi Appropriation of Myth." New German Critique 84 (Fall 2001): 37-54. "The Aesthetic Foundations of Morality in Das Erdbeben in Chili." In Kleists Erzählungen und Dramen: Neue Studien. Ed. Paul Michael Lützeler and David Pan. Würzburg: Königshausen und Neumann, 2001. 49-59. "Carl Einstein und die Idee des Primitiven in der Moderne" In Carl-Einstein-Kolloquium 1998: Carl Einstein in Brüssel: Dialoge über Grenzen/ Carl Einstein à Bruxelles: Dialogues par-dessus les frontiers. Ed. Roland Baumann and Hubert Roland. Munich: Peter Lang, 2001. 33-48. "The Primitivist Critique of Modernity: Carl Einstein and Walter Benjamin." Telos 119 (Spring 2001): 41-57. "The Struggle for Myth in the Nazi Period: Alfred Baeumler, Ernst Bloch, and Carl Einstein." South Atlantic Review 65.1 (2000): 41-57. "The Persistence of Patriarchy in Franz Kafka's 'Judgment.'" Orbis Litterarum 55 (2000): 135-60. "Adorno's Failed Aesthetics of Myth." Telos 115 (Spring 1999): 7-35. "Defending the Premodern Household against the Bourgeois Family: Anti-Enlightenment Anticolonialism in Heinrich von Kleist's Die Verlobung in St. Domingo. Colloquia Germanica 32.2 (1999): 153-187. "The Crisis of the Humanities and the End of the University." Telos 111 (Spring 1998): 69-106. "Instrumentalizing the Sacred: From Alfred Baeumler to Manfred Frank." In Wendezeiten - Zeitenwenden: Positionsbestimmungen zur deutschsprachigen Literatur 1945-1995. Ed. Robert Weninger and Brigitte Rossbacher. Tübingen: Stauffenburg, 1997. 233-247. "Botho Strauß: Myth, Community, and Nationalism in Germany." Telos 105 (Fall 1995): 57-75. "Kafka as a Populist: Re-reading 'In the Penal Colony.'" Telos 101 (Fall 1994): 3-40. "Political Aesthetics: Carl Schmitt on Hamlet." Telos 72 (Summer 1987): 153-159. |
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REVIEWS Erhard Schüttpelz. Die Moderne im Spiegel des Primitiven. Weltliteratur und Ethnologie (1870-1960). München: Fink, 2005. Zeitschrift für deutsche Philologie 126.4 (2007): 624-28. Reto Sorg. Aus den "Gärten der Zeichen": Zu Carl Einsteins Bebuquin. Munich: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 1998. Journal of English and Germanic Philology 100.1 (2001): 106-107. "The Deconstruction of Tragedy." Review article of John Sallis. Crossings: Nietzsche and the Space of Tragedy. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1991. Telos 89 (Fall 1991): 141-154. |
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Professional Societies |
American Association of Teachers of German American Comparative Literature Association Carl Einstein Society German Studies Association Modern Language Association |
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| Link to this profile | http://www.faculty.uci.edu/profile.cfm?faculty_id=5475 | |
| Last updated | 10/17/2008 | |