Professor Matthew Handelman is Assistant Professor of German and a member of the Core Faculty in the Digital Humanities Specialization at MSU. His research interests include German-Jewish literature and philosophy in the early twentieth century, the intersections of science, mathematics and culture in German-speaking countries, as well as the digital humanities and the history of technology. Currently, he is working on two major projects. The first is a book manuscript that examines the philosophical and aesthetic application of mathematical thinking in the writings of Franz Rosenzweig and Siegfried Kracauer. The second is a collaborative digital project with scholars in Israel and Germany - together they are working to design and build a social edition of Franz Rosenzweig's Star of Redemption.
Matthew received his Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania. During his graduate work, he was a fellow at the Leo Baeck Institute in London, the DAAD, and the Deutsches Literaturarchiv, Marbach am Neckar. He received his B.A. from Hamilton College with a dual major in mathematics and German literature.
Articles:
“Making Room for Judaism – Franz Rosenzweig and the Spatiality of Belief,” in: Räume und Dinge, ed. Manfred Pfaffenthaler et al. (Bielefeld: transcript, 2014).
“Der Text ist Landschaft – Marginalität und Paul Celans ‘Engführung,’” in Am Rand: Grenzen und Peripherien in der europäisch-jüdischen Literatur, eds. Sylvia Jaworski and Vivian Liska (München: Edition Text + Kritik, 2012).
“Franz Rosenzweig’s Modern Mathematics,” Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook, Vol. 57 (forthcoming, 2012).
“The Forgotten Conversation: Five Letters from Franz Rosenzweig to Siegfried Kracauer, 1921 – 1923,” Scientia Poetica, Vol. 15 (December, 2011): 232-251.
“Mathematical Mythologies and the Dialectic of Enlightenment,” in: Fiktum versus Faktum: Nicht-mathematische Dialoge mit der Mathematik, eds. Franziska Bomski and Stefan Suhr (Berlin: Erich-Schmidt Verlag, 2011): 59-77.
Book Reviews:
Johannes von Moltke and Gerd Gemünden, eds. Culture in the Anteroom: The Legacies of Siegfried Kracauer (Ann Arbor: Michigan University Press, 2012), forthcoming in German Studies Review.
