Yale University
The Shape of Things: Reading Culture through Form in the Weimar Republic
Sophie Duvernoy is a scholar and translator focusing on the literature and aesthetic theory of the Weimar Republic. Sophie received her PhD in German Literature at Yale University in 2023 with a dissertation entitled “The Shape of Things: Reading Culture through Form in Wilhelmine and Weimar Germany,” which examined the birth of the analytical concept of ‘cultural form’ in late nineteenth century sociology and philosophy before tracing it into the feuilleton of the Weimar Republic. Sophie is co-editor of the academic volume Representing Social Precarity in German Literature and Film (Bloomsbury Press, 2023), and her writing and translations have appeared in Modern Language Notes, The Paris Review Online, Los Angeles Review of Books, No Man’s Land, and The Offing.
In addition to her scholarly work, Sophie is the English-language translator of Gabriele Tergit. Her translation of Tergit’s Effingers was published in 2025 by New York Review Books and was shortlisted for the 2026 Kurt and Helen Wolff translation prize, while her translation of Tergit’s Käsebier Takes Berlin (2019) was shortlisted for the 2021 Schlegel-Tieck translation prize. Her work has been supported by the National Endowment of the Arts and the Berlin Senate.