john mccarthy

books (selection)

  • Author. Remapping Reality: On Chaos and Creativity in Science and Literature (Goethe B Nietzsche B Grass). Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi Publishers, 2006. 373 pp
  • Co-editor and Co-Author. German Studies in the United States: A Handbook. Ed. by Peter Uwe Hohendahl, Frank Trommler, Patricia Herminghouse, and Cora Lee Kluge. New York: The Modern Language Society of America, 2003. 576 pp.
  • Co-editor and Co-Author. The Many Faces of Germany: Transformations in the Study ofGerman Culture and History. Ed. by John A. McCarthy, Walter Grünzweig, and Thomas Koebner. New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2004. 411 pp.


articles & chapters (selection)

  • “Disciplining History: Schiller als Historiograph.” Goethe Yearbook XII (2004): 209-225.
  • “Goethe and Schiller after Adorno: Using the Past to See the Future.” In: The Many Faces of Germany: Transformations in the Study of German Culture and History. Ed. John A. McCarthy, Walter Grünzweig, and Thomas Koebner. New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2004. Pp. 319-335.
  • “The Study of Germany in the United States.” In: The United States and Germany in the Era of the Cold War, 1968-1990. A Handbook. Ed. by Detlef Junker. Vol. 2. Publications of the German Historical Institute. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Pp. 287-93.
  • “Introduction.” In: The Many Faces of Germany: Transformations in the Study of German Culture and History. Ed. John A. McCarthy, Walter Grünzweig, and Thomas Koebner. New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2004. Pp. ix-xx.
  •  “Kopernikus und die bewegliche Schönheit: Schiller und die Gravitationslehre.” In: Schillers Natur. Leben, Denken und literarisches Schaffen. Sonderheft 6 der Zeitschrift für Ästhetik und Allgemeiner Kunstwissenschaft. Ed. by Georg Braungart und Bernhard Greiner unter Mitwirkung von Lutz-Hennig Pietsch. Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag, 2005. Pp. 15-37.
  • “Die Goethe-Gemeinde in Amerika.” In: Goethe in Gesellschaft. Zur Geschichte einer literarischen Vereinigung vom Kaiserreich bis zum geteilten Deutschland. Ed. by Jochen Golz and Justus H. Ulbricht. Köln-Weimar-Wien: Böhlau Verlag, 2005. Pp. 123-36.
  • “Faktum und Fiktion. Die Darstellung bürgerlicher Schichten zur Zeit des Sturm und Drang.” In: Bürgerlichkeit im 18. Jahrhundert. Ed. by Hans Erwin Friedrich, Fotis Jannidis, and Marianne Willems. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 2006. 241-67.
  • “Abermals 'Sektionsberichte des Lasters.' Bilaterale Reformvorstellungen in Literatur und Recht um 1800.” Internationals Archiv für Sozialgeschichte der deutschen Literatur 2006. In Press. 31 pp.


current projects

  • Book. Counter Cultures: The Critical Reception of the "Sturm und Drang." Göttingen: Wallstein Verlag, 2008. The ms. of ca. 300pp. is to be submitted to the publisher in 2007, An examination of the critical theory of the Storm and Stress period and its reception in the 19th and 20th centuries.
  • Chapter. “’Age of Tendencies’: Forms and Objectives of Romantic Criticism.” In: German Romanticism. A Companion Book. Ed. by Nicholas Saul. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. [6000 words]
  • Chapter. “Locating the Soul: The Soul Body Debate Then and Now.” In: Neuroscience and Religion. Ed. by Volney Gay. 30 pages.  In the 18th century, concurrent with Kant, a debate in the budding discipline of anthropology took place about where to locate the soul. One proposal (by Sömmering) was to locate it in the fluids within the cranium itself. Earlier medical doctors (Unger, Krüger) had competing proposals of where to locate the “soul.” I will tie those early ruminations in with contemporary research in neurology by framing the discussion within the wider field of how to define human consciousness. The main achievement of the Enlightenment was to highlight the rise of consciousness as the distinguishing feature of humankind. Is consciousness a secularist’s way of speaking about the soul? After all, Leibniz and Spinoza both argued that to be God-like is to know the mind of God.