Michael Swellander has studied German and English literature in Austin, Freiburg, Frankfurt, and New York. His research interests include politically activist aesthetics (patriotic and protest lyric, the politicization of prose in early nineteenth-century Germany, committed literature, operative literature, Brecht‘s eingreifendes Denken), feuilletonism, figurations of the historical present in literature, German nationalism, Junges Deutschland, Heinrich Heine, and Georg Büchner.
He is writing his dissertation on the thematic turn to the historical present in the literature of Junges Deutschland, with a particular focus on Heine’s and Büchner’s criticisms of this development.
He has also translated the poetry of Stefan Döring into English.
