Xuxu Song

Xuxu Song’s research and teaching interests center on German thought from the sixteenth century to the present. She works at the intersection of German studies with European studies, political and legal theories, public policy, environmental studies, migration in the context of (de)globalization, translation, and the history of science and economic thought.  

Her work is largely motivated by the interest in breaking the barriers between “major”/ “canonical” and “minor”/lesser-known perspectives in various kinds of German-speaking context. Her dissertation, “A Study of the Athenaeum (1798-1800) as the Early German Romantic Work of Art,” explores the multi-year, multi-volume, and multi-authored journal in its own right as the paradigmatic work of the Jena constellation through Sympoesie and Symphilosophie. She is particularly interested in dialogues between German intellectual history and crucial interconnected discussions of global concern of our day, such as environmental crises, migration, and the rule of law. A second project expands on her recent work theorizing translation and untranslatability in both a literal and metaphorized sense vis-à-vis issues around borders, memory, and inequalities. She approaches translation as an unstable and situational act of re-bordering and a space opened up for uncertainties and chaos, which in turn, via early Romanticism, leads to creativity and productivity. This project asks the guiding questions of how “translation changes everything,” to use Venuti’s phrase, and how (under)representations of disadvantaged, marginalized experiences in juxtaposition with the dominant and hegemonic can be understood via translation.

Prior to joining the faculty of Columbia’s Department of Germanic Languages in Fall 2024, she taught at Princeton University (Department of German). She received her Ph.D. in German Studies from the University of California, Irvine following a research stay in Frankfurt and Mannheim funded by the DAAD Doctoral Research Fellowship. She was a recipient of the Andrew W. Mellon Humanities Faculty Fellowship, Humanities Out There Public Fellowship, and Humanities Out There Higher Education Fellowship. She studied German and Public Administration at the University of Southern California, Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, and Renmin University of China. She has interpreted for intergovernmental meetings in Vienna, Bern, Florence, and Los Angeles, and has translated on contemporary politics in Germany and the U.S. and the Second World War. 

Outside of the Department of Germanic Languages she currently serves on the Modern Language Association forum executive committee, Literatures, Languages, and Cultures: 18th- and Early-19th-Century German. She is also a USEA (United States Eventing Association) amateur rider.