The Distinguished Visiting Max Kade Professorship
The Max Kade Foundation
The Max Kade Foundation promotes Germanic studies and transatlantic exchange by supporting programs that foster collaboration between German-speaking countries and the United States. Its initiatives include post-doctoral research, visiting professorships, and student exchange opportunities at both the undergraduate and graduate level.
Spring 2026
Nicola Gess, Distinguished Visiting Max Kade Professor
Nicola Gess is Professor of Modern German and General Literature at Basel University (Switzerland). Most recently, she has directed two large research projects on „Half-Truths. Truth, Fiction and Conspiracy in the Post-Factual Age“ and on „The Power of Wonder. The Instrumentalization of Admiration, Astonishment and Surprise in Discourses of Knowledge, Power, and Art“. She has published widely on these topics, as well as on literary primitivism, the cultural history of listening, and connections between literature and music.
Please visit her academic profile: https://germanistik.philhist.unibas.ch/de/personen/nicola-gess/
Spring 2025
Maha El Hissy, Distinguished Visiting Max Kade Professor
Maha El Hissy is an independent literary scholar, after having taught German and Comparative Literature at Queen Mary University of London, Ludwig-Maximilians University in Munich and the University of Cairo. El Hissy’s research and writing focus on migration, transcultural perspectives, writing by marginalised communities in Germany, literature and right-wing extremism, postcolonial theory and literatures. She is currently working on a collection of essays on erased Arab archives in Germany from 1970 to the present.
Please visit her academic profile: https://www.germanistik.uni-muenchen.de/personal/ndl/mitarbeiter/el_hissy_maha/index.html
Spring 2024 - Spring 2025
Faime Alpagu, Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Faime Alpagu is a postdoctoral researcher funded by the MAX KADE Foundation in New York City. She holds a Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Vienna. Her dissertation project entitled Migration Narratives Juxtaposed: A Sociological Analysis of Biographies, Photos and (Audio) Letters of “Guest Workers” from Turkey living in Austria was funded by a doctoral scholarship from the Austrian Academy of Sciences. Faime Alpagu received several awards such as the Research Award for Research on Migration and Integration 2021 by the Austrian Integration Fund (ÖIF) and the Dissertation Award for Research on Migration from the Austrian Academy of Sciences. Her research has been further supported by the Institute for Human Sciences Vienna (IWM), the IFK Internationales Forschungszentrum Kulturwissenschaften Wien and vorarlberg museum.
Spring 2024
Anne Fleig, Distinguished Visiting Max Kade Professor
Anne Fleig is Professor of Modern German Literature at Freie Universität Berlin. Since 2021 she is President of the international Heinrich-von-Kleist-Gesellschaft. Her research covers German Literature around 1800, 1900 and Contemporary Literature with special interest in multilingualism, migration and belonging, affect studies and gender studies. Her recent work concerns the literary history of Berlin and urban poetics.
Please visit her academic profile: https://www.geisteswissenschaften.fu-berlin.de/we04/ndl/mitarbeiter_innen/prof/fleig/index.html
Spring 2023
Stefan Willer, Distinguished Visiting Max Kade Professor
Stefan Willer is Professor of Modern German Literature at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. Until 2018 he was co-director of the Leibniz-Zentrum für Literatur- und Kulturforschung (ZfL). His research interests include the cultural history of generation, genealogy, and inheritance, the literary rhetoric of futurity, theories of translation, and connections between literature and music.
Please visit his academic profile: https://www.literatur.hu-berlin.de/de/ueberdasinstitut/mitarbeitende/derzeitige-institutsmitarbeiter-innen/derzeitige institutsmitarbeiterinnen/1691402
Fall 2021
Frauke Berndt, Distinguished Visiting Max Kade Professor
Frauke Berndt is Professor of German Literature at the University of Zurich, after teaching at Goethe University Frankfurt am Main, The University of Chicago, and Eberhard Karls University Tuebingen. Berndt has published widely on rhetoric, aesthetics & literary theory. Currently she is leading the international research groups ETHOS (finishing in 2022) as well as FORM (starting in 2022), and is working on a monograph on ambiguity.
Please visit her academic profile: https://www.ds.uzh.ch/p/berndt
Fall 2019
Eva Geulen, Distinguished Visiting Max Kade Professor
Max Kade Professor of Fall 2019: Eva Geulen, Leibniz-Zentrum für Literatur- und Kulturforschung (ZfL).
Please visit her academic profile: https://www.zfl-berlin.org/people-detail/geulen.html
2013 and 2019
Michael Gamper, Distinguished Visiting Max Kade Professor
Please visit his academic profile: https://www.geisteswissenschaften.fu-berlin.de/we03/institut/mitarbeiter/ProfessorInnen/Gamper/index.html
Former Visiting Professors from Other Programs
Spring 2025
Lieke van Deinsen, Queen Wilhelmina Visiting Assistant Professor of the History, Language and Literature of the Dutch Speaking People
Lieke van Deinsen is an Assistant Research Professor Dutch Literature and Culture at KU Leuven and will join the department as the Queen Wilhelmina Chair in the Spring term of 2025. Her research focuses on the visual and textual representations of female authorship and authority in early modern Europe.
Her interdisciplinary approach combines a strong foundation in textual and literary analysis with expertise in material and visual cultures, enriched by the application of innovative digital methods. This is evident in her two major book publications. Her dissertation, published in 2017, examines processes of literary canon formation during periods of cultural crisis. Additionally, as a Rijksmuseum Fellow, she authored the first volume in the museum’s Studies in History series: The Panpoëticon Batavûm. The Portrait of the Author as a Celebrity.
Please visit her academic profile: https://nl-lab.net/en/about-nl-lab/who-are-nl-lab/guest-researchers/lieke-van-deinsen/