Erica Weitzman

Erica Weitzman is an Associate Professor of German at Northwestern University, specializing in 19th- and early 20th-century German literature, aesthetics, and critical theory. She holds a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from New York University (2012). Her research explores ethics, materiality, and irony in German realist literature, with a focus on figures like Stifter, Kafka, and Walser. She has held fellowships at Universität Konstanz, the University of California, Berkeley, and the Berlin Zentrum für Literatur- und Kulturforschung. Recent publications include At the Limit of the Obscene (2021) and co-edited Suspensionen. Über das Untote (2015).

Education: Ph.D. in Comparative Literature, New York University (2012); Postdoctoral Fellowships at Universität Konstanz and UC Berkeley. Research interests span realism, modernism, new materialisms, psychoanalysis, and theories of irony. She has been an AT&T Research Fellow (2020–22) and Kaplan Institute Faculty Fellow (2016–17).

Her work examines how materiality and aesthetics intersect in German literature, particularly through analyses of shame, obscenity, and bodily representation. Recent articles address topics like Kafka's realism, Walser's comic irony, and the 'undead' as a cultural metaphor. She also explores intersections of literature with philosophy, politics, and cultural history.

Awards include the Volkswagen Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship (2012–13) and a Humboldt Foundation Fellowship (2017–18). Her teaching covers German literature, comparative studies, and interdisciplinary humanities. She currently investigates 'bluster' as a rhetorical mode in late 19th-century Germany.