Matt Erlin

Matt Erlin is Professor of German and Comparative Literature and Chair of the Department of Comparative Literature & Thought at Washington University in St. Louis. He also directs the Max Kade Center for Contemporary German Literature. Holding a PhD from UC Berkeley, his research focuses on 18th- and 19th-century German literature and culture, aesthetics, economics and literature, philosophies of history, urban culture, and digital humanities.

His academic career includes co-editing influential works like German Culture in Nineteenth-Century America and Distant Readings, and authoring books such as Berlin’s Forgotten Future and Necessary Luxuries. His digital humanities projects leverage computational tools to re-examine German literature, including the multi-university “Text Mining the Novel” initiative.

Erlin teaches courses on German literature, consumer culture, and Marxist theory. His pedagogical interests align with interdisciplinary approaches, including the Interdisciplinary Project in the Humanities. He actively collaborates with the Humanities Digital Workshop (HDW) to advance computational methods in literary studies.