John Zilcosky

Current Research Interests

I am writing a book on the "uncanny" in modern literature and thought; this project is supported both by an NEH fellowship (2013-14) and a Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) Insight Grant (2013-2016)

Publications

Books

Writing Travel: The Poetics and Politics of the Modern Journey (edited volume). Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008. 336 pp.

Kafka’s Travels: Exoticism, Colonialism, and the Traffic of Writing. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003 (paperback edition, 2004). 289 pp. Winner of the 2004 MLA Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize, awarded biennially to one outstanding monograph in the literatures and linguistics of the Germanic languages.

Reviewed in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (Hanns Zischler), Times Literary Supplement (Jeremy Adler), Chronicle of Higher Education (Nina C. Ayoub), H-Net Travel (Mirjam Triendl), German Studies Review (Sheila Johnson), Germanic Review (Iris Bruce), Seminar (Rochelle Tobias), Choice (E. Williams), H-Net German (Katherine Arens), German Quarterly (Imke Meyer), Journal of the Midwest Modern Language Association (Ben Hutchinson), University of Toronto Quarterly (Russell Kilbourn), Modernism/Modernity (Sabine Wilke), Germanic Notes and Reviews (Pamela Saur), The Yearbook of English Studies (John Pilling), Modern Fiction Studies (Allen Thiher), Journal of European Studies (Ritchie Robertson), The Modern Language Review (Julian Preece), Colloquia Germanica (Rolf Goebel), Monatshefte (Andreas Härter), Transit (Christina Gerhardt), Studies in Travel Writing (Elizabeth Boa), and Arbitrium: Zeitschrift für Rezensionen zur germanistischen Literaturwissenschaft (Claudia Albert).

Articles

2014. “Trains, Trauma, et le corps mecanisé.” Cahiers de l'Herne. Special Issue on Franz Kafka (forthcoming).
           
2013. “Savage Freud: Primitives, War Neurotics, and the Invention of the ‘Uncanny’ Method.” American Imago 70 (forthcoming).

2012. “Unheimliche Begegnungen: Abenteuerliteratur, Psychoanalyse, Moderne.” In Literarische Entdeckungsreisen: Vorfahren - Nachfahrten – Revisionen. Ed. Hans-Jörg Bay and Wolfgang Struck. Weimar: Böhlau Verlag. 203-220.

2011. “Kafka’s Poetics of Indeterminacy: On Trauma, Hysteria, and Simulation at the Fin de Siècle.” Monatshefte für deutschsprachige Literatur und Kultur 103: 344-359.

2011. “‘Samsa war Reisender’: Trains, Trauma, and the Unreadable Body.” In Kafka for the Twenty-First Century. Ed. Stanley Corngold and Ruth Gross. Rochester, NY: Camden House. 179-206.

2010. “On Claudio Magris’ ‘Frontiers of Identity.’” In Memories, Identities, Migrations. Ed. Martin Stiglio. Toronto: Istituto Italiano di Cultura. 64-70.

2008. “Uncanny Encounters: Adventure Literature, Psychoanalysis, and Ethnographic Exhibitions.” In Literature and Science / Literatur und Wissenschaft. Ed. Monika Schmitz-Emans and Manfred Schmeling. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann. 139-157.

2008. “Writing Travel.” Introduction to Writing Travel: The Poetics and Politics of the Modern Journey. Ed. John Zilcosky. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. 1-22.

2007. “Inventing Reception: Genius and Judgement in Kant’s Critique of Judgement.” Neohelicon 34: 93-99.

2007. “Von Zuckerbaronen und Landvermessern: Koloniale Visionen in Schaffsteins Grüne Bändchen und Kafkas Das Schloss.” In Kafkas Institutionen. Ed. Arne Höcker and Oliver Simons. Bielefeld: Transcript Verlag. 119-144.

2006. “Orientierungslosigkeit und Nostalgie in Sebalds ‘Austerlitz.’” Text+Kritik (Sonderband: Literatur und Migration): 120-30.

2006. “Lost and Found: Disorientation, Nostalgia, and Holocaust Melodrama in Sebald’s Austerlitz.” Modern Language Notes (MLN) 121: 679-98.

2005. “Poetry after Auschwitz?: Celan and Adorno Revisited.” Deutsche Vierteljahrsschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Geistesgeschichte 79: 670-91.

2005. “Modern Monuments: Nietzsche, T.S. Eliot, and the Problem of History.” Journal of Modern Literature 29: 21-33.

2004. “The Writer as Nomad?: The Art of Getting Lost.” Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies 6: 229-41.

2004. “Sebald’s Uncanny Travels.” In W.G. Sebald: A Critical Companion. Ed. Jonathan Long and Anne Whitehead. Edinburgh: Edinburgh Univ. Press. 102-20.

2004. “Wildes Reisen: Kolonialer Sadismus und Masochismus in Kafkas ‘Strafkolonie.’” Weimarer Beiträge 50: 33-54.

2003. “Lost in America.” The New Republic 229: 38-41.

2003. “Boundless Entertainment?” (review essay on Hanns Zischler’s Kafka Goes to the Movies). H-German, H-Net Reviews.

2002. “Kafka’s Remains.” In Lost in the Archives. Ed. Rebecca Comay. Toronto: Alphabet City Press. 630-643.

2002. “Surveying the Castle: Kafka’s Colonial Visions.” A Companion to the Works of Franz Kafka, Ed. James Rolleston. Rochester, NY: Camden House. 281-324.

2002. “The End(s) of the Exotic: Franz Kafka, Modernist Inwardness, and the Travel Novel, Richard and Samuel.” La Porta D’Oriente: Viaggi e Poesia. Ed. Paola Mildonian, Maria Alzira Seixo, Lourdes Câncio Martins. Lisbon: Edições Cosmos. 165-76.

1999. “The Traffic of Writing: Technologies of ‘Verkehr’ in Franz Kafka’s Briefe an Milena.” German Life and Letters 52: 365-81.

1998. “The Revenge of the Author: Paul Auster’s Challenge to Theory.” Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction 39: 195-206.

1997. “Franz Kafka, Perverse Traveler: Flaubert, Kafka, and the Reiseaufzeichnungen.” Journal of the Kafka Society of America 21: 80-87.

1996. “Of Sugar Barons and Banana Kings: Franz Kafka, Imperialism, and Schaffstein’s Grüne Bändchen.” Journal of the Kafka Society of America 20: 63-75.

1994. “Botho Strauss.” Afterword. “Pairs, Passersby.” By Botho Strauss. Conjunctions 23: 266-267.

1991. “Kafka Approaches Schopenhauer’s Castle.” German Life and Letters 44: 353-369.

Translations

1995. Botho Strauss, “Saved” (translated from the German by J. Zilcosky). Harper’s Magazine 291: 36-37.

1994. Botho Strauss, Pairs, Passersby (excerpts) (translated from the German by J. Zilcosky). Conjunctions 23: 255-265.

top of page

Page updated on May 18, 2013

All contents © The Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures, Faculty of Arts & Science,
University of Toronto. All rights reserved.
For comments or inquiries please send an email to: german(at)chass.utoronto.ca