Carlos Spoerhase - Biography#

Carlos Spoerhase is a literary theorist and Chair of Modern German Literature at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität Munich. He studied German literature, philosophy, and the history of political thought at Humboldt University of Berlin and The Johns Hopkins University (D. Phil. in 2006 and Habilitation in 2016, both from Humboldt University of Berlin). He has held visiting positions at King’s College London, the University of Pennsylvania, and Princeton University. He is one of the editors of the “Deutsche Vierteljahrsschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Geistesgeschichte” (DVjs) and a member of the editorial committee of the “Zeitschrift für Ideengeschichte” (ZIG). His research and teaching comprise literature from the 17th to the 21st century, intellectual history, history of the humanities, history of the book, media studies, and social theory. His penultimate book focused on format theory and the history of material texts in the 18th and 19th centuries (Das Format der Literatur, 2018). He takes a wider interest in the history and theory of the humanities and recently co-authored a widely discussed book that examines the humanities as everyday practices of intellectual labor (Geistesarbeit, 2022). Spoerhase regularly writes on contemporary literature and culture for Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Süddeutsche Zeitung, Merkur, and the New Left Review.