German Studies, Cornell University

Patrizia McBride

Professor McBride’s teaching and research lie primarily in twentieth-century German literature and culture and aesthetic theory since the eighteenth century. Her interests include the relationship between literature, philosophy, and political theory, modernism and avant-garde studies, visual culture, and Austrian literature and culture, especially turn-of-the-century Vienna. She has completed a book on Robert Musil's contribution to modern ethics and aesthetics in which she recovers his debt to the philosophy of Immanuel Kant, and is the author of articles on Bertolt Brecht, Kurt Schwitters, Walther Rathenau, Hermann Broch, Adolf Loos, Jörg Haider, and J.M.R. Lenz. Her current book project focuses on the impact of montage practices on the visual and literary media of Weimar Germany.

Selected publications

Books
Legacies of Modernism: Art and Politics in Northern Europe, 1890-1950. Co-edited with Richard
            McCormick and Monika agar. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007.
The Void of Ethics. Robert Musil and the Experience of Modernity. Evaston, IL.: Northwestern University
            Press, 2006.

Articles
•     “Narrative Resemblance: Weimar Germany’s Photography and the Modernist Photobook of Hannah Höch.”  30 pages. Forthcoming in New German Critique, Fall 2011.
•    “Learning to See in Irmgard Keun’s Das kunstseidene Mädchen.” The German Quarterly, 84.2 (Spring 2011): 220-38.
•    “Montage and Violence in Weimar Culture: Kurt Schwitters’ Reassembled Individuals.” Violence, Culture, Aesthetics: Germany 1789-1938. Eds. Carl Niekerk and Stefani Engelstein. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2011. 245-65.
•    “De-Moralizing Politics: Bertolt Brecht’s Early Aesthetics.” Deutsche Vierteljahrsschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Geistesgeschichte 82.1 (2008): 85-111.
•    “‘Ein schreibender Eisenkönig’? Robert Musil und Walther Rathenau.“  Musiliana, vol. 14. Eds. Annette Daigger and Peter Henninger. Frankfurt a.M./Berlin/Bern/New York: Peter Lang, 2008. 1-17.
•    “The Game of Meaning: Collage, Montage, and Parody in Kurt Schwitters’ Merz.” MODERNISM/Modernity 14.2 (April 2007): 249-72.
•    “The Future’s Past. Modernism, Critique, and the Political.” Legacies of Modernism: Art and Politics in Northern Europe, 1890-1950. Eds. Patrizia McBride, Richard McCormick, and Monika Zagar. New York: Palgrave/Macmillan, 2007. 1-13.
•    “The Value of Kitsch. Hermann Broch and Robert Musil on Art and Morality.”  Studies in Twentieth and Twenty-First Century Literature, 29. 2 (Summer 2005): 88-106.
•    “‘In Praise of the Present’: Adolf Loos on Style and Fashion.” MODERNISM/Modernity 11.4 (November 2004): 745-67.
•    “Whose Community? Jörg Haider’s Freedom Party, Count Leinsdorf’s Wisdom, and the Logic of the Political.” Modern Austrian Literature 34.1/2 (2001): 37-51.
•    “On the Utility of Art for Politics: Musil’s ‘Armed Truce of Ideas.’” The German Quarterly 73.4 (Fall 2000): 366-86. 
•    “The Paradox of Aesthetic Discourse: J.M.R. Lenz’s Anmerkungen übers Theater.” German Studies Review 22.3 (October 1999): 397-419.

Recent courses

Montage and Collage in Weimar Germany (GERST 662; spring 2008)
Cultural Pessimism and the Fin-de-Siècle (GERST 622, fall 2007)
The Art of the Historical Avant-Garde (GERST 377; fall 2007)
Vienna 1900 and the Challenge of Modernity (GERST 419; Spring 2008)