Mattias Pirholt

Short presentation

PhD 2005 (Uppsala University)

Research interests: Eighteenth-century literature and theory, Weimar classicism, German romanticism, Johann Wolfgang Goethe, Karl Philipp Moritz, German twentieth-century literature, Ingeborg Bachmann, American nineteenth- and twentieth-century literature, Southern Gothic, Flannery O'Connor, William Faulkner.

Biography

Presentation

I am a professor and researcher in literature specialized in Swedish 20th-century literature, German romantic literature, Goethe, and Southern Gothic. I was awarded a PhD in literature in 2005 (Uppsala University). I have been postdoctoral fellow at Peter-Szondi-Institut für Allgemeine und Vergleichende Literaturwissenschaft at Freie Universität Berlin (2006–2008), visiting scholar at the Department of Philosophy at Columbia University, New York (2014), visiting professor and Matariki fellow at Deutsches Seminar at Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen (2014–2015), and visiting scholar at the Department of German, Nordic, and Slavic at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (2019). From 2015 through 2023 I was a faculty member at the Department of Comparative Literature at Södertörn University, Stockholm, from 2018 as full professor.

Research Interests

Goethe, Weimar classicism, romanticism, 20th century German literature, 19th century American literature, 20th century American literature, Southern Gothic

Degrees

• PhD (fil. dr) in Comparative literature from Uppsala University, 2005.
• Licentiate degree (fil. lic.) in Comparative literature from Uppsala University, 2002.
• Master’s degree in Comparative literature. Courses in Philosophy, Scandinavian languages, Aesthetics and Greek, 2000.

Employments and Appointments

• Professor of Literature, Uppsala University, 2023–
• Visitin scholar, German, Nordic, and Slavic Department, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 2019.
• Full professor, Department of Comparative Literature at Södertörn University, Stockholm, 2018–2023.
• Associate professor, Department of Comparative Literature at Södertörn University, Stockholm, 2015–2018.
• Visiting professor, Matariki Fellow, Deutsches Seminar, Universität Tübingen, 2014–2015
• Visiting scholar, Department of Philosophy, Columbia University, New York, 2014
• Post-doctoral fellow at the Department of Literature at Uppsala University, financed by The Swedish Research Council (Vetenskapsrådet), 2008–2012.
• Administrator of Svenska Litteratursällskapet, 2010–2015
• Post-doctoral scholar at Peter-Szondi Institut für Allgemeine und Vergleichende Literaturwissenschaft, Freie Universität Berlin, 2006–2008.
• Post-doctor scholar in Uppsala, 2006.
• Part-time teacher at the Department of Literature, Uppsala University, 2005.
• PhD candidate at the Department of Literature, Uppsala University, Sweden, 2001–2005.

Scholarships and Awards

• Riksbankens Jubileumsfond, research grant, 2017–2020.
• Swedish Research Council, research grant, 2012–2015
• Swedish Research Council, research fellow (research funds), 2008–2012.
• Svenska kulturfonden i Finland (research funds), 2007.
• Wenner-Gren Stiftelserna (post-doctor scholarship), 2006–2008.
• Kung. Vetenskapsakademien, Stiftelsen Hierta-Retzius fond för vetenskaplig forskning (research funds), 2006.
• Birgit och Gad Rausings Fond för Humanistisk Forskning (research funds), 2006.
• Humanistiska Vetenskaps-Samfundets arbetsstipendium för doktorander och nydisputerade doktorer (5-month post-doctoral scholarship), 2006.
• The Swedish Academy, Stina och Erik Lundbergs stiftelse (award for dissertation), 2005.

Research Networks

• Society for German Idealism and Romanticism (SGIR)
• Society for the Study of Southern Literature (SSSL)
• Society for the Study of the American Gothic (SSAG)
• Svenska litteratursällskapet i Finland (SLS)

Recent Publications

“Henry Parland’s Cyborgs: The Problematic Perfection of Man,” in Self-Optimization in Modernist Culture, Literary Modernism, vol. 9, ed. Thorsten Carstensen & Mattias Pirholt (Leiden & Boston: Brill, 2025), 307–327

Self-Optimization in Modernist Culture, Literary Modernism, vol. 9, ed. Thorsten Carstensen & Mattias Pirholt (Leiden & Boston: Brill, 2025)

“Sentimental Symbolism in Goethe’s ‘Alexis und Dora’”, in Art, Nature, and Self-formation in the Age of Goethe, ed. Gerad Gentry, Mattias Pirholt & Camilla Flodin (Berlin & Boston: De Gruyter, 2024), 139–161, https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110751383-008

Art, Nature, and Self-formation in the Age of Goethe, ed. Gerad Gentry, Mattias Pirholt & Camilla Flodin (Berlin & Boston: De Gruyter, 2024)

"Beatrice Cenci’s Ghost: Ekphrasis, Spectrality, and the Art of Copying in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Marble Faun," Nineteenth-century Literature, 78, no. 3 (2023): 211-233

”Heimentlassung. Die Heimat und die Wüste in Ingeborg Bachmanns Todesarten-Projekt,” in Heimat in Literatur und Kultur: Neue Perspektiven, ed. Thorsten Carstensen and Oliver Kohns (Paderborn: Brill Fink, 2023), 153–169

”’Southern Living from a Bygone Time’. Gothic Spatialization of History in Gillian Flynn’s Sharp Objects,” Mississippi Quarterly 75, no. 4 (2022): 381–403

”Imagery, Irony, and Transcendence in Carl Jonas Love Almqvist’s The Queen’s Tiara,” Scandinavian Studies 94, no. 2 (2022): 196–220

”Imitation, Interest, and the Ethics of Imperfection in Karl Philipp Moritz’s Aesthetics, 1786–1788”, Monatshefte 113, no. 2 (2021): 263–285

”Goethe’s Exploratory Idealism,” in Beyond Autonomy in Eighteenth-Century British and German Aesthetics, Routledge Studies in Eighteenth-Century Philosophy, ed. Karl Axelsson, Camilla Flodin, and Mattias Pirholt (New York and London: Routledge, 2021), s. 217–238, https://tandfbis.s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/rt-files/docs/Open+Access+Chapters/9780429330254_oachapter10.pdf

Beyond Autonomy in Eighteenth-Century British and German Aesthetics. Routledge Studies in Eighteenth-Century Philosophy, ed. Karl Axelsson, Camilla Flodin, and Mattias Pirholt (New York and London: Routledge, 2021), 312 pp

”’Allt gamla bekanta’: Reflektioner över Goethes italienska resa och konstverkets idé,” in Luften så klar: Nordeuropeiska konstnärer och författare i Rom 1780–1950, ed. Roland Lysell, Mattias Pirholt & Anna Smedberg Bondesson (Gothenburg and Stockholm: Makadam, 2020), 17–30

Luften så klar: Nordeuropeiska konstnärer och författare i Rom 1780–1950, ed. Roland Lysell, Mattias Pirholt & Anna Smedberg Bondesson (Gothenburg and Stockholm: Makadam, 2020), 287 pp.

”Disinterested Love: Ethics and Aesthetics in Karl Philipp Moritz’s ’Versuch einer Vereinigung aller schönen Künste und Wissenschaften unter dem Begriff des in sich selbst Vollendeten,’” Goethe Yearbook 27 (2020): 63–81

”Karl Philipp Moritz’ melankoliska blick och mötet med Italien," on Kulturmöten: Festskrift till Christine Farhan, ed. Amelie Björck et al. (Huddinge: Södertörns högskola, 2020), 241–258

Grenzerfarhungen: Studien zu Goethes Ästhetik (Heidelberg: Winter Verlag, 2018)

”Walter Benjamins Ekphrasen des Alltags in Berliner Kindheit um 1900," in Das Abenteuer des Gewöhnlichen: Alltag in der deutschsprachigen Literatur der Moderne, Philologische Studien und Quellen vol. 267, ed. Thorsten Carstensen and Mattias Pirholt (Berlin: Erich Schmidt Verlag, 2018), 307–326

Das Abenteuer des Gewöhnlichen: Alltag in der deutschsprachigen Literatur der Moderne, Philologische Studien und Quellen vol. 267, ed. Thorsten Carstensen and Mattias Pirholt (Berlin: Erich Schmidt Verlag, 2018), 383 pp.

Media

Bildningspodden #182: Romanticism: https://anekdot.se/bildningspoddavsnitt/romantiken/

Bildningspodden # 182: Romanticism

A conversation between Elisabeth Mansén and Mattias Pirholt about European Romanticism

https://anekdot.se/bildningspoddavsnitt/romantiken/

Is Frankenstein gothic romanticism or groundbreaking cli-fi?

A discussion about the romantic era, focusing on Mary Shelley's Frankenstein

https://youtu.be/8euktpbp3dM?si=7Vd-oi33CpA23jzY