Lynn Wolff

Lynn L. Wolff’s teaching and research interests encompass modern German literature and culture, in particular the relationship between literature and historiography, the representation of the Holocaust, theories of translation, practices of intermediality, and concepts of world literature. Bringing these interests together and teaming up with colleagues in German, French and Francophone, and Japanese Studies, Lynn Wolff, Liz Mittman, and Matthew Handelman have initiated the Graphic Narratives Network, a research collaborative focused on writing history and visualizing trauma in a variety of text-image forms. Lynn is also affiliate faculty in the Serling Institute for Jewish Studies and Modern Israel.

Lynn’s publications include the monograph W.G. Sebald’s Hybrid Poetics: Literature as Historiography (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2014, paperback 2016; Interdisciplinary German Cultural Studies 14) and three edited volumes: A Modernist in Exile: The International Reception of H.G. Adler (1910–1988)(Oxford: Legenda, 2019); Witnessing, Memory, Poetics: H.G. Adler and W.G. Sebald (Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2014; Dialogue and Disjunction: Studies in Jewish German Literature, Culture, and Thought 1), co-edited with Helen Finch (University of Leeds); and Aisthesis und Noesis: Zwei Erkenntnisformen vom 18. Jahrhundert bis zur Gegenwart (München: Fink, 2013), co-edited with Hans Adler (University of Wisconsin, Madison). Together with Christian Klein, former Max Kade Professor at MSU, and Matías Martínez, Lynn co-edited the special issue Wirklichkeit erzählen im Comic / Narrating Reality in Comics of the journal Diegesis 8.1 (2019).

In addition to her work on H.G. Adler and W.G. Sebald, Lynn has also written on contemporary German-language authors, such as Marcel Beyer, Wilhelm Genazino, Per Leo, Katja Petrowskaja, and Bernhard Schlink. Her articles and review essays have appeared in Eurostudia – Revue Transatlantique de Recherche sur l’Europe, Gegenwartsliteratur, Internationales Archiv für Sozialgeschichte der deutschen Literatur (IASL), Journal of European Studies, Monatshefte, and Modern Language Review.

Prior to joining the department, Lynn was an Alexander von Humboldt research fellow and taught in the Department of Modern German Literature at the Universität Stuttgart. She has also taught German language, literature, and culture at Middlebury College’s Summer German School, where she also co-hosted the German School’s weekly radio program.