Esther Bauer is a native of Germany. She did her graduate work both at the University of Freiburg (Germany) and at Yale University (Ph.D., German Literature, Yale University, 2004).

Her research and teaching concentrate on 19 th and 20 th century German literature and culture, and she is particularly interested in the constitution of subjectivity in times of cultural change, such as Industrialization, the turn of the century, the Weimar Republic, and Germany after World War II. Her investigations of the history of subjectivity focus on questions of gender and the body as well as the geography of desire. She has been especially intrigued by the works of Thomas Mann, Franz Kafka, Vicki Baum, Max Frisch, Ingeborg Bachmann, Jurek Becker, W.G. Sebald, and Georg Büchner, all of whom explore the human struggle for self-knowledge and authenticity within or beyond established social boundaries.

She is also very interested in female authors of the 19th and 20th century. Esther Bauer teaches German language, literature, and culture classes at all levels. In Spring 2005, she will offer a course entitled “Coping With the Past After 1945”, that will cover literature, music, and art from the end of WWII to the present within the socio-historical context.