PhD candidates Glen Gray and Brad Harmon each received a Fulbright Grant to Germany for the 2024–2025 academic year.
Based at the University of Hamburg, Glen will be working on a research project entitled “Politics and Aesthetics of Despotism in Opera and German Drama.” This will constitute the foundation for his dissertation on the influence of Italian poet Pietro Metastasio (1698–1782) on the development of 18th-C. German opera and dramatic literature, with emphasis on Fredrick II’s court in Berlin, the operas of Mozart, and the dramas of Friedrich Schiller.
In residence at the FU in Berlin, Brad will conduct research for several chapters of his dissertation, titled “Flesh of the World: Corporeal Ecopoetics in German & Nordic Modernism.” These chapters focus on Paul Celan’s anatomical poetics, elemental envelopment in Nelly Sachs’ poetry, and atmospheric anxiety in Inger Christensen’s writing.