Jennifer Gosetti-Ferencei is Professor and Kurrelmeyer Chair in German and Professor in Philosophy at Johns Hopkins University. Her research interests include Continental philosophy, particularly phenomenology and existentialism, aesthetics and the philosophy of literature, cognitive literary theory, poetics, philosophy of imagination, modernism, especially modern German literature, and literary ecology. She has previously taught in modern languages departments in the UK (Oxford and Birmingham, at the latter of which she was Chair and Professor of German and Comparative Literature) and was Professor of Philosophy at Fordham University. She received a DPhil in German and MSt in European Literature from Oxford; MA and PhD in Philosophy from Villanova; and an MFA in Poetry from Columbia University. For 2023, she has been appointed Visiting Fellow at All Souls College, Oxford.<\/p>\r\n
Gosetti-Ferencei\u2019s research has included books on existentialism, on the philosophy of imagination, on the construction of the exotic in German modernism, on the relationship between the quotidian or everyday experience and ecstatic reflection in phenomenology, modern art and literature, and a critical reading of poetics in Heidegger and H\u00f6lderlin. Her work explores the boundaries between philosophy and literature, poetic experience and cognition, and in addition to H\u00f6lderlin her work has engaged the writings of Rainer Maria Rilke, Wallace Stevens, Marcel Proust, Franz Kafka, Thomas Mann, and many other modernist writers. Her work in aesthetics has engaged the visual art of Paul C\u00e9zanne, Cy Twombly, Giorgio Morandi, Alfred Kubin, Georg Baselitz and Anselm Kiefer. Her book of poetry,\u00a0After the Palace Burns<\/em>, won The Paris Review Prize.<\/p>\r\n In On Being and Becoming: An Existentialist Approach to Life<\/em> (Oxford University Press, 2020), Gosetti-Ferencei presents a new interpretation of existentialist thought and literature, exploring, beyond the existentialism of the French phenomenologists, its historical origins in nineteenth century German, Danish, and Russian thought, contributions to existentialism of African-American thinkers, and its relevance for the social and environmental challenges of the twenty-first century.<\/p>\r\n Gosetti-Ferencei\u2019s previous book,\u00a0The Life of Imagination: Revealing and Making the World<\/em>\u00a0(Columbia University Press, 2018), is grounded in philosophy and a range of other disciplines, including cognitive theory, evolutionary anthropology, aesthetics and literary theory, and offers a new theory of imagination as both emerging from the wider cognitive ecology of our embodied life and engagement with the world, and affording its transformation and transcendence. In contrast to a long tradition of philosophy that sequestered imagination from cognition proper, in this work Gosetti-Ferencei demonstrates how imagination must be understood as multimodal, shaping our ordinary experience and affording the heightened manifestations of creativity in scientific discovery and artistic and literary creation. Among other accomplishments of the book is the development of an understanding of cognitive play (drawing from Kant, Schiller, Nietzsche, and Husserl), which show how creativity affords \u2018situated transcendence.\u2019 and in so doing both relies upon, and diverges from, the operations of ordinary thinking. This expansive and probing account of imagination demonstrates its reach across human experience and its crucial role in shaping and transforming our relationship to the world.<\/p>\r\n Previous works include\u00a0Exotic Spaces in German Modernism<\/em>\u00a0(Oxford University Press 2011), in which Gosetti-Ferencei illuminates the construction of the \u2018exotic\u2019 in modern German literature. The rendering of spaces projected as exotic is shown to situate examination of the modern self and its relation to a foreign other, sometimes exploiting, otherwise destabilizing, colonialist or Eurocentric assumptions. She engages prose works of Hofmannsthal, Dauthendey, Hesse, Benn, Brecht, Kubin, Zweig, Kafka, and Thomas Mann, also mining the 19th century speculations of Nietzsche and other German philosophers as the theoretical foundation for modern literary challenges to the self and European modernity.<\/p>\r\n Reflection on the quotidian, or the everyday, in literature, art, and phenomenology comprises the subject of\u00a0The Ecstatic Quotidian: Phenomenological Sightings in Modern Art and Literature\u00a0<\/em>(Pennsylvania State University Press 2007), which won an Outstanding Academic Title award from the American Library Association. Gosetti-Ferencei there demonstrates analogous structures of reflection in phenomenology, modern literature and visual art, in their respective defamiliarizations from everyday experiences. She engages the ideas of Nietzsche, Freud, Heidegger, Benjamin, Merleau-Ponty and Wittgenstein, along with literary works by Rilke, Proust, Ponge, Sartre and others, and the visual art of Morandi, Twombly, and C\u00e9zanne, in illuminating the relation between the everyday and the ecstatic.<\/p>\r\n In her book\u00a0Heidegger, H\u00f6lderlin, and the Subject of Poetic Language<\/em>\u00a0(Fordham University Press 2004), Gosetti-Ferencei reconstructs H\u00f6lderlin\u2019s fragmentary poetic theory, and his theoretical and poetic responses to the ideas of Kant, Fichte and Schiller, in order to critically address Heidegger\u2019s interpretations of the poet and their political entanglements. She demonstrates that H\u00f6lderlin\u2019s poetics, while inspired by Enlightenment ideals, supports a theory of poetic subjectivity both tragic and analeptic in nature, a model which at once structures a reverent human relationship with nature and evades the problematic ontology of Heidegger\u2019s notion of the history of Being.<\/p>\r\n Gosetti-Ferencei\u2019s current projects include a forthcoming introduction to philosophy of imagination, and a study of nature and ecology in modern literary thought, including in H\u00f6lderlin, Nietzsche, Kafka and Rilke, along with writers across English- and French-language modernisms.<\/p>"],"ecpt_publications":[" Monographs:<\/strong><\/p>\r\n Imagination: A Very Short Introduction<\/em> (Oxford: Oxford University Press, in submission for 2022).<\/p>\r\n On Being and Becoming: An Existentialist Approach to Life<\/em> (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020).<\/p>\r\n The Life of Imagination: Revealing and Making the World <\/em>(New York: Columbia University Press, 2018).<\/p>\r\n Exotic Spaces in German Modernism<\/em> (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011).<\/p>\r\n The Ecstatic Quotidian: Phenomenological Sightings in Modern Art and Literature <\/em>(University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2007).<\/p>\r\n Heidegger, H\u00f6lderlin, and the Subject of Poetic Language <\/em>(New York: Fordham University Press, 2004).\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\r\n Other Books:<\/p>\r\n After the Palace Burns <\/em>(Lincoln, NE: Zoo Press, 2004). The Paris Review Prize in Poetry.<\/p>\r\n Translation:<\/p>\r\n Martin Heidegger, Phenomenology of Religious Life<\/em>, trans. Fritsch and Gosetti-Ferencei (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004).<\/p>\r\n Edited volume:<\/p>\r\n Modern Language Notes<\/em> (MLN)<\/em> Special Issue, Drinking from Two Glasses: H\u00f6lderlin at 250 and Celan at 100,<\/em> Volume 135 Issue 3 (2020).<\/p>\r\n Journal Articles and Book Chapters:<\/strong><\/p>\r\n \u201cUncertainty, Realism, and the Self in Kafka,\u201d in From the Enlightenment to Modernism: Three Centuries of German Literature<\/em>, ed. Carolin Duttlinger, K. F. Hilliard, and Charlie Louth (Oxford: Legenda, 2021).<\/p>\r\n \u201cExistentialism and The Future of Humanity\u201d (1930 words) in Arts & Ideas<\/em>, Issue 94 (10 February 2021).<\/p>\r\n \u201cThe Phenomenology of Poetry,\u201d in\u00a0Language and Phenomenology<\/em>, ed. Chad Engelland (London and New York: Routledge, 2020).<\/p>\r\n \u201cNature and Poetic Consciousness from H\u00f6lderlin to Rilke,\u201d in\u00a0Harmonisch entgegengesetzt:\u00a0H\u00f6lderlin\u2019s Philosophy of Nature<\/em>, ed. Rochelle Tobias (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2020).<\/p>\r\n \u201cDistributed Cognition in Modern Poetry and Painting: Rilke and C\u00e9zanne,\u201d in\u00a0Distributed Cognition in Victorianism and Modernism<\/em>, ed. Miranda Anderson (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2020).<\/p>\r\n \u201cEditor\u2019s Introduction: Drinking from Two Glasses:\u00a0H\u00f6lderlin at 250 and Celan at 100<\/em>,\u201d\u00a0Modern Language Notes, German Issue,\u00a0<\/em>vol. 135 no. 3 (April 2020).<\/p>\r\n \u00a0\u201cOn Literary Understanding,\u201d\u00a0Varieties of Understanding,<\/em>\u00a0ed. Stephen Grimm (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019).<\/p>\r\n \u201cImaginative Ecology in Rilke\u2019s\u00a0Sonnets to Orpheus<\/em>,\u201d in\u00a0Rainer Maria Rilke: Sonnets to\u00a0Orpheus<\/em>, ed. Hannah Eldridge and Luke Fischer (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019).<\/p>\r\n \u201cNietzsche and Cognitive Ecology,\u201d in\u00a0Anti-Idealism, Anti-Classicism: Reinterpreting a German Discourse<\/em>, ed. Juliana de Albuquerque and Gert Hoffman (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2019).<\/p>\r\n \u201cLanguage, World, and Animality: Between Derrida and Heidegger,\u201d\u00a0Understanding Derrida,\u00a0Understanding Modernism,\u00a0<\/em>ed. Jean-Michel Rabat\u00e9 (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2019).<\/p>\r\n \u00a0\u201cOn Philosophy and Poetry,\u201d\u00a0Palgrave Handbook of Philosophy and Literature<\/em>, ed. Barry Stocker (New York: Palgrave, 2018).<\/p>\r\n \u201cPhenomenology and the Imagination of Modernism,\u201d in\u00a0Understanding Merleau-Ponty,\u00a0Understanding Modernism<\/em>, ed. Ariane Mildenberg (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2018).<\/p>\r\n \u00a0\u201cMuerte y autenticidad. Reflexiones sobre Heidegger, Rilke y Blanchot,\u201d trans. J. Daniel Gonz\u00e1lez Mar\u00edn,\u00a0Andamios\u00a0<\/em>Vol. 14, no 33 (enero-abril 2017) pp. 123-148.<\/p>\r\n \u201cThe Imagination of Animals: Rilke, Kafka, and the Philosophy and Literature of Embodied Cognition,\u201d in\u00a0The Animal Inside: Essays at the Intersections of Philosophical Anthropology and Animal Studies<\/em>,\u2019 ed. Geoffrey Dierckxsens et al (Lantham, MD: Roman and Littlefield, 2016).<\/p>\r\n \u201cRadn\u00f3ti, Blanchot, and the (Un)writing of Disaster,\u201d\u00a0Comparative Literature and\u00a0Culture\u00a0<\/em>17.2 (June 2015).<\/p>\r\n \u201cThe Mimetic Dimension: Literature Between Neuroscience and Phenomenology,\u2019\u00a0British Journal of Aesthetics<\/em>, vol. 54, no. 4 (October 2014), 425-448.<\/p>\r\n \u00a0\u201cThe Tragic Dimension in Modern German Painting,\u2019\u00a0A Companion to Tragedy in German\u00a0Literature, Art, and Thought,<\/em>\u00a0ed. Stephen Dowden and Thomas Quinn (Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2014).<\/p>\r\n \u201cDeath and Authenticity: Reflections on Heidegger, Rilke, Blanchot,\u201d\u00a0Existenz<\/em>, 9:1 (Spring 2014).\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\r\n \u201cThe World and Image of Poetic Language: Heidegger and Blanchot,\u201d\u00a0Continental Philosophy\u00a0Review\u00a0<\/em>45:2 (2012).<\/p>\r\n \u201cWriting in Philosophy and the Literature and Philosophy of Writing (Plato, Mann, Blanchot)\u2019 in\u00a0Philosophy, Literature, and the Crisis of Metaphysics<\/em>, ed. S\u00e9bastian H\u00fcsch (W\u00fcrzburg: K\u00f6nigshausen & Neumann, 2011).<\/p>\r\n \u201cImmanent Transcendence in Rilke and Stevens,\u201d\u00a0The German Quarterly<\/em>\u00a083:3 (Summer 2010).<\/p>\r\n \u201cThe Poetics of World: Sources of Poetic Theory in Heidegger\u2019s Phenomenology of Religious Life,\u201d in\u00a0A Companion to Heidegger\u2019s Phenomenology of Religious Life<\/em>, ed. Andre\u00a0Wiercinski and Sean McGrath (Rodopi Press, 2010).<\/p>\r\n \u201cForeshadowings of the Kafkaesque in Alfred Kubin\u2019s Drawings,\u201d\u00a0Hyperion: On the Future of\u00a0Aesthetics\u00a0<\/em>vol. III, no. 4 (December 2008).<\/p>\r\n \u00a0\u201cInterstitial Space in Rilke\u2019s Short Prose Works,\u201d\u00a0The German Quarterly<\/em>\u00a080:3 (Summer 2007).<\/p>\r\n \u201cThe Poetics of Thinking: Heidegger and H\u00f6lderlin,\u201d in\u00a0Literature and Philosophy: A Guide to\u00a0the Contemporary<\/em>\u00a0Debates<\/em>, ed. David Rudrum, (New York: Palgrave\/Macmillan, 2007).<\/p>\r\n \u00a0\u201cBetween Animality and Intellection: Phenomenology of the Child-Consciousness in Proust and Merleau-Ponty,\u201d\u00a0Analecta Husserliana: The Yearbook of Phenomenological Research\u00a0<\/em>vol. 93 (2007).<\/p>\r\n \u201cLanguage and The Flesh of Being: Merleau-Ponty and Kristeva,\u201d in\u00a0Interrogating Ethics<\/em>:\u00a0Essays\u00a0on Merleau-Ponty<\/em>, edited by James Hatley (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 2006).\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\r\n \u201cArticulate Spontaneity and the Aesthetic Imagination,\u201d\u00a0Analecta Husserliana: The Yearbook of\u00a0Phenomenological Research<\/em>, vol. 92 (2006).<\/p>\r\n \u201cMoral Sentiment and the Ethics of Representation in Holocaust Literature,\u201d\u00a0Analecta\u00a0Husserliana: the Yearbook of Phenomenological Research,\u00a0<\/em>vol. 84 (2006).<\/p>\r\n \u00a0\u201cTrompe l\u2019Oeil and the Mimetic Tradition in Aesthetics,\u201d\u00a0Analecta Husserliana: The Yearbook\u00a0of Phenomenological Research,<\/em>\u00a0vol. 87 (2006).<\/p>\r\n \u00a0\u201cConfirmations of Life in a Phenomenology of the Poetic Image,\u201d\u00a0Analecta Husserliana<\/em>:\u00a0The\u00a0Yearbook of Phenomenological Research<\/em>, vol. 83 (2004).\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\r\n \u201cThe Aesthetic and the Poetic Image: Beyond the Ekphrastic Divide,\u201d\u00a0Philosophy Today,\u00a0<\/em>vol. 29 (Summer 2003).<\/p>\r\n \u201cPhenomenology of the Mysterious: A Reading of Rilke\u2019s\u00a0Sonnets to Orpheus,<\/em>\u201d\u00a0Phenomenological Inquiry<\/em>\u00a0vol. 26 (Fall 2002).<\/p>\r\n \u201cAsh in the Clouds: Unearthing Goethe,\u201d in\u00a0Literary Imagination: Review of the Association of\u00a0Literary Scholars and Critics<\/em>, 4:3 (2002).<\/p>\r\n \u201cTragedy and Truth in Heidegger and Jaspers,\u201d\u00a0International Philosophical Quarterly\u00a0<\/em>42:3 (Fall 2002).<\/p>\r\n \u201cPhenomenological Literature: From the Natural Attitude to \u2018Recognition,\u2019\u201d\u00a0Philosophy Today,\u00a0<\/em>vol. 45 (Summer 2001).<\/p>\r\n \u201cThe Ecstatic Quotidian: Literary Phenomenology in Sartre and Rilke,\u201d\u00a0Journal of the\u00a0Association of the Interdisciplinary Study of the Arts,\u00a0<\/em>7:1 (2001).<\/p>\r\n \u201cFigures of the Feminine in Heidegger\u2019s Theory of Poetic Language,\u201d in\u00a0Feminist Interpretations\u00a0of Heidegger<\/em>, edited by Patricia J. Huntington and Nancy Holland (College Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2001).<\/p>\r\n \u201cRevolutions in Language: H\u00f6lderlin to Kristeva,\u201d\u00a0International Studies in Philosophy<\/em>, XXXII:1 (1999).<\/p>\r\n \u201cLanguage and Subject in Heidegger and Kristeva,\u201d\u00a0Philosophy Today<\/em>\u00a0(SPEP supplement, vol.43, 1999).<\/p>\r\n \u201cThe Poetic Politics of Dwelling: H\u00f6lderlin, Kant, Heidegger,\u201d\u00a0International Studies in\u00a0Philosophy<\/em>, XXXI: 1 (1998).<\/p>\r\n Reviews:<\/strong><\/p>\r\n Friedrich Nietzsche: A Companion to His Life and Works<\/em>, ed. Paul Bishop,\u00a0Modern Language\u00a0Review<\/em>\u00a0vol. 110, part 4 (October 2015).<\/p>\r\n The Cambridge Companion to Rainer Maria Rilke<\/em>, ed. Leeder and Vilain,\u00a0Modern Language\u00a0Review\u00a0<\/em>(Spring 2012).<\/p>\r\n Julian Young,\u00a0Nietzsche: A Philosophical Biography<\/em>,\u00a0Modern Language Review<\/em>\u00a0(Summer 2012).<\/p>\r\n Michael Cowan,\u00a0Cult of the Will: Nervousness and German Modernity<\/em>,\u00a0Modern Language\u00a0Review<\/em>\u00a0(Spring 2010).<\/p>\r\n Wolfgang Detel,\u00a0Foucault and Antiquity<\/em>,\u00a0International Philosophical Quarterly\u00a0<\/em>(Spring 2006).<\/p>\r\n Martin Heidegger,\u00a0Phenomenological Interpretations of Aristotle<\/em>,\u00a0Review of Metaphysics<\/em>, vol. 57: 3 (March 2004).<\/p>"],"ecpt_teaching":[" Teaching interests include: German Literary Modernism; Kafka and Rilke; Literary Aesthetics; Reflections on Modernity; Existentialism in Literature and Philosophy; The City as Text; Philosophy of Art; Continental Philosophy in the 19th century; Continental Philosophy in the 20th Century; Phenomenology and Literature; German and Comparative Poetry and Poetics.\u200b<\/p>"],"ecpt_hours":["W 12:20-1:20"],"ecpt_degrees":["DPhil, University of Oxford, PhD, Villanova University"],"_thumbnail_id":["3859"],"_searchwp_last_index":["1552647663"],"_wp_old_date":["2018-08-24"],"ecpt_cv":[""],"_ecpt_cv":["field_61e0871dac8e2"],"cv_file":[""],"_cv_file":["field_61e088d12999e"],"ecpt_job_abstract":[""],"_ecpt_job_abstract":["field_61e0873bac8e3"],"abstract_link":[""],"_abstract_link":["field_61e088f52999f"],"abstract_file":[""],"_abstract_file":["field_61e088f52999f"]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/krieger.jhu.edu\/modern-languages-literatures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/people\/3757"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/krieger.jhu.edu\/modern-languages-literatures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/people"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/krieger.jhu.edu\/modern-languages-literatures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/people"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/krieger.jhu.edu\/modern-languages-literatures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/people\/3757\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3758,"href":"https:\/\/krieger.jhu.edu\/modern-languages-literatures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/people\/3757\/revisions\/3758"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/krieger.jhu.edu\/modern-languages-literatures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3859"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/krieger.jhu.edu\/modern-languages-literatures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3757"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"role","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/krieger.jhu.edu\/modern-languages-literatures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/role?post=3757"},{"taxonomy":"filter","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/krieger.jhu.edu\/modern-languages-literatures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/filter?post=3757"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}