Marcel Schmid

I am an Associate Professor and Director of Undergraduate Programs at the German Department at the University of Virginia. I teach classes in German language, literature and culture, particularly on Serial Media, early German environmental movements, and Fairy Tales, which I established as popular courses in the German curriculum.

I studied history, German literature, and art history at the University of Zurich, Yale, and New York University, and I wrote a dissertation on the concept of autopoiesis in literature. I have been a visiting scholar at Yale and Brown University, and a postdoctoral fellow of the Swiss National Science Foundation. 

I am interested in literary history, specifically relating to the German Life Reform movement and the interface between literary analysis and technology. In the past few years, I have written and edited books on self-reference in literature (Autopoiesis und Literatur , Self-reflection in Literature) and the life reform movement (Die Literatur der Lebensreform). I have also published in the Feuilleton of the Neue Zürcher Zeitung and in Feedback on car aesthetics. Currently, I am working on a book project on car aesthetics. And I just finished co-editing a volume on the Swiss author Christian Kracht: The Case of Christian Kracht (Brill series “German Monitor” 2024).