Max Phillips

Max Phillips is a PhD candidate in Germanic Languages and Literatures. His dissertation examines shifting understandings of 'chance' in 18th- and 19th-century literature and theories of human language, culture, and history. The project profiles a distinct German trajectory within broader Europeans debates on chance, one that would help shape physical theories of chance in the later 19th century.

Max is broadly interested in using literary texts and approaches to study the history of knowledge, with a particular interest in historical and methodological questions concerning the relationship between the humanities and the exact sciences. Recent publications include articles on music and writing in German Minnesang (DVjs), on Austrian dialect in Heimito von Doderer's "Die Strudlhofstiege" (forthcoming in JAS), and on metaphors of linear perspective in the historiology of J.M. Chladenius (forthcoming in Bildbruch).
 

Department: Germanic Languages and Literatures