Alexander Sorenson
Lecturer
Comparative Literature; German and Russian Studies
Background
Alexander Sorenson is a lecturer of German and comparative literature at Binghamton University. His research and teaching interests center upon interdisciplinary themes and issues related to the environmental humanities, such as the interface between philosophy, literature, art and the history of science.
His first book project, The Waiting Water: Order, Sacrifice and Submergence in German Realism (Cornell University Press, forthcoming 2024), examines the relationship between water imagery, law and sacrifice in Poetic Realism. He is also in the early stages of a second research project about the concept of “sacramental ecology” in the 19th century and is co-editing a volume of essays about the poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke and phenomenology. His publications have appeared in The German Quarterly, Literature and Theology, German Life and Letters, Forum for Modern Language Studies and the Los Angeles Review of Books.
Education
- PhD, University of Chicago
- MA, University of Chicago
- BA, Portland State University
Research Interests
- German literature and thought ca. 1800-1917
- Literary, philosophical and artistic accounts of the relation between human communities and the natural world (ecocriticism, nature writing, eco-phenomenology, posthumanism, etc.)
- Modern European intellectual and cultural history
- Convergences between the natural and human sciences
Teaching Interests
- German language and literature
- European literature, culture and thought
- Cultural, literary and critical theory
