Dr Ned Curthoys

Research Fellow

T: ( 02 ) 612 50090

F: ( 02 ) 6125 1285
E: ned.curthoys@anu.edu.au

Research School of Humanities
College of Arts and Social Sciences

Short biography:

Ned Curthoys completed his PhD in the English Department at the University of Sydney in 2002. His doctorate focused on the dissemination of the humanist tradition of classical rhetoric into twentieth century literary theory, philosophy, and political theory. Post-PhD he has researched and published on the political theorist Hannah Arendt’s cross-cutting interests in literary narrative and biography. More recently he has published on various aspects of the German Jewish experience from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries, returned to a long standing interest in Albert Camus and the Algerian war, and entered debates about the cross-cultural validity of secularism.

Research Interests:

German Jewish intellectual history from the eighteenth to twentieth centuries, historiography of the Enlightenment, the political theory of Hannah Arendt, English and European Romanticisms, public-intellectuals and the work of Edward Said, Holocaust and genocide studies, Albert Camus and Algeria.

Current Research Projects:

Ned’s ARC project is an investigation into the German writer Goethe’s enigmatic proclamation of a ‘world literature’ to come, in 1827. With its cognate notions of a dynamic cross-cultural public-sphere transcending national and parochial limitations, Goethe’s idea has inspired the emergence of comparative literature in the twentieth century, and was recuperated as a critical and cultural agenda by anti-fascist and cosmopolitan scholars in the twentieth century including Eric Auerbach, Leo Spitzer, and Edward Said.

Ned is currently writing a book, The Fate of Humanism, discussing four German Jewish émigré scholars inspired by Goethe’s ideal. It is due for completion in 2009. He is also embarking on a project analysing the intellectual context, performance history, and critical reception of Gotthold Ephraim Lessing's 1779 play 'Nathan der Weise' (Nathan the Wise).

Selected Publications:

Books and Monographs

2007 Co-edited with Debjani Ganguly 'Edward Said: the Legacy of a Public-Intellectual', Melbourne University Press, 2007.

Chapters in books

2007 ‘Edward Said’s Unhoused Philological Humanism’ in Edward Said: the Legacy of a Public Intellectual (Melbourne University E-Press 2007)

‘The Refractory Legacy of Algerian Decolonisation: Revisiting Arendt on Violence’, in the volume Hannah Arendt and the Uses of History: Imperialism, Nation, Race, and Genocide eds. Richard King and Dan Stone (Berghahn Books, 2007).

Journal articles

2008 'Against the New Athiesm' In Overland 192, a critique of the anti-religious sentiments of Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins et al. Also available online.

2005 “The Émigré Sensibility of ‘World-Literature’: Historicising Hannah Arendt and Karl Jaspers’ Cosmopolitan Intent”, Theory and Event, Volume 8, Issue 3, 2005. http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/theory_&_event/toc/

Disciplines: