Borges made a habit of differing from himself. “El otro” and “Borges y yo” are only the most overt examples from a corpus that constantly played with his biography, his beliefs, and his proper name. In his “non-fiction,” this Auseinselbstsetzung takes the form of self-contradiction, asserting opposed theses in his own name, celebrating…[Read more]

Marco Heiles: Topography of German Humanism 1470–1550. An Approach, Essay, University of Oxford 2010.
The maps are also available as website: Marco Heiles, Topography of German Humanism 1470–1550 (2011),
https://topography-german-humanism.artesliteratur.de/index.html.

By way of the autobiographical writings of Bruno Schulz and the “resurrection” paintings of Stanley Spencer, this talk sketches out some of the ways in which literature and the fine arts situate themselves within the division, or series of breaks, that Michel de Certeau argued Western historiography inscribes between past and present, between the…[Read more]

This essay ruminates the ethics of a co-implicated, bounded dependence between objects (human and otherwise) that are always in some sense withdrawing from each other but also always together in a some-place labeled “here”: the world (where no Absolute or Outside vantage point is possible or habitable). This essay also considers the possibility,…[Read more]

Through a comparative analysis of Chaucer’s “The Clerk’s Tale” and Lars von Trier’s film “Breaking the Waves,” this essay wonders what happens when two texts and one reader happen to each other and open up a singular adventure that is also a moment of ‘futurition’ that opens up new horizons of meaning, both human and inhuman. How can we reckon the…[Read more]

Diplomatische Transkription nach
Halle (Saale), Universitäts und Landesbibl., Yg 2° 7 , fol.
77 rb 86 r (Oberösterreich, um

Die Minnereden ‘Der Spalt in der Wand’ und ‘Klage einer jungen Frau’. Synoptische Abdruck nach Cgm 270 und Cgm 379

Diplomatische Transkription und Leseversion nach Freiburg, Universitätsbibliothek, Hs. 1500,7, fol. 38r-43v

A syllabus for an undergraduate course, taught in English, on the visual culture (primarily film, photography, and aesthetic theory) of the Weimar Republic. The course is housed in German Studies and crosslisted with Art History, Cinema, and other departments.

Master Thesis / Masterarbeit 2010

Das Wunderbare in der deutschsprachigen Rezeptliteratur des 15. Jahrhunderts, in: Stefanie Kreuzer und Uwe Durst (Hg.), Das Wunderbare. Dimensionen eines Phänomens in Kunst und Kultur (Traum – Wissen – Erzählen 3), Paderborn: Fink 2018, S. 233–250.

Few of Arendt’s writings have drawn more criticism from her own supporters than “Reflections on LIttle Rock,” in which she opposes the federally mandated desegregation of schools. I take Arendt’s comments as a way of opening up problems in her conception of the relationship among political storytelling, plurality and judgment. I do this through a…[Read more]

This is a worksheet I ask students to use to engage in self-assessment of their own essays. I use a version of the same worksheet for peer feedback on essays.

From Charles Taylor to Marcel Gauchet, theorists of the social imaginary have given us new ways
to talk about the shared structures of meanings and practices of the West. Theorists of this group
have argued against the narrow horizons of meaning that are deployed by deliberative political
theories in developing their basic normative concepts…[Read more]

When speaking of the philosophical importance of James’s late style, critics and philosophers have taken two broad approaches. One route, exemplified by Martha Nussbaum, attributes this style to the sensitivity of the characters. The other, exemplified by Robert Pippin, attributes the writing’s complexity to the ambiguities of the moral codes dur…[Read more]

Introduction to Althusser’s concept of ideological reproduction, written for those with little to no theory experience.

Heiles, Marco: Abschließbare Bücher des Mittelalters und der Frühen Neuzeit, in: Einbandforschung 43 (2018), S. 6–19.

The article describes the phenomenon of lockable books in the Middle Ages and the Early Modern and developes a (German) terminology for their description.

Marco Heiles, Heinrich Kaufringer Bibliographie 1809–2017, in: Mittelalter. Interdisziplinäre Forschung und Rezeptionsgeschichte, https://mittelalter.hypotheses.org/9836, Stand: 07.05.2019.

Slides for an Introduction to Philosophy course at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver. These are about Michael Walzer’s article, “Just War and Terrorism” (2006).

Slides for an Introduction to Philosophy course at the University of British Columbia. These refer to an article by Soran Reader, “Making Pacifism Plausible” (2000).