Department of German and Russian Studies
German and Russian Studies @ the MU logo University of Missouri
451 Strickland Hall (formerly GCB) | Columbia, MO 65211-4170
email: grs@missouri.edu | phone: 573-882-4328 | fax: 573-884-8456
Faculty | Ireton

Sean Ireton

Sean Ireton

Associate Professor of German
Director of Graduate Studies in German
Education: Ph.D., 1998, University of Washington
Office: 218C Strickland Hall
Phone: 573-882-4672
Email: iretons@missouri.edu

Research

My research interests generally encompass the intersections between philosophy and literature. My recently published book, An Ontological Study of Death: From Hegel to Heidegger (2007), examines interpretations of death by Hegel, Hölderlin, Nietzsche, Rilke, and Heidegger. It also incorporates the ideas of several modern French philosophers (e.g., Kojève, Sartre, and Foucault) and then places these literary and philosophical views within the socio-medical context of contemporary thanatology. My next book project traces the evolution of both German and American attitudes toward nature in the realms of philosophy, literature, and politics. In more theoretical terms, I trace the development of eighteenth-century anthropocentric conceptions of nature to the more recent ideals of biocentrism and ecocentrism. Authors that I deal with include: Hölderlin, Schelling, Stifter, Thoreau, John Muir, Heidegger, and Aldo Leopold.

Teaching

Some of the courses that I have taught include:

  • Literature, Eco-Philosophy, and the Environment
  • The Road Movie in a Multicultural Context
  • German Conversation and Composition
  • Introduction to Film Analysis
  • German Film from 1945 to the Present
  • German Classics of the Twentieth Century
  • German Nobel Prize-Winners
  • Death in German Literature and Philosophy

 

An Ontological Study of Death: From Hegel to Heidegger
An Ontological Study of Death:
From Hegel to Heidegger
also available from Amazon

Publications

Books

An Ontological Study of Death: From Hegel to Heidegger. (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 2007). 326 pp.

Articles

Between Autobiography and Fiction: Thomas Mann’s Die Entstehung des Doktor Faustus, Roman eines Romans, Seminar: A Journal of Germanic Studies 44 (2008): 210-25.

Wunden/Wunder: On the Romantic Function of Blood and Wounds in the Later Brentano, German Studies Review 30 (2007): 597-610.

Die Aufzeichnung der Memoria in Thomas Manns Buddenbrooks und Der Erwählte, The German Quarterly 76 (2003): 183-194.

The Problem of Language in Nietzsche's Ueber Wahrheit und Lüge im aussermoralischen Sinne and Fontane's Der Stechlin, Colloquia Germanica: Internationale Zeitschrift für Germanistik 35 (2002): 239-261.

Heinrich Manns Auseinandersetzung mit dem Haß: Eine Analyse der Henri Quatre-Romane im Rahmen der exilbedingten Haßliteratur, Orbis litterarum: International Review of Literary Studies 57 (2002): 204-221.

Brechts 'Zertrümmerung' von Heidegger: Das Badener Lehrstück vom Einverständnis als mögliche Kritik an Sein und Zeit, Das Brecht-Jahrbuch 24 (1999): 293-309.

Die Transformation zweier Gregors: Thomas Manns Der Erwählte und Kafkas Die Verwandlung, Monatshefte 90 (1998): 34-48.

Heidegger's Ontological Analysis of Death and its Prefiguration in Nietzsche, Nietzsche-Studien 27 (1997): 405-420.