Biography

Peter R. Erspamer
e-mail: perspamer@yahoo.com

EDUCATION

Attended Grinnell College, University of Freiburg in Germany, University of Bonn in Germany (Fulbright Scholar), and University of Wisconsin-Madison. Ph.D. cum laude in Comparative Literature and German Cultural History with Research Focus on Jewish Studies

TEACHING

Visiting Assistant Professor at Carroll College (Waukesha), Marquette University, Indiana University/Purdue University of Indianapolis, Fort Hays University, University of Missouri, and Winona State University. Citation from the Teaching Committee at IUPUI for having had "a remarkable and positive impact."

BOOKS

The Elusiveness of Tolerance: The "Jewish Question" from Lessing to the Napoleonic Wars; edited by Professor Paul T. Roberge for the University of North Carolina Press, 1997. Recipient of Choice Outstanding Academic Book Award (American Library Association). Reprinted in 1998. (189 Pages)

ARTICLES

"Christian Wilhelm von Dohm's On the Civic Improvement of the Jews," in The Yale Companion to Jewish Writing and Thought in German Culture, edited by Sander L. Gilman and Jack D. Zipes, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997, pp. 75-84

"Women Before Hell's Gate: Survivors of the Holocaust and their Memoirs," in Literature and Ethnic Discrimination, edited by Michael J. Meyer, Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1997, pp. 171-186

Essays: "Assimilation," "Emden-Eibeschütz Controversy," "Haskalah," "Theodor Herzl", and "Toleration" in Reader's Guide to Judaism, edited by Michael Terry, London: Fitzroy Dearborn, 2000.

"Music as a Locus of Social Conflict and Social Connection in Friedrich Torberg's Süßkind von Trimberg," in Literature and Music, edited by Michael J. Meyer, Amsterdam: Rodopi, forthcoming in 2001

CURRENT RESEARCH

Book Project: "Foreshadowings of the Unthinkable: European Jews Between Emancipation and Destruction"

GRANTS AND AWARDS

Lucius N. Littauer Foundation, National Endowment for the Humanities, Biographical Citations in Contemporary Authors, Who's Who in America, International Authors and Writers Who's Who