Dr. Kurt Beals
Visiting Associate Professor/ Humanities Fellow in Literary Translation
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Profile
Kurt Beals is Visiting Associate Professor of German and Humanities Fellow in Literary Translation. His research focuses on experimental movements in 20th-century and contemporary German literature, as well as media theory and translation. He is the author of Wireless Dada: Telegraphic Poetics in the Avant-Garde (Northwestern University Press, 2020) and of articles about authors including Max Bense, Paul Celan, Ferdinand Kriwet, and Regina Ullmann. He has translated a wide range of works from German into English. His translation of Jenny Erpenbeck’s speech and essay collection Kein Roman (Not a Novel) was included in World Literature Today’s 75 Notable Translations of 2020. His new translation of Hermann Hesse’s classic novel The Steppenwolf was published by W.W. Norton in 2023.