Stefan H. Uhlig

Education and degrees

PhD, MA, and BA, University of Cambridge

Research interests and appointments

I work on eighteenth-century and Romantic European writing, art, aesthetics, and material culture. Before I came to UC Davis, I was a Fellow and Director of Studies at King's College in the University of Cambridge, and previously a Research Fellow at King's College and at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. In Spring 2025, I was the Derek Brewer Visiting Fellow at Emmanuel College, Cambridge. I am writing a short book on Josiah Wedgwood’s Portland Vase, and a longer study of the links between aesthetics and more worldly interests in the eighteenth century. 

Courses taught

COM 14 Intro to Poetry / COM 210 Thinking Backward: Theories of History / COM 166B The Novel / COM 210: German Literary Worlds / COM 168A Romanticism / COM 142 The Romantic Self(ie) / COM 210 Reading Comparatists / COM 210 Aesthetic Value / COM 142 (Not) At Home in Romantic Poetry / COM 195 The Bildungsroman / COM 141 Comparative Critical Theory / COM 164D The Enlightenment / COM 120 Writing Nature: 1750 to the Present / COM 7 Fantasy and the Supernatural / COM 210 Aristotle's Poetics and its Afterlives / COM 255 Comparative Literature: Past, Present, and Future / Freshman Seminars: Democratic Education; What is the Point of an Interpretation?.

Selected Publications

Book

Rhetoric, Poetics, and Literary Historiography: The Formation of a Discipline at the Turn of the Nineteenth Century (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2024)
Reviewed in Eighteenth-Century Fiction and SEL: Studies in English Literature 1500–1900.
Translation into Russian forthcoming in 2028 from Academic Studies Press, Newton, MA

Edited collections

Persuasion after Rhetoric in the Eighteenth Century and Romanticism, co-edited and introduced with Yasmin Solomonescu (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2024)
Winner of the 2024 Jean-Pierre Barricelli Prize awarded by the International Conference on Romanticism for the year's best book in Romantic studies.
Reviewed in Forum for Modern Language Studies, Nineteenth-Century Contexts, and The Times Literary Supplement

Goethe, Worlds, and Literatures, co-edited and introduced with Daniel Purdy and Chunjie Zhang, special issue of Seminar: A Journal of Germanic Studies, 54.2 (2018)

Wordsworth’s Poetic Theory: Knowledge, Language, Experience, co-edited and introduced with Alexander Regier (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010)
Reviewed in BARS Bulletin & Review, European Journal of English Studies, Forum for Modern Language Studies, RES: The Review of English Studies, Romanticism, Textual Practice, and Studies in Romanticism.

Aesthetics and the Work of Art: Adorno, Kafka, Richter, co-edited and introduced with Peter de Bolla (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009)
Reviewed in Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews

Selected essays

“Aesthetic Utility in Kant, Smith, and Wedgwood“ in The Useful Enlightenment: Theories, Practices, and Representations of Usefulness, ed. Jean-Alexandre Perras (forthcoming 2027)

“Dinner with Kant and Wedgwood,” in Art and Craft. Technique in the Eighteenth Century, ed. Kristin Eichhorn and Sandra Richter (Stuttgart: Metzler, forthcoming 2026)

“Bouterwek’s Idea of Literature,” in Friedrich Bouterwek (1766–1828). Schriftsteller und Philosoph der Sattelzeit, ed. Cord Berghahn and Till Kinzel (Heidelberg: Winter, forthcoming 2026), 1–30

“Literary Ethics in Kant, Schiller, Wordsworth, and Goethe,” in Handbook of Literary Criticism and Ethics,” ed. Susana Onega and Jean-Michel Ganteau (Leiden: Brill, 2026), 117–40

“Rhetoric and Aesthetics,” in The Cambridge History of Rhetoric: Volume 4, Seventeenth to Nineteenth Centuries (1650-1900), ed. Adam Potkay and Dietmar Till (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2026), 216–39

“Humboldt’s Populations,” in Latin American Literature in Transition, 1800-1870, ed. Ronald Briggs and Ana Peluffo (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023), 359–76

“Secondary Affect in Lessing, Mendelssohn, and Nicolai,” in Affect and Literature, ed. Alex Houen (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020), 49–65

“Goethe’s Figurative Method,” in The Oxford Handbook of European Romanticism, ed. Paul Hamilton (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 315–39

“Ferguson’s School for Literature,” in The Poetic Enlightenment: Poetry and Human Science, 1650-1820, ed. Tom Jones and Rowan Boyson (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2013), 43–57

“The Long Goodbye to Rhetoric,” in REAL: Yearbook of Research in English and American Literature. Volume 28: Mobility in Literature and Culture, 1500-1900, ed. Ingo Berensmeyer, Christoph Ehland, and Herbert Grabes (Tübingen: Narr, 2012), 237–64

“Wordsworth and Poetic Objecthood,” in Wordsworth’s Poetic Theory, ed. Stefan H. Uhlig and Alexander Regier (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), 36–42

“Wordsworth, Gray, and the Ordinary Life of Poetry,” in The Meaning of “Life” in Romantic Poetry and Poetics, ed. Ross Wilson (New York: Routledge, 2009), 33–56

“Changing Fields: The Directions of Goethe’s Weltliteratur,” in Debating World Literature, ed. Christopher Prendergast (London: Verso, 2004), 26–53