GLL is delighted to announce that Matthew Birkhold will be joining the faculty next fall. His recruitment is the result of a search conducted by the department this past fall and winter. Over 130 individuals applied for the position, but Birkhold was the clear choice of the departmental faculty, as well as graduate and undergraduate students.

Birkhold is receiving his PhD this spring from Princeton University with a dissertation titled “Borrowing Werther: The Rise and Regulation of Fan Fiction in Eighteenth-Century Germany.” It is the first in-depth study of “fan-fiction,” a modern phenomenon that Birkhold applies to earlier centuries; it involves works written by readers or “fans” who appropriate characters invented by other authors.

Birkhold’s preoccupation with fan fiction in the eighteenth century derives in part from his interest in the connection between law and literature. He also holds a J.D. from Columbia Law School (2014), and in his publications he has focused on the many ways in which law connects with cultural production. Besides writing on literary phenomena – for example an essay on the connection between Kleist’s Die Marquise von O. . .  and the discourse on rape and parenthood in the early nineteenth century – he has also published several articles in law journals.

Birkhold will be teaching a graduate seminar in the fall on “Literature and the Law of War” and two courses in the undergraduate curriculum, one on “Fan Fiction: From Goethe to J.K. Rowling,” the other on “Grimms Fairy Tales and their Afterlife.”

Because of his expertise in legal studies, Birkhold also received a courtesy appointment from the College of Law at Ohio State.