Adi Nester

Assistant Professor and Levine-Sklut Fellow in Jewish Studies

Education

Ph.D., German Studies, University of Colorado Boulder

Intellectual Biography & Awards

My research and teaching interests focus on the interrelations of music, literature, theology, and political theory in the German and German-Jewish traditions. I am particularly interested in the ways in which aesthetics and aesthetic theories inform our understanding of concepts like identity and difference. In my current book project, I relate the historicizing German reception of the Hebrew Bible and the Jewish people to the problematic position of opera as a modern revival of Greek tragedy, and show how biblical themed operas contributed to the discourse of difference between Germans and German Jews in the twentieth century. Additional research projects include the study of music as an experiential phenomenon and its disruption of hermeneutic traditions, as well as a study of contemporary cultural production by Israelis in Germany. My research has been supported by fellowships for emerging scholars in Jewish Studies from the Posen Society of Fellows and the Association for Jewish Studies.

Recent Publications

“The End of Abstraction and the Beginning of the People: On Law and Representation in Arnold Schoenberg’s Moses und Aron,” German Quarterly 93/1 (Winter 2020): 19-36.

“Eine ungeheure Epopöe unseres eigenen: Language and the Hebrew Bible in Rudolf Borchardt’s Das Buch Joram,” The Germanic Review: Literature, Culture, Theory 94/1 (2019): 16-38.

Book Review of: The Translated Jew: German Jewish Culture Outside the Margins by Leslie Morris. Shofar: An interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies 38/2 (Summer 2020): 303-306.

Book Review of: The Trouble with Wagner by Michael P. Steinberg. German Studies Review 42/3 (2019): 599-601.

Frequently Taught Courses

GERM 303: German in Conversation

For more details, please reference Adi’s CV.