Gerhild Williams

Barbara Schaps Thomas & David M. Thomas Professor in the Humanities

PhD, University of Washington

research interests:

Early Modern German and French Literature
Magic, Daemonologies, Witch Theory
Media and Culture
Reformation Movements
Translation Theory and Practice
Travel Narratives
Volksbuch/Novel
Early Modern Media and the Evolution of the Novel

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contact info:

Pronouns: She / Her
Email: gerhildwilliams@wustl.edu

Professor Williams has published widely on German and French literature and culture from the Middle Ages to the Early Modern Period (1100-1700), specializing more recently in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

Williams has been working in translation theory and practice, the early modern witch phenomenon, the early modern Volksbuch, and the development of the novel. She has explored the impact and influence of newspapers and other early modern media on the production of novels. Some of her recent publications include books, edited and co-edited volumes, translations, and articles on the Prosaromane of Fortunatus, Melusine, Dr. Faustus, Wagner, and on the seventeenth-century writers Johannes Praetorius and Eberhard Werner Happel. Currently, she is working on the influence of Ottoman power and culture on German prose texts and on the globalizing impact of the Ottoman imperial ambition and cultural hegemony during the seventeenth century.

Selected Publications

Mediating Culture in the Seventeenth-Century German Novel (Eberhard Werner Happel, 1647-1690). Ann Arbor: Michigan UP, 2014.

Mothering Baby: On Being A Woman in Early Modern Germany. GSW trans. Tempe: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 2010

Ways of Knowing in Early Modern Germany: Johannes Praetorius as a Witness to his Time. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006

On the Inconstancy of Witches: Pierre de Lancre's Tableau de l'inconstance des mauvais anges et Demons (1612). Harriet Stone and Gerhild Williams, trans. Tempe, Arizona: Center for Medieval Renaissance Texts and Studies, 2006

in the news:

4.25.24

Communicating with History Through Literature: A Celebration of Gerhild Williams

11.4.22

Williams awarded Sixteenth Century Society and Conference medal (2022)

8.26.21

Transnational literature in the age of nationalism

7.1.21

New book reveals the connected histories of Vienna and Constantinople

Ottoman Eurasia in Early Modern German Literature

By Gerhild Williams

Even a casual perusal of seventeenth-century European print production makes clear that the Turk was on everyone’s mind. Europe’s confrontation of and interaction with the Ottoman Empire in the face of what appeared to be a relentless Ottoman expansion spurred news delivery and literary production in multiple genres, from novels and sermons to calendars and artistic representations. The trans-European conversation stimulated by these media, most importantly the regularly delivered news reports, not only kept the public informed but provided the basis for literary conversations among many seventeenth-century writers, three of whom form the center of this inquiry: Daniel Speer (1636-1707), Eberhard Werner Happel (1647-1690), and Erasmus Francisci (1626-1694). The expansion of the Ottoman Empire during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries offers the opportunity to view these writers' texts in the context of Europe and from a more narrowly defined Ottoman Eurasian perspective.

Ottoman Eurasia in Early Modern German Literature: Cultural Translations (Francisci, Happel, Speer) explores the variety of cultural and commercial conversations between Europe and Ottoman Eurasia as they negotiated their competing economic and hegemonic interests. Brought about by travel, trade, diplomacy, and wars, these conversations were, by definition, “cross-cultural” and diverse. They eroded the antagonism of “us and them,” the notion of the European center and the Ottoman periphery that has historically shaped the view of European-Ottoman interactions.

University of Michigan Press

Mediating Culture in the Seventeenth-Century German Novel

By Gerhild Williams

Eberhard Happel, German Baroque author of an extensive body of work of fiction and nonfiction, has for many years been categorized as a “courtly-gallant” novelist. In Mediating Culture in the Seventeenth-Century German Novel, author Gerhild Scholz Williams argues that categorizing him thus is to seriously misread him and to miss out on a fascinating perspective on this dynamic period in German history.

Happel primarily lived and worked in the vigorous port city of Hamburg, which was a “media center” in terms of the access it offered to a wide library of books in public and private collections. Hamburg’s port status meant it buzzed with news and information, and Happel drew on this flow of data in his novels. His books deal with many topics of current interest—national identity formation, gender and sexualities, Western European encounters with neighbors to the East, confrontations with non-European and non-Western powers and cultures—and they feature multiple media, including news reports, news collections, and travel writings. As a result, Happel’s use of contemporary source material in his novels feeds our current interest in the impact of the production of knowledge on seventeenth-century narrative. Mediating Culture in the Seventeenth-Century German Novel explores the narrative wealth and multiversity of Happel’s work, examines Happel’s novels as illustrative of seventeenth-century novel writing in Germany, and investigates the synergistic relationship in Happel’s writings between the booming print media industry and the evolution of the German novel.

University of Michigan Press