Caroline Kita is Assistant Professor of German at Washington University in St. Louis. She received her PhD in German Studies from Duke University in 2011.

Professor Kita's scholarship focuses on German and Austrian culture in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. She is particularly interested in aesthetic philosophy, and the connections between literature and music. Her publications investigate the literary and philosophical writings of the Austrian-Jewish poet Siegfried Lipiner and his friendship and intellectual exchange with the composer Gustav Mahler. Currently, her research examines religious and cultural identity in the works of Jewish writers and composers in Austria from the turn of the twentieth century to the Second World War, including Richard Beer-Hofmann, Stefan Zweig, Arnold Schoenberg, and Franz Werfel.

Professor Kita's course offerings range from language courses of all levels to seminars on various aspects of German and European culture, such as music, literature and national identity, Classicism, Romanticism, and Modernism. In addition to music, Professor Kita researches other aspects of auditory culture, including the radio play, or Hörspiel, as a literary genre.

Professor Kita has studied at the University of Vienna, the University of Potsdam and the University of Duisburg-Essen. She was the recipient of a Fulbright Grant to Austria in 2004-2005, and has received funding for advanced research from the OeAD, who awarded her an Ernst Mach Grant in 2012 and a Franz Werfel Fellowship in 2015.

Research Interests

19th and 20th Century German and Austrian Literature and Culture, German-Jewish Studies, Aesthetic Philosophy and Religion, Music and Narrative, the Radio Play (Hörspiel) in German culture.

Selected Publications

"Richard Beer-Hofmann’s Die Historie von König David: Jewish Biblical Drama and the Limits of Epic Theater." The German Quarterly. 89.2 (2016). 133-149.

"Myth, Metaphysics and Cosmic Drama: The Legacy of Faust in Lipiner's Hippolytos and Mahler's Eighth Symphony." Monatshefte. 105.4 (Winter 2013).

Spring 2017 Courses

L21 German 302D: Advanced German: Core Course V
L21 German 432: What Dreams May Come: Explorations of the Psyche in Viennese Modernism