Department of German and Dutch

Department of German and Dutch

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Research interests: Dr Ruehl specializes in the intellectual history of modern Germany. His research to date has focussed on the ideas and ideologies that shaped German society and culture in the Wilhelmine and Weimar period, in particular the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche and its reception since the 1890s. He has published books and articles on Nietzsche, Burckhardt, Thomas Mann, German Geschichtsphilosophie and philhellenism. His essay on the palingenetic nationalism of the George Circle will appear in the collective volume Weimar Thought: A Critical History (Princeton University Press, forthcoming).

Teaching interests: Dr Ruehl has taught both undergraduate and graduate courses on the history of political thought, with particular emphasis on Romanticism, Nietzsche and Nietzscheanism, the Conservative Revolution and fascist ideology. In addition to this, he has supervised and lectured on various aspects of modern historiography, including Ranke and the Prussian School, Historismus, Marx and historical materialism, as well as postmodernism. For the MPhil in European Literature and Culture, he regularly supervises dissertations and essays on topics in modern German philosophy and theory, from Kant to the Frankfurt School. In the MPhil in Screen Media and Cultures, he teaches the core course on Fascist Cinema and supervises essays and dissertations on German film since the 1920s. His PhD students work on Heidegger, Hannah Arendt, Bachofen's Mutterrecht, the idea of Europe in the Weimar Republic, philosophers under Nazism, German debates about slavery in the 19th century, and the films of Alexander Kluge.

Link to further selected publications.