Martin’s research focuses on the interrelation between literary and philosophical texts from the Enlightenment to the present, with particular emphasis on the German tradition, but also including French and American critical thought and contemporary texts, novels in particular. His current project concerns brother/sister relations in 19th- and 20th- century literary and philosophical writers ffrom Heinrich von Kleist to Rober Walser.

Books & Online Articles

• Martin is the author of Wittgenstein’s Novels (Routledge, 2006; paperback released in 2012)
• “Email aus Chicago: Yankee Hotel Foxtrot” (April 2002).
• “Es war einmal der Mensch: Comte und Houellebecq erinnern (an) uns,” parapluie 8: Zeitenwenden (Summer 2000).

Stern’s scholarly interests revolve around how the analysis of narratives allows us to gain insight into how human cultures codify experiences and accord them value. His first book, Nietzsche’s Ocean, Strindberg’s Open Sea, explored how two late 19th century figures, Friedrich Nietzsche and August Strindberg, criticized European, bourgeois conceptions of subjectivity. His subsequent research exploring Nietzsche’s critique of morality as it relates to restrictions and conceptions of the body and on the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard’s conception of human subjection to an absolute demand deepened this analysis and led to an engagement with the limits of “freedom” within a philosophical tradition that bases its ethical analyses on the possibilities accorded and necessitated by volition. 

Current Projects:

• The Singing Socrates addresses the legacy of Socrates in 19th Century thought as it relates the notions of subjectivity, value creation, history, and the split between the conceptions of the ancient and of the primitive.
• Progress and Its Other compares European and African notions of the human being as it relates to decolonization.