About

Beate I. Allert is a Professor of German and Comparative Literature at Purdue University, serving as the director of the Comparative Literature Program in the School of Interdisciplinary Studies. Her academic specialization includes German and Comparative Literature, with a focus on the 18th and 19th centuries, Enlightenment, Weimar Classicism, Romanticism, Hermeneutics, Critical Theory, Metaphor, Ekphrasis, Visual-Verbal Dynamics, Color Theories, and Film studies. She completed her M.A. and Ph.D. at the University of California Berkeley and her undergraduate studies at the Universität Tübingen in Germany. Her teaching career at Purdue began in 1991, and she has also taught at Mills College, Mount Holyoke College, the University of Bordeaux, and Universität Freiburg, where she directed the Purdue-Ohio-Indiana Universities Consortium. Her scholarly contributions include authoring five books on topics related to metaphor, visuality, comparative cinema, and German cultural figures such as J.G. Herder and G.E. Lessing. She has served as Chair of German at Purdue and held leadership roles in the International Herder Society, including Vice President and President. Her research interests encompass literature, the visual and performing arts, music, and film, with a particular emphasis on visual-verbal dynamics. She actively participates in study abroad programs, fosters international partnerships such as the Purdue-Freiburg University collaboration, and engages with organizations like Fulbright, DAAD, and ASECS. Her work aims to support students in reaching their professional goals in Comparative Literature, and she has a passion for working with individuals from diverse cultural backgrounds.

Research topics

• Artificial Intelligence
• History
• Political Science
• Sociology
• Art history
• Philosophy
• Computer Science
• Theology
• Psychology
• Art
• Anthropology
• Law

Selected publications

• Nemesis in Herder's Approach to Time, or How “to Enjoy the Ocean in a Nutshell” *

  2024-09-12

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  The chapter discusses how Herder provides in “Nemesis. An Educational Symbol”—an educational blueprint against the dominant belief in endless linear progress that comes with the restless yearning for human perfection. Herder’s unique approach to temporality draws attention to more realistic horizons and the need for pause, reflection, gestalt formations, and necessary endings. This approach has important consequences for ethics and aesthetics, including for accepting disability in society, environmentalism, and individual self-care today. Herder draws attention, through storytelling, description of ancient artworks, as well as playful reviews of their reception, to what vital roles of the Goddess Nemesis figure could have in sculpture, literature, and coins since Antiquity while trying to teach us poetically the art of living with measure; to listen to Nemesis as one’s individual conscience; and how to “enjoy the ocean in a nutshell.”

  PublisherDOI

• Georg Forster: German Cosmopolitan By ToddKontje, Penn State University Press.2022. pp. 200. $99.95 (hardcover)

  The German Quarterly · 2023-06-01

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Todd Kontje's book consists of six parts. The introduction provides a succinct, infomative, and entertainingly written history lesson about the 18th century that only on the surface looks as if it will be an “unabashed celebration of European cultural superiority” (51). Instead, it reveals itself to be a nuanced critique of such a point of view, based on Georg Forster's own interventions, especially when he translated and commented on Captain James Cook's posthumously published three-volume account of his final voyage in the Pacific in 1776−78. Kontje's first chapter, entitled “What is an Author?” addresses Forster's own multinational background. He was born in Nassenhuben near Danzig (Gdańsk, now Mokry Dwór, Poland), where his father was a pastor. While his family could trace their roots back to Scotland (which is why his father named him “George” at his baptism, not “Georg”), and while Forster was a multinational citizen, he retained a self-proclaimed identity as someone who was German to the core, as he wrote to his friend Friedrich Adolf Vollpracht in 1776: “In my thoughts I am an emotional German” (“[ich] bin in Gedanken ein Deutscher und schwärme;” cited in Kontje 25). Georg Forster had multiple political allegiances, and Kontje elaborates on his unique yet complex position, navigating his own approach while considering philosophical, socio-political, and postcolonial discourses. In the second chapter, entitled “A Voyage Round the World,” Kontje delves into the life and writings of Georg Forster and his fascinating interactions with other important writers of the time, especially Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Johann Gottfried Herder, and Alexander von Humboldt. What stands out as one of the most interesting features in Forster's written work is that he not only prepared a translation of Cook's three-volume account of his amazing third voyage but also that he added an introduction that deserves much more attention than it has ever received. Kontje argues in this commentary on the introduction that Forster positions himself quite differently from most of his contemporaries, proclaiming: “The only thing I enjoyed about the work [i.e., to translate Cook] was that it gave me a chance to express my own philosophy” (cited in Kontje 51). Kontje continues by stating that although Forster was to some extent influenced by the notion of European dominance at the time, he was also of the belief that different cultures have manifested cultural flowerings at different times in history and it was only by virtue of Europe's own deep roots in ancient Greece, itself a very multinational and fertile ground, that it had a chance to blossom in the 18th century. At the same time, Forster held that other cultures have their flowerings at varying and different times and that these are no less important or no less advanced than the cultures of Europe. Kontje might also have pointed out more specifically the sources from which Forster drew this cultural relativism, which is similar to the comments made by Alexander von Humboldt and is also found in the work of Herder. Kontje's own research, as he acknowledges in his preface to his volume, gained much insight from visits to Weimar, the German Library Archive in Marbach, and the permanent exhibit “Georg Forster und die Wörlitzer Südseesammlung in Dessau-Wörlitz.” As Chapter 3, entitled “Race, History, and German Classicism,” in particular shows, this book is far more than just a biography of Forster. Forster was only 20 years old when he returned from traveling around the world with Captain Cook on his second voyage into the Pacific, 1772−75. He had been to the coast of Antarctica and spent time in Tahiti, which already had the reputation in Europe of being a “tropical paradise.” He was already a celebrity and would remain so for almost the rest of his life. Soon after he returned to London with his father in 1776, he received an audience with King George II and amused the queen with exotic stories from their voyage, and in 1777, he became the “youngest scientist ever elected to the Royal Academy.” He met with Comte de Buffon, Louis-Antoine de Bougainville, and Benjamin Franklin in Paris; was celebrated in Vienna with a poem in his honor; dined with the King of Poland; and met with Goethe, Christoph Martin Wieland, and Herder in Weimar. He shared with them certain ideals of Weimar Classicism, which are worth exploring from Kontje's new scholarly perspective. What makes Forster “a classic,” according to Kontje (who also draws links to Alexander von Humboldt among others), is his strong belief in renewal, a credo of permanence and continuance, and a notion expressed already by Herder in his volume Ideen “placing humankind in the grand cosmic perspective of a dynamically evolving universe” (45). Chapter 4 is devoted to Forster's Views of the Lower Rhine, Brabant, Flanders (three volumes, 1791−1794). Kontje elaborates on how, in keeping with the Enlightenment, Forster praises recent advances in international trade and how he celebrates the city of Aachen with two subchapters devoted to the description of the city and how the local business was connected in a global context. Kontje makes use of Reinhart Koselleck's concept of “Sattelzeit,” which is a much more informative notion than “Goethezeit” and which could replace it since it hints at the transitional period and the political challenges and ideological contradictions of the time. In his fifth chapter, provocatively titled “Revolution in Mainz: Liberation or Conquest?” Kontje further comments that the Mainz Republic was “a short-lived attempt to establish a revolutionary democracy in Germany” (2), a great chance of a lifetime, which was missed and undone before Forster's eyes and to his dismay. Kontje guides his readers to reflect upon Forster's fall from fame as a consequence of that political disaster. He highlights Foster's progressive thinking and the problems he consequently had to deal with in the wake of new feudal oppression. Finally, in his conclusion, entitled “A Different Kind of Classic,” Kontje insists that it is important to understand Forster as “an enemy of political despotism and religious obscurantism, and an advocate of the French Revolution” (171). Moreover, he “questioned the presuppositions of the confident worldview. He endorsed Emperor Joseph's progressive reforms but worried that his imposition of a single standard onto diverse cultures would result in a machine-like leveling of local differences” (171). Kontje's book is extremely well researched and differs from such important and famous earlier benchmarks as Mary Louise Pratt's Imperial Eyes (1992), Susanne Zantop's Colonial Fantasies (1997), John Noyes's Herder: Aesthetics against Imperialism (2015), and Birgit Tautz's Translating the World: Toward a New History of German Literature Around 1800 (2018). What makes Kontje's book innovative and surprising is that he interprets the historical figure Georg Forster—despite all his international travels and interactions—as a German cosmopolitan as indicated by the subtitle. Kontje asserts that Germany, from Herder to Forster, has its own distinct philosophical approach and differs in comparison to Britain, France, and other countries that had colonies or famous travelers at the time. This book is daring, somewhat provocative yet brilliant. It is an elegant volume, well done and with a helpful index. Above all, this is a major contribution to current scholarly debates on race, travel literature, science, and political and philosophical discourses surrounding the French Revolution and the Mainz Republic. In conclusion, I recommend it to everyone interested in 18th- and 19th-century studies, the Enlightenment, Weimar Classicism, and Romanticism, or to anyone who wants to stay at the cusp of new developments in German, European, and Comparative Literature, for it gives much insight into diverse aspects of nationalism, cosmopolitanism, individual and group identity, populism, and democracy.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Images for Memories

  Routledge eBooks · 2023

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Computer Science
  • Computer Science
  • Artificial Intelligence

  Allert proceeds from the insights that 1) an individual’s ability to comprehend and contextualize images is linked to culturally engrained literary narratives, such as poems, songs, and legends; and 2) as James Elkin asserts, when one looks upon a work of art, that objects also gaze back at the subject. In early Romantic narratives, personal agents are often responsible for failures, mishaps, or accidents, whereas those of the later Romantics find fault with the uncontrollable power of forces that challenge the tales’ protagonists. Poems and other texts illustrate that Romantic figures such as Loreley, Venus, or Pygmalion activate cultural memory, which becomes repeated, reinterpreted, or reinvented. Works by Brentano, Tieck, Eichendorff, and Heine elucidate how authors frequently project desire and fear of such agents and agencies into their works. Although science could easily explain, for example, maritime accidents on the Rhine near Bacherach as adverse but completely natural effects of physical, geographical, and geological causes, Romantic artists often prefer to lay the blame at the feet of bewitching, fictitious female entities of supernatural powers, prompting questions of incorporating cultural iconography, adopting coherent imagery, and modifying established icons.

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• From the Fluid to the Crystal:

  Liverpool University Press eBooks · 2022-10-15

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
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• Paola Mayer. <i>The Aesthetics of Fear in German Romanticism</i>

  Seminar A Journal of Germanic Studies · 2021-05-01

  article1st authorCorresponding
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• Forum: New Approaches to Eighteenth‐Century Literature, Culture, and Theory

  The German Quarterly · 2020-04-01

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• John K. Noyes. Herder: Aesthetics against Imperialism. Toronto: The U of Toronto P, 2015. 402 pp.

  Boydell & Brewer eBooks · 2020-06-15

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
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• Wolfgang Albrecht, <i>Lessing in persönlichen Kontakten und im Spiegel zeitgenössischer Briefe. Eine neue Quellenedition</i>. Lessing Museum, Kamenz 2018. 300 S., € 35,–.

  Arbitrium · 2020-12-01

  article1st authorCorresponding
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• John K. Noyes. Herder: Aesthetics Against Imperialism. Toronto: the U of Toronto P, 2015. 402 Pp.

  2020-06-15

  other1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Herder: Aesthetics against Imperialism by John K. Noyes

  Goethe yearbook · 2020

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Sociology
  • Political Science
  • Anthropology

  Reviewed by: Herder: Aesthetics against Imperialism by John K. Noyes Beate I. Allert John K. Noyes. Herder: Aesthetics against Imperialism. Toronto: The U of Toronto P, 2015. 402 pp. In his helpful introduction, John K. Noyes gives an astute account of cultural history during Herder's time in order to document a growing awareness of the [End Page 377] various dimensions of globalization and the development of an anti-imperialist aesthetics. He argues that "although Herder does not use the word imperialism, it is clear that he talks about what Christopher Bayly calls the 'first age of global imperialism,' beginning around 1760—that is, around the time Herder started to write." Noyes also draws from theoretical works by Dimas Figueroa on the three structural conditions that make globalization possible, from Immanuel Wallerstein's description of "the second era of the great expansion of the capitalist world economy," and from Reinhard Koselleck's 1959 Kritik und Krise with the observation that "in the eighteenth century, the modern subject became increasingly defined as encompassing all of humanity," and that its "field of action was the unitary world of the globe." Noyes emphasizes that Herder followed the latest discoveries by James Cook and Georg Forster, and explains how "the changing picture of the world and its inhabitants," due to many scientific advances in geography, biology, ethnography, and anthropology, made the world then more imaginable as a whole, but also less imaginable, considering its infinite complexity, arguing that Herder considered "the threats which unchecked commercialism posed to the global environment—whether we take this as an environment of cultural and linguistic diversity, or that of biodiversity." Noyes maintains that Herder's writings can be interpreted as "an ongoing exercise in crisis management related directly to globalization." While Herder's writings are replete with many interesting and sometimes conflicting observations, Noyes has a talent for making even Herder's most speculative ideas appear to be logical, philosophically stringent, and grounded on materiality and cultural study. Noyes discusses how contemporaneous developments, in terms of globalization, made Herder aware of "the Atlantic slave trade and the decimation of the indigenous population throughout the New World," which he clearly condemned. As Noyes clarifies, Herder also opposed such "ideas as the superiority of European civilization, the primacy of reason, and the progress of humankind," while drawing attention to more complex notions that defy any simplistic interpretation. According to Noyes, Herder also rejected the idea that "artistic expression can be universalized, reduced to a set of a priori rules" as was implicit in the philosophical rationalism of his time and especially in "the academic school that dominated German philosophy at mid-century." As Noyes explicitly states, Herder had "a deep-seated aversion to any form of exploitation or domination of one culture by another," a contention that Noyes, however, then begins to unravel by elaborating on what he calls "several dimensions to his anti-imperialism." Especially striking is Noyes's exploration of aspects of Herder's biography in the context of his philosophical work—in particular, his important sea travels that led to a new methodological approach connecting the movement of the mind with that of the body. Noyes attributes a concept of "embodied thought" to Herder, which I find fascinating, stating, for example, that "Herder speculates on the migration of fish, and he uses the resulting figures of motion to think about the long history of migrating humanity that gave rise to Europe as he knows it." One of Noyes's primary achievements is to show how Herder's approach to aesthetics is extremely relevant to recent debates in postcolonial studies. Noyes explicitly engages with theorists such as Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (A Critique of Postcolonial Reason: Towards a History of the Vanishing Present, 1999), A. G. Hopkins (Global History: Interactions between the Universal and the Local, 2006), and Dipesh Chakravabarty (Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference, 2008), among others, and also addresses the important [End Page 378] book by Vicki A. Spencer, Herder's Political Thought: A Study on Language, Culture and Community (2012), adding important nuances to its interpretation of Herder. In his treatment of Sonia Sikka's Herder and Humanity and Cultural Difference: Enlightened Relativism (2011...

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Frequent coauthors

• Lesley Sharpe

  3 shared

• Thomas P. Saine

  2 shared

• Birgit Joos

  2 shared

• Gerhart Hoffmeister

  2 shared

• Dennis F. Mahoney

  2 shared

• Alexander Košenina

  1 shared

• Florian Krobb

  1 shared

• Katharina Weisrock

  1 shared

Education

• B.A., Anglistik & Germanistik & Grosses Latinum

  Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen

• Ph.D

  University of California at Berkeley

Awards & honors

• Global Synergy Grant for the International Herder Conference
• vice president and as president of the International Herder…