About

Kathleen L. Komar is a Distinguished Professor in the Department of Comparative Literature at UCLA. She holds a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from Princeton University, obtained in 1977. Her academic interests include feminist theory, modernism, contemporary women's literature, and post-symbolist poetry, with a focus on languages such as German. She is involved in teaching and research within the Humanities Division at UCLA, contributing to the development of programs and courses in comparative literature and experimental critical theory.

Research topics

• Computer Science
• History

Selected publications

• Two Views of Arnold Band

  2020

  Senior authorCorresponding
  • Computer Science
  • Computer Science
  • History
  PublisherDOI

• 1: Perspectives on Broch’s Die Schlafwandler: Narratives of History and the Self

  Boydell and Brewer eBooks · 2019-12-31

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• The Feminine in Rilke’s <i>Sonnets to Orpheus</i>

  2019-06-20

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract Women play a unique role in Rilke’s work. They are exemplary lovers—usually unrequited—or extraordinarily protective mothers or creative inspirations. The Sonnets to Orpheus feature a number of crucial women both historical and mythical. This essay investigates the significance of women and the feminine more generally in the Sonnets. For Rilke, women embody the nonvisible and capture the realm beyond the merely physical. This feminine principle has the capacity to bring into being that which is potential but not yet realized—just as the poet does in the creation of the poem. Rilke sees the feminine as creatively potent but at the cost of personal fulfillment. The feminine thus embodies for Rilke a philosophy of productive deprivation that presents challenges for a feminist view but also privileges the feminine. Only by participating in that feminine principle can the poet gain access to the most crucial world beyond the tangible.

  PublisherDOI

• Perspectives on Broch’s Die Schlafwandler:

  Boydell & Brewer eBooks · 2019-04-15

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Perspectives on Broch’s Die Schlafwandler: Narratives of History and the Self

  2019-04-15

  other1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Poetry and the Hard Sciences

  Classiques GARNIER · 2017-01-01

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  L’article s’attache à analyser comment les technologies électroniques modifient la façon dont nous comprenons la littérature et comment, réciproquement, la littérature reconfigure l’espace cybernétique.

  PublisherDOI

• Le Comparatisme comme approche critique Comparative Literature as a Critical Approach. Tome 6

  Classiques GARNIER · 2017-01-01

  articleOpen access

  Sélection des actes du vingtième congrès de l’Association internationale de littérature comparée, cet ensemble de volumes engage une réflexion sur les bases d’une critique littéraire comparatiste et sur les relations entre le comparatisme en littérature et dans les autres domaines du savoir et des arts.

  PublisherDOI

• The <i>Duino Elegies</i>

  Cambridge University Press eBooks · 2010-01-21 · 24 citations

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  One of the most famous cycles of poems written in German in the twentieth century, and arguably one of the best known from any era, Rainer Maria Rilke's Duino Elegies (published in 1923) have remained remarkably influential into the twenty-first century. Translations into many languages are still being actively produced, with at least seven new translations into English alone since the turn of the millennium. Rilke's work has inspired not only major English-speaking writers such as American novelists Thomas Pynchon, British poet W. H. Auden, and American poet James Merrill but also writers from Iran (Sadegh Hedayat), the former Czechoslovakia (Milan Kundera), and India (Amitav Ghosh) - among many others. Composers such as Britain's Oliver Knussen, Russia's Dimitri Shostakovich, Denmark's Per Nørgård, Norway's Arne Nordheim and America's Morten Lauridsen have all set Rilke to music. Popular culture continues to absorb Rilke's writing and reproduces it in surprising venues ranging from self-help manuals to films to contemporary Indie rock groups. What is it about Rilke's work, and in particular the Duino Elegies, that fascinates so many readers? One answer might be that Rilke draws from a diverse cultural background. As a world traveller and lover of other traditions, Rilke is influenced by many cultures in addition to those of German-speaking countries: including, among others, Russia, where he travelled with Lou Andreas-Salomé, Scandinavia, where he stayed with Ellen Key, and France, whose poets, Baudelaire, Mallarmé and Valéry, he admired.

  PublisherDOI

• Rainer Maria Rilke's 'The Book of Hours' (Studies in German Literature, Linguistics, and Culture) by Susan Ranson, Ben Hutchinson

  The Modern Language Review · 2010-01-01

  article1st authorCorresponding

  902 Reviews biology but departs from contemporary male theorists in seeing woman as primary, rather than defined in relation toman. 'Das Weibliche', deriving as itdoes from the egg, may be less developed and differentiated than 'dasMannliche', but this is viewed as a positive; women should revel in their closeness to nature, their difference, their ability to enjoy life and think inways other than the logical. If men, like the sperm, have to strive, compete, and propel themselves, women are already fully legitimated. This biological thinking seems blithely unconcerned by the contemporary demands of the firstwomen's movement, a movement which Andreas-Salome was aware of but never joined. Rather, it shows her intellectual immersion?she was among thefirstwomen to study at university?in the (usually male, oftenmisogynist) literature and philosophy of the period, ofwhich Schiitz gives a useful overview, from Ibsen and Tolstoy toNietzsche, Mobius, and Wei ninger, the strongest influence on her own theory being Wilhelm Bolsche's Das Liebesleben inderNatur. Andreas-Salome's twenty-fiveNovellen and novels spring from her early career, roughly 1885 to 1903, preceding her friendship with Freud and her psychoana lyticalwork by some years. Schiitz provides a reading of each text, drawing out common themes such as the sexual submission of the woman, marriage as le galized prostitution, the family as a place of conflict, and incest. A final chapter draws up a typology of Andreas-Salome's women: mother-saint-madonna versus whore, working woman versus housewife, androgyny versus womanly woman, and the figure of the artist. The close readings are illuminating, ifover-descriptive at times; primary quotations are both overused and underexploited. Schiitz ismost interestingwhen she analyses Andreas-Salome's literary forms,where the tension between theory and social reality is exposed. The success of the story 'Fenitschka', for example, lies precisely in the fact that it is not, as one contemporary critic complained, a first-person narrative of female liberation; rather the eponymous protagonist, a contradictory character who develops over time, is seen through the eyes of aman who does not know what tomake of her. The tale is thus less about the essence ofwoman than about men's attempts to define and fixher. Schiitz stops short of arguing that Andreas-Salome's fiction critiques social norms, concluding merely that the theory ismore progressive than the fiction; her study also suffers from a lack of references to the effortsof Anglo-American scholars such as Biddy Martin to open up Andreas-Salome's work to reappraisal. Swansea University Brigid Haines Rainer Maria Rilke's 'The Book ofHours. Trans, by Susan Ranson. Ed. by Ben Hutchinson. (Studies inGerman Literature, Linguistics, and Culture) Rochester, NY: Camden House. 2008. xliii+240 pp. $75; ?40. ISBN 978-1 57113-380-9. For the readers and scholars of Rilkes work who have long occupied themselves with the late poetry, Rainer Maria Rilke's 'The Book ofHours' is a refreshing MLR, 105.3, 2010 903 reminder of the roots of those later texts. Ben Hutchinson makes a convincing argument that the three parts of The Book ofHours reveal Rilke's rapid early development as a poet. He helps to contextualize the three books by connecting 'The Book ofMonkish Life' to Rilke's tour of Russia with Lou Andreas-Salome in 1899, 'The Book of Pilgrimage' to his marriage and the birth of his child in 1901 inWesterwede (near the famous artists' colony inWorpswede), and 'The Book of Poverty and Death' to his experience of the urban bustle and poverty of Paris in 1903. These connections help the reader to comprehend the biographical underpinning of each of the sections; they also allow us to see the geographical settings and landscape, and the developing themes and imagery of the collection as a whole. In both his introduction and his very useful notes to each poem, Hutchinson connects themajor themes and repeated (but shifting) images of these books to Rilke's more famous pieces, including Malte Laurids Brigge, theDuineser Elegien, and the Sonette an Orpheus. This cross-referencing ofmotifs both within the Book ofHours and between this volume and the later poetry helps the reader to under stand how many of Rilke's central concerns surface early inhis work and continue...

  PublisherDOI

• Comparativism

  The Encyclopedia of the Novel · 2010-12-24

  other1st authorCorresponding

  Most studies of the novel are comparative. When critics examine a single volume, they usually contextualize it by placing it among other novels of its time, or its national literature, or other texts written by the same author. Ian Watt's 1957 study, The Rise of the Novel , examines the genre and the society that enabled its survival. Watt contextualizes and investigates genre, analyzes and compares individual British texts, and reads the novel in light of the British and continental philosophical traditions of the eighteenth century. All of these are comparative forms of analysis in a general sense.

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Dorothy Z. Baker

  1 shared

• Joëlle Prungnaud

  Université de Lille

  1 shared

• Laurence Dahan-Gaïda

  1 shared

• John Pilkington

  1 shared

• Nicholas Manning

  Université Grenoble Alpes

  1 shared

• Hans-Joachim Backe

  1 shared

• Donlyn Lyndon

  1 shared

• M R C McDowell

  1 shared

Awards & honors

• CLGSA Fellowship and Graduate Support
• The Edward W. Said Professorship