C.V.

G  E  N  E  S  E    G  R  I  L  L ,  P  h  D

        

C U R R I C U L U M   V I T A E

EDUCATION

Awarded PhD, May, 2001 in Germanic Literature and Languages, City University of New York Graduate Center, New York, New York.

Fields of interest include Robert Musil, early twentieth-century experimental writing, medievalism, mysticism, Jahrhundertwende literature & culture, nineteenth-century literature and culture, the English aesthetic movement, anthropology, "primitivism," folklore, mythology, bohemianism, the avant garde, German and Austrian arts & crafts movements, feminist theory, philosophy, art history & theory, architecture and design, utopian thought, existentialism and transcendentalism.

Doctoral Dissertation:  Ecstatic Experience, Crime, and Conversion in Robert Musil's Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften, an interdisciplinary study of Robert Musil's use of Judeo-Christian, Islamic, early Christian, Mithraic forms of mystical experience and "primitive" anthropology in his search for the religious origin of art.

                Cited in Mark Mirsky's introduction to Musil's Diaries: 1899-1941, Basic Books, 1998. 

Awarded M.A., Fall, 1992, City University of New York Graduate Center.

                Master’s thesis:  From Universalism to the Gesamtkunstwerk:  Panorama in Adalbert Stifter's Nachsommer  and the  Austrian & German Arts & Crafts  Movements of the Jahrhundertwende .

                Awarded B.F.A., May, 1986, in painting, The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science & Art, New York City.

                Delivered commencement speech.

T   E   A   C   H   I   N  G     E   X  P  E   R   I   E   N   C   E

Spring, 2014 –Present, Artist-in-Residence, Walden Project, Monkton, Vermont.

Spring 2007-Present, Visiting Lecturer on transcendentalism, existentialism, and art, Walden Project, Monkton, Vermont.

Fall 2008- Spring 2012: Adjunct Instructor, Community College of Vermont, Winooski, Vermont, teaching German, Dimensions of Work (a freshman seminar) and Seminar in Educational Inquiry (the capstone research and critical thinking course).

Spring 2004-2008: Burlington College, Burlington Vermont, “Standing Faculty” of Writing and Literature and Liberal Studies (comparable to assistant or advanced assistant professor).  Burlington College is an alternative, progressive four-year liberal arts college, which does not rank its small “standing faculty” members.  Along with creating and teaching a wide variety of courses in interdisciplinary humanities, I had the opportunity, while at Burlington College, to participate actively in many aspects of academic planning, institutional and individual student assessment, accreditation processes, and hiring.

 Faculty of the Year Award, 2006

Courses taught include: Introduction to Literature; Moments of Being: The Modernist Novel and the Dissolution of Traditional Narrative; Academic Writing (Intermediate and Advanced); Ways of Seeing: Art, Literature and Film Criticism; German I-III Tutorials; Living Dangerously, Thinking Clearly, and Feeling Deeply: Transcendentalism and Existentialism; Shakespeare's Crack'd Mirror: Kings, Fools, Cross-dressers, and Cuckolds In Elizabethan England; Civic Engagement Seminar; Degree Project advisement (Literature, Human Services, Psychology, Sociology, Women's Studies, Studio Art and more).

Fall 2002-Spring 2004: Adjunct Instructor and Independent Degree Program Instructor, Burlington College, Burlington, Vermont. Courses Include: The Avant Garde:  Form and Feeling (1885-1935); Utopia; Search & Research; Religious Themes in Early Modern Literature; 19th Century Women Poets; Fairy Tales; and Creative Writing.

Adjunct Instructor, Saint Michael's College, Colchester, Vermont: Introduction to Literary Analysis.

Fall 2000- Spring 2002: Adjunct Instructor, Community College of Vermont, Burlington, Vermont. Courses Include:  two sections of Dimensions of Learning, an introductory humanities class introducing students to cultural concepts and learning strategies for college work in the humanities; German I & II.

Fall 1995 - Spring 1997: Hunter College, New York: Graduate Teaching Assistantship.  Duties included teaching two classes each semester, German 101 & 102, and conducting proficiency interviews. Mentored teaching assistant:  German 202.

Substitute Adjunct instructor, State University of New York at Purchase, Purchase, New York: Elementary German I.

               

PUBLICATIONS

 

“From Silence to Stammering: Hugo von Hofmannsthal’s ‘Lord Chandos Letter’ and ‘The Letters of One Who Returned’”. Hyperion, Spring, 2015.

Thought Flight: The Small Prose of Robert Musil. Translation and introduction. Contra Mundum Press (2015).

“The Earnestness of High Modernism in Wittgenstein and Musil”. Numero Cinq (February, 2015).

“Primitivisms: On Modernism”. Numero Cinq (July, 2014).

“Musil’s Small Prose”. A selection of translations. Fiction, Volume 60, 2014.

“Apologia: Why Do We Write” (with illustrations from “Almandal Grimoire”), Numero Cinq (April,

                2014).

“Musil’s Small Prose” (3 translations). Hyperion: On the Future of Aesthetics, Volume VIII, No. 1 (spring

                2014).

“Metaphor as Extratemporal Moment in Musil and Proust”. Numero Cinq, February, 2014.

"Musil's 'Über die Dummheit': the Aesthetic and Ethical Uses of the Feminine Discursive”. In: Studia  austriaca XXI (June 2013).

“Robert Musil to an Unknown Little Girl”. Translation of a Musil short prose piece. Fiction Volume 59, 2013.

The World as Metaphor: Possibility as Reality in Robert Musil’s ‘The Man without Qualities’, Camden House, 2012.  

Seeking publication:  Translation of Klaus Amann’s Robert Musil: Literatur und Politik.

Ongoing, since September, 2011: “Attempts to Find Another Human Being.” An English-language blog in association with the International Robert Musil Society. <Musilattempts.blogstop.com>

Review: “Sarah Bernhardt:  Inszenierung von Weiblichkeit im Fin de Siècle”.  German Quarterly, October 1^st, 2008.

“The Other Musil:  Robert Musil and Mysticism”.  In: A Companion to the Works of Robert Musil, edited by Philip Payne, Camden House, 2007.

               

Translation of “Long Time No See,” by Robert Menasse. In: Contemporary Austrian      

             Writings, Continuum, 2007.

“Sorrows and Pleasures of a Young Writer,” a translation of selected letters by Robert Musil, along with introduction and annotations.  In: Fiction, volume 20, Number 1, 2006.

               

“Versuche ein Scheusal zu lieben: Zwillingsriten in Robert Musils ‘Der Mann Ohne Eigenschaften’” [Attempts to Love a Scoundrel: Twinning Rituals in Robert Musil's ‘The Man without Qualities’]. In: Musil an der Schwelle zum 21. Jahrhundert, Peter Lang, 2005.

“Critical Introduction” to my translation of selections from Robert Musil's diaries and letters, in: Fiction, volume 17, number 2, 2002.

“Three Other Women,” translations from Musil's diaries and letters, in: Fiction, volume 17, number 2, 2002.

“That Was Not a Farce, that was the Collapse of a Wall,” critical afterword to my translation in:  Fiction, Volume 16, Number 1, 2000.

First English translation of Robert Musil's farce “Vinzenz and the Mistress of Important Men, Acts II & III” in: Fiction, Volume 16, Number 1, 2000.

First English translation of Robert Musil's farce “Vinzenz and the Mistress of Important Men, Act I”. In:  Fiction, Volume 15, Number 2, 1999.

Extensive citation (pp.XLIX-LI) from my unpublished dissertation in Mark Mirsky's introduction to Robert Musil's Diaries: 1899-1941, Basic Books, 1998.

  PAPERS/PANELS

The Novel Graphic: Panel Discussion on Images and Text, Burlington Book Festival, September 19-21, 2013, Main Street Landing, Burlington, Vermont.

Failure, Foolishness, and Heroic Unfinishability, MLA Conference panel on Heroic Idiocy in the Modernist Novel, Seattle, Washington, January, 2012.

Wortzauber: Dieser Diskurs Gebärt Wiederholend eine Mehrheit von Welten  [Word Magic: This Discourse gives Birth Repeatedly to a Multitude of Worlds] for Robert Musil und die Fremdheit der Kultur, International Robert Musil Conference in Basel, Switzerland, September 2009.

Metaphor as Extratemporal Moment in Robert Musil and Marcel Proust for Re-contextualising Robert Musil: The Author “Without Qualities” and European Culture. International Robert Musil Society conference at Lancaster University, September 20-21, 2007.

Primitivisms in Modernism and the Avant Garde for New Worlds, Old Worlds, an Institute for Civic Engagement Series, Burlington College, Burlington, Vermont, October 25, 2006.

Mysticism, Ethics, and Aesthetics in Robert Musil's The Man without Qualities. Philosophy, Poetry and Religion Seminar, Harvard University Humanities Center, Cambridge, Massachusetts, December 5, 2005. 

‘Versuche, ein Scheusal zu lieben': Zwillingsriten in Robert Musils Mann ohne Eigenschaften. International Robert Musil Conference, Musil an der Schwelle des 21. Jahrhundert, in Saarbrücken, Germany, June 2001.

Towards a Ritual of Reading: Levy-Bruhl's "Participation Mystique" and Robert Musil's Metaphoric Morality, New York University, Deutsches Haus conference, Robert Musil and the Legacy of Cultural Criticism, to celebrate the publication of the English translation of Robert Musil's Diaries.  December 4, 1998.

Respondent to Philip Payne, translator of Musil's Diaries, at a talk sponsored by City College's Jewish Studies department, December 3, 1998.

Ecstasy and Activism: a Radical Aesthetic of Experimental Ethics in Robert Musil's Man without Qualities. At Discontinuities, 1933, 1945, 1989, an interdisciplinary German studies conference at Duke University, September 6-8, 1996.  

            A  W  A  R  D  S  ,       G  R  A  N  T  S  ,      &      H  O  N  O  R  S

Austrian Ministry of Arts, Culture, and Education Grant toward the publication of Thought Flights (Contra Mundum, 2015).

           

Fools’ Gold Artists’ Fund Creative Community Contributor Award, April, 2014.

NEA Translation Fellowship to attend one-month Vermont Studio School Residency, Johnson, VT, February, 2014.

1^st Prize, Art’s Alive Festival of Fine Arts Juried Show, June, 2013, Main Street Landing, Burlington, VT.

Fellowship Award Recipient: National Endowment for the Humanities Landmark Workshop, “Feminists, Utopians, and Social Reform in the Age of Emerson and Thoreau,” July 15-21^st, 2012, Concord, MA.

R E C E N T   A R T   E X H I B I T S  ,  P E R F O R M A N C E S    &

C R E A T I V E   C O L L A B O R A T I O N S

Participation in group show, “Works Both Ways,” at the Flynndog Gallery, Burlington, Vermont,

                July-September, 2015.

One-month residency at Maison Gai Saber, Leigné-sur-usseau, France, February, 2015.

                Artist-in-Residence, The Walden Project, Monckton, Vermont, Spring 2014-Spring 2015.

Exhibition of “Almandal Grimoire” (first 5 pages of giant book), Burlington Book Festival,

                September 19-21, 2013, Main Street Landing, Burlington, Vermont

South End Art Hop, Group Exhibition and Open Studio at 8 Space, September 6-8, Burlington, VT.

Art’s Alive Group Show, August, 2013, Main Street Landing, Burlington, VT.

Rose Street Artist’s Co-op Gallery, Group Show for The Ramble, July, 2013, Burlington, VT.

Sculpted clay mold for iron casting as contribution to the Vermont Sail Freight Project’s boat,

                “Ceres,” July, 2013, Ferrisburgh, VT.

Art’s Alive Festival of Fine Arts Juried Show, June, 2013. 1^st Prize winner for two pages from

                “Almandal Grimoire,” Main Street Landing, Burlington, VT.

Fools' Gold Artists' Fund: a non-profit fund which distributes small grants to local artists and arts

                organizations to complete projects in process. Board of directors, founding fool, event

                coordinator, 1999-present.

Guest Lecture/Consultancy: The Walden Project, Vergennes, Vermont: art theory, transcendentalism,

                and existentialism, annually, 2007-2014.

Co-Founder and collaborator, “Research Sharing via Paper” (RSVP), an initiative to incite scholarly

                and creative discourse through a correspondence circle (i.e., essay-letters), a research fund,

                lecture series, and publication, begun Summer, 2012.

“April Art Show” curated by Boutilier’s Art Store, at Computers for Change, Burlington Vermont,

                April, 2013.

Featured artist for The Salon, a journal of poetry and fiction, Burlington VT, Autumn, 2012.

 “Word-Maker, World-Maker”:  cover art for The World as Metaphor (Camden House, 2012).

“Golden Godling: Know Thyself”:  a collaborative poetic/musical performance with the Pansensical Parlour,

multiple performances, Burlington, Vermont, Autumn, 2012.

“Honey me to Tears”:  “Aesthesian Leaves,” pages from my artist’s books, in the final group show of

                the Honey Space Gallery, 11^th Avenue and 21^st Street, NYC, March 6-24, 2012.

Solo Painting Exhibition: Radio Bean Coffee House, Burlington, Vermont, July, 2011.               

“Aphrodisiacal Anagoges”:  Solo art exhibit of egg tempera paintings, artist’s books, silk screens and

                works on paper, The Block Gallery, Winooski, Vermont, May 2011.

               

Guest artist, theater arts educator, and back-drop painter, Very Merry Theater Company, Burlington,

                Vermont, December, 2010 –present.

“Goethe Spell”: collaborative spoken word and musical performance based on the works and ideas of

                Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, with The Pansensical Parlour.  Performed for the Walden

                Project students on May 6, 2011, and again for a general audience on March 20, 2012, Radio

                Bean, Burlington, Vermont.

“Out of the Box”: Group Show. Exhibit of artist's books at the Block Gallery, Winooski, Vermont,

                November-December, 2010.

       

“The Art Why”: multiple venue group show, Vienna, Austria, June, 2010.

“Pages from Genese's Grimoires”:  Solo retrospective of 15 years of artist's books, Radio Bean Coffee

                House, May, 2010.

Spiel Palast Cabaret: cultural-historical consultant, skit writer, some-time master of ceremonies,

                performer, set-maker, off and on, from 2001-present, Burlington, Vermont.

Co-Director: “Vinzenz and the Mistress of Important Men,” performed at Gezellig, Burlington,

                Vermont, January, 2007.

Fools' Jacket Puppet and Theater Troupe: writer, performer, set designer, 1998-2002.

                            Aesthesia [spoken word] Orchestra: writer, oratrix, musician, 1987-present.