Books by Helmut Muller-Sievers

This new series presents original scholarly and essayistic work addressing the central status of literature in and for the human sciences. At stake in the monographs and essay collections are paradigms of literary forms for thinking the human sciences: the knowledge involved in a literary work; how modes of reading and writing shape and depend on an epoch or area of thinking; literature's affinities and points of resistance to what we call the humanities and the sciences. In other words, the series examines how literature works with and upon philosophy, rhetoric, technology, anthropology, sociology, statistics, economics, history, experimental science, mathematics etc. Paradigms is primarily concerned with German letters, but also includes its European and comparative literary contexts.All volumes will be published in English and are first reviewed by the series editors followed by a peer review from two academics in the particular area of specialization. Two to four volumes are planned annually. EditorsRudiger Campe (Yale University)Paul Fleming (Cornell University, Ithaca NY) Editorial BoardEva Geulen (Zentrum fur Literatur- und Kulturforschung, Berlin)Rudiger Gorner (Queen Mary, University of London)Barbara Hahn (Vanderbilt University)Daniel Heller-Roazen (Princeton University)Helmut Muller-Sievers (University of Colorado at Boulder)William Rasch (Indiana University, Bloomington)Joseph Vogl (Humboldt University, Berlin)Elisabeth Weber (University of California, Santa Barbara) Submission FormatThe series accepts monographs and edited volumes, if they systematically approach a specific topic and show a high level of coherence and focus.Please submit an abstract and table of contents with narrative description of each chapter (4-5 pages total, single-spaced) as well as a CV along with the complete manuscript.Only complete manuscripts can be evaluated. In exceptional cases, abstracts or outlines can be submitted to discuss the general fit of a book with the series' editors. Please understand that a final commitment for publication can only be reached on the basis of a complete manuscript.Manuscripts should have a minimum length of circa 200 pages (approximately 500,000 characters including spaces).Please submit your abstract, table of contents, and CV as one file; the complete manuscript as a second file to Dr. Manuela Gerlof: manuela.gerlof@degruyter.com.

This volume begins by describing how and why epigenesis came to replace the reigning model of biological origination, preformation the theory that all organisms were preformed at the creation of the world.

The Cylinder investigates the surprising proliferation of cylindrical objects in the nineteenth century, such as steam engines, phonographs, panoramas, rotary printing presses, silos, safety locks, and many more. Examining this phenomenon through the lens of kinematics, the science of forcing motion, Helmut Muller-Sievers provides a new view of the history of mechanics and of the culture of the industrial revolution, including its literature, that focuses on the metaphysics and aesthetics of motion. Muller-Sievers explores how nineteenth-century prose falls in with the specific rhythm of cylindrical machinery, re-imagines the curvature of cylindrical spaces, and conjoins narrative progress and reflection in a single stylistic motion. Illuminating the intersection of engineering, culture, and literature, he argues for a concept of culture that includes an epoch's relation to the motion of its machines.