James Donelan / CV / Publications

Poetry and the Romantic Musical Aesthetic

Cambridge University Press, 2008
Winner of the Jean-Pierre Baricelli Book Prize of the International Conference on Romanticism

James H. Donelan describes how two poets, a philosopher, and a composer – Hölderlin, Wordsworth, Hegel, and Beethoven – developed an idea of self-consciousness based on music at the turn of the nineteenth century. This idea became an enduring cultural belief: the understanding of music as an ideal representation of the autonomous creative mind. Against a background of political and cultural upheaval, these four major figures – all born in 1770 – developed this idea in both metaphorical and actual musical structures, thereby establishing both the theory and the practice of asserting self-identity in music. Beethoven still carries the image of the heroic composer today; this book describes how it originated in both his music and in how others responded to him. Bringing together the fields of philosophy, musicology, and literary criticism, Donelan shows how this development emerged from the complex changes in European cultural life taking place between 1795 and 1831.

Other Publications and Lectures

“The Sound Itself: Kantian Consequences for Romantic Poetics and Musical Aesthetics” American Comparative Literature Association, Harvard University, March 27, 2009

“Researching Fully Online Instruction:  Assessment, Pedagogy, and a New Theory of Hybrid Online Learning Environments on the Border of the ‘Real’ and ‘Virtual Worlds’” Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC), New Orleans, April 4, 2008

“Institutional Policy and Faculty IP Rights: Redefining Instruction and Research in Composition” Intellectual Property Caucus, Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC), New Orleans, April 4, 2008 (scheduled)

“The Desire for Music: Enlightenment Ideals in Mozart’s Don Giovanni” International Comparative Literature Association, Venice , Italy , September 25, 2005

“Hegel and the Machine: Scholarly Self-Creation in the Digital Classroom” Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC), New York, March 23, 2007

“Owning Your Handouts: Negotiating Intellectual Property Rights in Research Universities” Intellectual Property Caucus, Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC), New York, March 21, 2007

“A New Kind of Violin: Challenges in Research and Administration for Computer Assisted Writing Pedagogy” Writing Research in the Making, UC Santa Barbara , February 6, 2005

"Connections Across California: Building an Online Community with UC WRITE, The University of California Writing Institute" Computers and Writing 2004, Honolulu, Hawaii, June 10-13, 2004 (proposed)

“Style as Territory: Rhetorical Boundaries in Humanities Scholarship”
American Comparative Literature Association, California University, San Marcos, April 4-6, 2003.

“Classrooms, Computer Labs, and Remote Locations: Integrating the Three Spaces of Computer Aided Interactive Writing Courses” with Charles Donelan. 
ALLC/ACH 2002, Tübingen, Germany, July 24-28, 2002.

“Course Design Strategies for Computer Assisted Interactive Writing Classes.” Computers and Writing 2002 Conference, Normal Illinois, May 16-19, 2002

“Hölderlin’s Poetic Self-consciousness.” Philosophy and Literature 26:1 (2002) 147-164.

“‘Near and Hard to Grasp’: Interpretation and the Ontology of Poetry in Hölderlin’s Translations.” American Comparative Literature Association, University of Puerto Rico, Rio Piedras, April 11-14, 2002. 

“Power and the Aesthetic in the Systemprogramm Fragment.” American Comparative Literature Association, University of Colorado, April 20, 2001.

“History and Rhetoric in Comparative Arts: Teaching Advanced Humanities Writing Through Interdisciplinary Intellectual History” Indiana University Comparative Arts Conference, April 5-8, 2001.

Review of Terry Pinkard's Hegel: A Biography, Philosophy and Literature, 24: 2 (2000) 477-479.

"Absolute Music and the Literary Absolute: Hegel and the Disciplinary Boundaries of Poetry and Music." American Comparative Literature Association 2000, Yale University, February 25, 2000

“Mozart and Enlightenment Thought.” Karpeles Museum, September 26, 1999. Text available here.

 “Berg’s War on Form: Historical and Formal Context in Wozzeck.” Twentieth-Century  Literature Conference, University of Louisville, Louisville KY, February 22, 1997

 “Hölderlin and Shelley: The Consequences of Poetic Philosophy.” American Conference on  Romanticism, Marquette University, September 24, 1995

 Comparative Reader, Ernst Cassirer, The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, Volume IV: The Metaphysics of Symbolic Forms tr. J. M. Krois (New Haven: Yale UP, 1996)

 “Wordsworth and Hegel: Studies in Romantic Subjectivity.” Deep Springs College, 1994

 “Hoffmann and Hegel:  A Hidden Controversy Concerning the Ontology of Music.” Yale Graduate German Studies Conference, April 10, 1994

“Hogarth’s A Midnight Modern Conversation.” Yale Center for British Art, October 1992

“The Argument from Noise: A Review of Black Athena . ” Critical Texts, IV:3 (1989) 98-108

Articles and Reviews for The Santa Barbara Independent