I am an intellectual/material historian of German modernity with poetic tendencies. My work looks at architecture (and its relationship to nature) as a multi-layered construction site of space, time, and identity, which I understand as cultural geology. I am currently a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Michigan Society of Fellows and an Assistant Professor of German at the University of Michigan (UM). I received a Ph.D. in Germanic Languages and Literatures with a certificate in Urban Humanities from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and a B.A. in Germanistik from the University of Würzburg.

My current book project Heavy Load-Bearing Modernity: A Cultural Geology of Albert Speer’s Berlin/Germania begins at the ruins of the so-called Schwerbelastungskörper, heavy load-bearing cylinder, probably history’s heaviest memorial, both physically and metaphysically speaking. I take the reader into the deepest ends of humanity’s darkest chapter, 20th-century German fascism, to lay bare the ties between technology and barbarism, beauty and brutality, suffering and the sublime. Exploring the intersection of materiality and thought, I navigate the reader through the entangled histories of architecture, geotechnical engineering, and violence, among other layers of history.

My intellectual path has been paved by the Berlin Program for Advanced German and European Studies at Freie Universität Berlin, the UCLA Urban Humanities Initiative, the Mellon EPIC Fellowship in Environmental and Urban Humanities, the Alan D. Leve Center for Jewish Studies, the Ernst Adolf Marum Fellowship, the Pauline Yu Fellowship, the DAAD Promos Scholarship, and the UM Weiser Center for Europe and Eurasia, among others.

Besides my intellectual work, I have experience as a film curator, public speaker, performer, and community event organizer.

Feel free to share your thoughts with me at pkurek@umich.edu.