Peter Arnds

Professor in Comparative Literature

Research Profile

Peter Arnds directs the MPhil in Comparative Literature and teaches for the German Studies Department. He has held visiting positions in Kabul, Delhi, Adelaide and Salamanca, and is a member of the PEN Centre for German-Speaking Writers Abroad and of Academia Europaea. He has written five academic monographs, books on Wilhelm Raabe, Charles Dickens, Günter Grass, on Lycanthropy in German Literature (Palgrave Macmillan 2015), Translating Holocaust Literature (Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2015), and Wolves at the Door: Migration, Dehumanization, Rewilding the World (Bloomsbury, 2021).

Prof. Arnds has also translated Patrick Boltshauser’s novel Stromschnellen (Rapids, Dalkey Archive Press, 2014, nominated for the IMPAC, Dublin International Literary Award) and written two novels, one of which, Searching for Alice, was published by Dalkey Archive Press in 2019. He has published widely in the fields of German Studies, Comparative Literature, Holocaust Studies, and the Environmental Humanities. He contributes to several international research networks, including Challenging Precarity: A Global Network and Narratives of Happiness and Resilience. His current research examines the links between cultural production and species politics, processes of dehumanisation in literature and politics, as well as the philosophy of walking in world literature. The monograph he is currently completing is entitled Bestia Sacra: An Eco-Literary Approach to the Holocaust.

Dr. Arnds's research interests include: