Contact: takamurd@dickinson.edu

David Takamura is a Germanist whose research focuses on the dialogue between self-assertion and self-limitation during the Romantic period, with particular focus on German Orientalism and German Idealism. His methodologies include critical philosophy, critical theory, and new philological approaches.

David works primarily within a tradition of thinkers seeking to reinterpret Romanticism as a movement wary of subjectivism. His dissertation, Egoism in the Age of Romanticism, foregrounds Romantic commitments to self-abnegation as the concept evolved in the wake of German Idealism, Early Romantic literary theory, and German Orientalism. His advisors were Stefani Engelstein and Gabriel Trop within the Carolina-Duke Graduate Program.

David completed his PhD in German Studies in the CDG program of the University of North Carolina and Duke University. He previously completed his MA in Comparative Literature at the University of Washington and while on exchange at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. His BA in Liberal Arts is from St. John’s College, with credits equivalent to a double-major in Philosophy and the History of Math and Science and a double-minor in Classics and Comparative Literature.