Matthew Vollgraff is a doctoral candidate at Princeton University, Department of German. He has studied Comparative Literature at the University of California, Berkeley, and the Humboldt-Universität Berlin; from 2014-2015 he was a guest fellow at the Center for Literary and Cultural Research (ZfL), Berlin. Matthew’s research concerns the intersections of aesthetics, philosophy and life sciences in 20th century Germany, with special focus on the problem of expression. His forthcoming dissertation on The Science of Expression: Ausdruckskunde in Germany, 1888-1933 examines the epistemic and psychohistorical role of gestural expression in the work of Aby Warburg, Helmuth Plessner, Ludwig Klages, Sergei Eisenstein and many others
