A continuum of loss: productive melancholia and irresolvable loss in twentieth-century elegy
Adam Sax conducts research at the Institute of Jewish Studies in academic year 2021-2022 as part of a Joint PhD with the University of Pennsylvania.
During his research stay at the Institute, Adam will produce a dissertation chapter on elegy in the late-work of the twentieth century German-language poet, Paul Celan. The Institute will provide necessary support for the project in terms of bibliographic and archival materials, as well as academic mentorship by Celan scholar and Institute director, Professor Vivian Liska. Working with other Ph.D. candidates in residence, Adam plans to workshop his ideas and enhance his professional network of up-and-coming Jewish Studies scholars. Additionally, he will work with undergraduates in a tutorial on post-1945 poetry. The Institute's central location in Europe is critical for the pan-European field of Celan Studies, providing easy access to conferences in honor of the 50 year anniversary of the poet's death during the research period. The Institute is also within two hours travel of both of the major Paul Celan archives, in Paris, France, and in Marbach, Germany. Through his time at the Institute, Adam hopes to produce a work of scholarship that enhances both the study of this important literary figure as well as the study of elegy and the literary representation of loss more broadly.
Adam Sax is a PhD Candidate, working on a dissertation provisionally titled, “A Continuum of Loss: Productive Melancholia and Aporetic Loss in Twentieth-Century Elegy.” This comparative project focuses on elegy and the formation of elegy in the 20th century through an archive of German-Jewish, Queer, and Yiddish-American poets, such as Paul Celan, Frank O’Hara, and Kayda Molodowsky. His research engages late-19th, 20th, and 21st century poetry & (multi-lingual) poetics of loss through practices of Jewish intellectual history, modern and contemporary aesthetics, psychoanalytic theory, queer theory, (dis)ability studies, genre theory, and translation theory. Adam is a joint-PhD candidate with the University of Antwerp in Belgium. He will be in residence in Antwerp for the 2021-2022 academic year on a Fulbright research grant, and is very grateful for his affiliation with the Institute of Jewish Studies. Adam received his BA in English and German Literature from Tufts University in 2013, graduating Summa Cum Laude. He then went on to serve as an US Teaching Assistant in Austria for two years.