About
Peter M. McIsaac's scholarship and teaching takes place at the intersections of modern German literature and culture, Museum Studies, and science and technology. Among his publications are the book Museums of the Mind: German Modernity and the Dynamics of Collecting (2007), and, as co-editor, a special issue of New German Critique on contemporary German literature (2003). His articles have appeared in The German Quarterly, Monatshefte, Literatur für Leser, German Life and Letters and The International Journal of Cultural Policy. He serves on the editorial boards of The German Quarterly and imaginations.
McIsaac is currently writing a book-length manuscript on the "secret" German pre-history to Body Worlds, a contemporary exhibition of human corpses that has broken attendance records and generated controversy around the world. Part of this work has appeared in the 2007 volume Museums & Difference. Additional work in progress focuses on the visual archive of Gottfried Benn's early poetry, and shifts in German cultural policy resulting from EU integration and globalization. Together with Gabriele Mueller, he is also co-editing a volume entitled The Past on Display, which examines the phenomenon of musealization in exhibition and film.
At York and Duke Universities, McIsaac taught on a wide range of topics, including the history of the museum, science and technology in 19th- and 20th-century German literature and culture, 20th-century Berlin and Fin-de-Siècle Vienna. His innovative work with iPods and other instructional technologies was cited in Newsweek and University Business magazines in 2005. Likewise in 2005, he received the Richard K. Lublin Distinguished Teaching Award from Trinity College of Duke University.
Before coming to Michigan, McIsaac served as the Director of the Canadian Centre for German and European Studies at York University.
Click here for a complete list of publications
