Elisabeth is Professor of German and Chair of the Department of German at New York University. Before joining NYU, she was Professor of German and Chair of the Department of German and Romance Languages and Literatures at the Johns Hopkins University. Elisabeth held several academic positions, including visiting professorships, at universities throughout the United States (Yale, Vanderbilt), Germany (FU Berlin, Center for Literary and Cultural Research, Berlin, University of Hamburg) and Switzerland (University of Zurich, University of Basel). She was awarded a Feodor Lynen Fellowship from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. Elisabeth’s areas of expertise are German literature, culture, and thought from the 19th century to the present, with a special emphasis on literary theory, psychoanalysis, ecocriticism, aesthetics, and poetics of knowledge.

At THE NEW INSTITUTE Elisabeth was involved in the program “The Foundations of Value and Values”.