Gerhard Lauer

Gerhard Lauer, 1962, is full professor and chair of German studies at Göttingen University, where he is currently also founding director of the Göttingen Centre for Digital Humanities. Since 2008 he is member of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen. In his research, Gerhard Lauer focuses on literary history, cognitive poetics, and digital humanities.

Most recently he is working on aspects of reading, that is emotional engagement, perspective taking, belief change, empathy, suspense. He looks into the change – cognitively and emotionally – books could cause and compares reading of traditional books with reading of e-books. His academic career took him from the University of Saarland to Tübingen and Munich (M.A.), the University of Princeton, the Hebrew University, Jerusalem, and the University of Munich (Ph.D.). He held visiting positions at the universities of Bergamo, Coimbra, Delhi, Durham, St. Louis, Rovereto and Trieste.

Among his recent publications are Lauer, G. (Ed.) (2015). Journal of Literary Theory 9,1. Special Issue: Empirical methods in Literary Studies Riese, K., Bayer, M., Lauer, G., Schacht, A. (2014). In the eye of the recipient. Pupillary responses to suspense in literary classics. The Scientific Study of Literature 4, 2, 211-232 Jannidis, F. & Lauer, G. (2014). Burrows’s Delta and Its Use in German Literary History. Erlin, M. & Tatlock, L. (Eds.). Distant Readings. Topologies of German Culture in the Long Nineteenth Century. Rochester, New York, 29-54.

www.gerhardlauer.de

@gerhardlauer