Kristin Gjesdal is Professor of Philosophy at Temple University. Her scholarship covers modern European philosophy, including women philosophers in this period. Systematically, she covers philosophy of interpretation (hermeneutics), social and political philosophy, feminism, and philosophy of art, especially philosophy of sculpture and philosophy of theater. She also publishes on Sophocles, Shakespeare, and Ibsen. Kristin Gjesdal is the author of four monographs (plus two forthcoming), eight edited and co-edited volumes, and around 50 peer-reviewed articles on Enlightenment philosophy, German Idealism, Nineteenth-Century thought, hermeneutics, phenomenology, and philosophy of literature. Her Germaine de Staël is under contract with Cambridge University Press and a further monograph on Staël, How to be a Self. Four Lessons from Germaine de Staël, is under contract with Oxford University Press.
Kristin Gjesdal is currently working on two further research projects: The first, preliminary entitled “Unruly Women: Philosophers, Romantics, and Revolutionaries,” explores social and political philosophy from Germaine de Staël to Rosa Luxemburg. The second, “Emancipation and Interpretation: Herder, Schleiermacher, Staël,” studies the development of modern hermeneutics from the point of view of concrete political and cultural challenges in post-revolutionary Europe, most notably discussions of colonialism, imperialism, slavery, gender, and related topics.
This 3:16 interview offers a survey of her research interests.
Kristin Gjesdal’s monographs include:
- Germaine de Staël (under contract with CUP)
- How to be a Self. Four Lessons from Germaine de Staël (under contract with OUP)
- Unruly Women. Philosophers, Romantics, Revolutionaries (in Norwegian with Cappelen Damm; German trans: Rebellinnen der Philosophie [Eichborn Verlag]; English trans. forthcoming with University of Chicago Press)
- The Drama of History: Ibsen, Hegel, Nietzsche (OUP 2020)
- Herder’s Hermeneutics: History, Poetry, Enlightenment (CUP 2017 | paperback 2019)
- Gadamer and the Legacy of German Idealism (CUP 2009 | paperback 2011)
Her edited and co-edited volumes include:
- Spinoza in Germany: Political and Religious Thought across the Long Nineteenth Century (forthcoming OUP | With J. Yonover)
- The Oxford Handbook of Nineteenth-Century Women Philosophers in the German Tradition (forthcoming OUP | with D. Nassar
- Women Philosophers in the Long Nineteenth Century: The German Tradition (OUP 2021 | with D. Nassar)
- Philosophy of Sculpture: Historical Problems; Contemporary Approaches (Routledge 2020| with F. Rush and I. Torsen
- The Cambridge Companion to Hermeneutics (CUP 2019 | with M. Forster)
- The Oxford Handbook of German Philosophy in the Nineteenth Century (OUP 2018 |with M. Forster)
- Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler: Philosophical Perspectives (OUP 2017)
- Key Debates in Nineteenth-Century European Philosophy (Routledge 2016)