The Author: William Crooke holds a doctorate in Comparative Literature from the University of California, Berkeley. He has taught German Literature and Media Studies at the Catholic University of America and is currently Assistant Professor of German and French at Eastern Tennessee State University. In addition to German literature, his research interests include German film, Italian women writers, and Francophone African literature.

• Contents: Nations and the Logic of Irrationalism – Mysticism and Nation: Modernity and Time-Space Compression – Gustav Landauer and Alfred Rosenberg: Eckhartian Mysticism and the Un-created Self – Mysticism as National Depression: Hermann Hesse’s Demian – Living as One Reads: Print-Mysticism in Robert Musil’s Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften – Qualities Without a Man: the Predicament of Swiss Nationalism in Max Frisch’s Mein Name sei Gantenbein – Death and the Nation.