Curriculum Vitae
8 August 2023
Professor of Integrated Studies, Humanities and Philosophy
Utah Valley University
email: scott.abbott@uvu.edu
EDUCATION
Ph.D. in German Literature: Princeton University, 1979
M.A. in German Literature, Philosophy minor: Brigham Young University, 1976
B.A. in German Literature, with Honors: Brigham Young University, 1973
EMPLOYMENT
1979-1981 Princeton University, Full-Time Lecturer
1981-1988 Vanderbilt University, Assistant Professor
Tenure granted with promotion to Associate Professor, March 1988
1988-1999 Brigham Young University, Associate Professor
1999-present Utah Valley State College/Utah Valley University, Professor
BOOKS
We: On Friendship. A third book with Žarko Radaković. Elik Press, Salt Lake City, Fall 2022; Serbian version: Knjiga o Prijateljstvu, Laguna Press, Belgrade, Spring 2022.
Dwelling in the Promised Land as a Stranger. Essays published, for the most part, in the 1990s when I was professor of German at Brigham Young University and co-president of the BYU Chapter of the American Association of University Professors. Each essay is preceded by a contextual account. By Common Consent Press, February 2022.
The Perfect Fence: Untangling the Meanings of Barbed Wire. Co-author Lyn Bennett. Texas A&M University Press, November 2017.
Immortal for Quite Some Time: Fraternal Meditations. University of Utah Press, 2016. (An early version of this book won first prize in the Utah Arts Council Original Writing Competition. Winner of the 2017 15 Bytes Book Award for Creative Nonfiction.)
Wild Rides, Wildflowers: Philosophy and Botany with Bikes. Co-author Sam Rushforth. Torrey House Press, 2014. (Utah Book Award, Runner-Up, 2015).
Vampires & A Reasonable Dictionary. Co-author Žarko Radaković. Punctum Books, 2014. Originally published in Serbo-Croatian as Vampiri + Razumni recnik. Stubovi kulture, 2008.
Repetitions. Co-author Žarko Radaković. Punctum Books, 2013. Originally published in Serbo-Croatian as Ponavljanja. Vreme-knjige, 1994.
Fictions of Freemasonry: Freemasonry and the German Novel. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1991.
BOOKS IN PROGRESS
On Standing: Variations on the Standing Metaphor. A study of the standing metaphor in works of literature, philosophy, and art. Approximate finish date: Summer 2024.
The Absolute Depravity of All Inanimate Objects: The Wit and Wisdom of Walter Furman. Notes from conversations over two years with a remarkable man in his mid-90s.
TRANSLATIONS
Alexander Makowsky’s January 1865 Lecture “On Darwin’s Theory of Organic Creation”: An English Translation with Commentary (with Daniel Fairbanks). Folia Mendeliana 55/1 2019: 5-15.
Gregor Mendel’s “Experiments with Plant Hybrids.” A Darwinian Translation (with Daniel Fairbanks). Genetics, October 2016. Reprinted in Folia Mendeliana 52 (suppl. 2): 5–31.http://www.genetics.org/content/204/2/407. Reprinted in Fairbanks’ Gregor Mendel: His Life and Legacy(Prometheus, 2022).
“Darwin’s influence on Mendel: evidence from a new translation of Mendel’s paper” (with Daniel Fairbanks). Genetics204 (2016): 401-405.
Peter Handke, excerpt from The Moravian Night. In Dislocation and Reconciliation in Kosovo: Essays on Goran Radovanović’s Film Enclave. Belgrade, 2016 (10-13). (Enclave was
Serbia’s submission for the 2016 Foreign-Language Oscar, 2016.)
Peter Handke, excerpt from To Duration. In Open Letters Monthly, 1 May 2016.
http://www.openlettersmonthly.com/from-to-duration/
Peter Handke: Bin im Wald. Kann sein, daß ich mich verspäte. A Documentary Film by Corinna Belz. Berlin: Zero One Films, 2016. (My translation is the basis for the subtitles.)
Peter Handke, To Duration. Amsterdam: Last Books, 2015. (Named “Best Book of the Year” by novelist and critic Gabriel Josopovici in the London Times Literary Supplement,
November 26, 2015.)
Žarko Radaković’s “The Landscapes Through Which We Traveled. For Peter Handke on His 70th Birthday.” Open Letters Monthly, 6 December 2012.
Peter Handke, Voyage by Dugout or The Play of the Film of the War. PAJ Publications. Boston: MIT Press, May 2012 (61-99).
The German Army and Genocide: Crimes Against War Prisoners, Jews, and Other Civilians, 1939-1944. Ed. by the Hamburg Institute for Social Research. New York: The New Press, 1999.
Five stories from Peter Handke’s Once Again for Thucydides. Web site of the literary journal Conjunctions. Fall 1998.
Peter Handke, A Journey to the Rivers or Justice for Serbia. New York: Viking, December 1996.
“Five Documents Relating to the Final Illness and Death of Ignaz Semmelweis.” With K. Codell Carter and James L. Siebach. Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 69, 1995 (255-270).
EDITION
Various Atmospheres, a book of poetry by A.F. Caldiero, ed. Scott Abbott. Salt Lake City: Signature Press, 1998.
ARTICLES: GERMAN STUDIES AND COMPARATIVE LITERATURE
“That beautiful And so on”: Re-reading Peter Handke.” The Goalie’s Anxiety, December 6, 2022.
This essay also tr. by Đorđe Tomić, in Peter Handke 2. Ed. Duško Paunković. Belgrade: Association of Literary Translators of Serbia, 2022 (31-46).
“A Slow, Inquiring Narration: Peter Handke’s The Moravian Night.” Open Letters Monthly,
December 2016.
“As I Lay Dying: Enclave as Metaphor.” In Dislocation and Reconciliation in Kosovo:
Essays on Goran Radovanović’s Film Enclave. Belgrade: Nama Film, 2016 (52-59).
“Storm Still. Klartext and Poesie in Peter Handke’s Immer noch Sturm. Originalbeitrag
Handke Online. Austrian National Library. 2 September 2015.
http://handkeonline.onb.ac.at/node/2633
“Barbed and Dangerous: Constructing the Meaning of Barbed Wire in Late Nineteenth-
Century America.” With Lyn Bennett. Agricultural History, Fall 2014 (566-590).
“Literary Barbed Wire: Reifying the Metaphor in Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath,
O’Conner’s Wise Blood, Brian Evenson’s “Contagion,” and Jeff Mann’s “The History
of Barbed Wire.” With Lyn Bennett. The Steinbeck Review, Spring 2013 (12-30).
“Forms of Identity: Stations of the Cross in Peter Handke’s Die linkshändige Frau.”
Originalbeitrag Handke Online. Austrian National Library. 26 June 2013.
http://handkeonline.onb.ac.at/node/2068
“‘Andre Umstände’: Erection as Self-Assertion in Kleist’s ‘Die Marquise von O. . . .” In
Heinrich von Kleist: Style and Concept. Ed. Dieter Sevin and Christoph Zeller.
Berlin: Walter de Gruyter Verlag, 2013 (101-112).
“An Essay on Peter Handke’s ‘Play of the Film of the War.’” PAJ Publications. Boston: MIT
Press, May 2012 (56-60).
“Peter Handke’s Die moravische Nacht: Erzählung.” Work entry in the Literary Encyclopedia.
2008. http://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=24866
“‘That sweet And so on’: Peter Handke’s Yugoslavia Work.” In the Companion to the Works
of Peter Handke. Camden House, 2005 (359-386).
“The Rhetoric of War and Peace: Peter Handke’s Unter Tränen fragend.” In World Literature
Today, Winter 2001 (78-81).
“Peter Handke.” Author entry in the Encyclopedia of German Literature. Chicago: Fitzroy
Dearborn, 2000 (403-406).
“Wunschloses Unglück.” Work entry for the Encyclopedia of German Literature. Chicago:
Fitzroy Dearborn, 2000 (407-408).
“Modeling a Dialectic: Peter Handke’s A Journey to the Rivers or Justice for Serbia.” In
Willy Riemer, ed., After Postmodernism: Austrian Literature and Film in Transition.
Riverside, CA: Ariadne, 2000 (340-352).
“The Reader Takes a Hike.” In Noch einmal für Jugoslawien: Peter Handke. Ed. by Thomas
Deichmann. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1999 (259-261).
“Postmetaphysical Metaphysics? Peter Handke’s Repetition.” In Themes and Structures. Ed.
Alexander Stephan. Columbia, S.C.: Camden House, 1997 (222-233).
“Izmebu Dva Jezika: Žarko Radaković i Peter Handke (Between Two Languages: Žarko
Radaković and Peter Handke).” LETOPIS: MATITSE SRPSKE (CHRONICLE:
SERBIAN ANNALS, Novi Sad) July-August, 1995 (164-170).
“‘The Material Idea of a Volk’: Peter Handke’s Dialectical Search for a National Identity.”
Amsterdam: Amsterdamer Beiträge zur neueren Germanistik, 1995 (479-494).
“Standing Stones and Stanzas: ‘The Twelve Stones of Pentre Ifan.’” An Open World: Essays
on Leslie Norris. Ed. by Eugene England and Peter Makuck. Columbia, S.C.:
Camden House, 1994 (78-86).
“Peter Handke.” Dictionary of Literary Biography, Twentieth-Century German Dramatists,
1919-1992, v.124. Ed. by Wolfgang D. Elfe and James Hardin. Detroit: Gale
Research, 1992 (176-187).
“The Semiotics of Young Werther.” Goethe Yearbook, 6 (1992): 41-65.
Reprint: Nineteenth Century Literary Criticism – Goethe’s “The Sorrows of Young
Werther,” Gale/Cengage Learning.
“‘Des Dastehns großer Anfangsbuchstab’: Standing and Being in Rilke’s Fifth Elegy.” The
German Quarterly, 60, Summer 1987 (432-446).
“Wunschloses Unglück in an American Context.” Knjizevna kritika (Literary Criticism,
Belgrade), 18, January-February 1986 (86-91). Tr. by M. Radaković.
“‘Des Maurers Wandeln / Es gleicht dem Leben’: The Freemasonic Ritual Route in Wilhelm
Meisters Wanderjahre.” Deutsche Vierteljahrsschrift, 58, June 1984 (262-288).
“The Raw and the Cooked: Claude Lévi-Strauss and Günter Grass.” In Günter Grass’s ‘The
Flounder’ in Critical Perspective. Ed. Siegfried Mews. New York: AMS Press, 1983 (107-121).
“Günter Grass’ Hundejahre: A Realistic Novel about Myth.” The German Quarterly, 55, March 1982
(212-220).
Reprinted in: Critical Essays on Günter Grass. Ed. Patrick O’Neill. Boston: G.D. Hall.
1987.
“Der Zauberberg and the German Romantic Novel.” The Germanic Review, 55, Fall 1980 (139-145).
ESSAYS
“Baggage.” In Baggage: Alex Caldiero in Retrospect. Utah Museum of Contemporary Art Press, 2021
(124-132).
“Fire on the Mountain.” saltfront, Fall 2019 (77-89).
“Alex Caldiero Is an Idiot: Performing the Chapbook.” 15 Bytes: Utah’s Art Magazine. May
2018.
http://artistsofutah.org/15Bytes/index.php/alex-caldiero-is-an-idiot-performing-the-chapbook/
“The Afternoon on the Sava.” RIC / red in corner. April 2018.
https://ricjournal.com/2018/04/17/the-afternoon-on-the-sava-with-peter-handke-scott-abbott/
“Walking the Body-Mind.” saltfront, Spring 2017 (66-72).
“The Motion of Form, the Form of Motion: Rainer Splitt’s Farbgüsse / Colorpours.
Pourings. Otterndorf, Germany: Museum gegenstandsfreier Kunst, 2015 (94-96).
(One of four essays in the catalogue for Splitt’s one-man show.)
“Moving at the Speed of Love: Alex Caldiero’s Some Love.” Open Letters Monthly, September
1, 2015. http://www.openlettersmonthly.com/moving-at-the-speed-of-love/
“Cassata: Am Anfang Waren die Formen.” Catalogue essay (with Žarko Radaković) for Nina
Pops exhibition “Cassata.” Leverkusen, Germany. 2015.
“Our Feet Are the Same.” saltfront, Winter 2015 (64-75).
“Double Consciousness: The Work of David Albahari.” Open Letters Monthly, December 2014.
“Immortal for Quite Some Time” (Part 3: Home Again). Dialogue, A Journal of Mormon
Thought, Spring 2013 (140-151).
“Buchstäblich / Literally: Recent Work by Nina Pops.” Essay for the November 2012
exhibition “Querschnitt” at the Kulturbunker, Cologne, Germany.
“Brian Evenson’s Affliction Fiction.” Open Letters Monthly, May 1, 2012.
“Fixing the Sonosopher.” Essay on the film The Sonosopher. DVD booklet. Salt Lake City:
Dream Garden Press, 2012 (1-6).
“The Other Side of the Limit: Sculptural Works by Frank McEntire.” The Destructible
Object and Other Essays. Salt Lake City: DirtDevil Press, 2011 (8-15).
“Immortal for Quite Some Time” (Part 2). Dialogue, A Journal of Mormon Thought, Fall 2011 (121-137).
“Immortal for Quite Some Time” (Part 1). Dialogue, A Journal of Mormon Thought, Spring 2011 (105-
114).
“Dreamland: The Way Out of Juarez – Charles Bowden, Alice Leora Briggs, Kelly Leslie, and
Lalo as a Jazz Quartet.” The Bloomsbury Review, Summer 2010 (5-6).
“Hermeneutic Adventures in Home Teaching: Mary and Richard Rorty.” Dialogue, A
Journal of Mormon Thought, Summer 2010 (131-135).
“A Time Capsule: Peter Handke’s 1989 Yugoslavia.” Literary Traveler, April 2009.
“Dictionary of Accepted Ideas: Michael McDonald’s Butchery of Peter Handke.” The
American Scholar, Summer 2007.
“On Words: The Eyes of a Flounder: Poems by Laura Hamblin.” Catalyst Magazine, March
2007.
“On Words: An Essay on Immigration.” Catalyst Magazine, December 2006.
“On Words: Charles Bowden’s Inferno.” Catalyst Magazine, November 2006.
“On Words: Abstractions Come Home: A review of interstices, by Laurelyn Whitt and
Sound Weave, by Theta Naught and Alex Caldiero. Catalyst Magazine, October
2006.
“On Words: Mormon Civilization and its Schizophrenic Discontents, Brian Evenson’s
The Open Curtain.” Catalyst Magazine, September 2006.
“A Reasonable Dictionary” (travel narrative). Salt Flats Annual, (Fall 2005), 98-149.
“Immortal for Quite Some Time” (excerpt). Irreantum: A Review of Mormon Literature and
Film, V. 7, Nr. 1, 2005 (75-94).
“Polka-dotted Truth: Adam Worden Collages at the Salt Lake Art Center.” Catalyst
Magazine, May 2005.
“Michael and Me: Education, Politics, Money, Culture, and Michael Moore at UVSC.”
Catalyst Magazine, October 2004.
“Every Angel is Terrifying: Frank McEntire and Alex Bigney, with Alex Caldiero, in a
Stunning Kimball Exhibit.” Catalyst Magazine, March 2003.
“Wild Rides, Wild Flowers: Biking and Botanizing the Great Western Trail.” With Sam
Rushforth. Salt Lake Observer (March 26, April 9, April 23, May 7, etc. 1999);
Catalyst Magazine (monthly since June, 2000, ended December 2002).
“Radical Jazz: Angela Davis Paints a History in Blacks and Blues.” Salt Lake Observer
(April 9, 1999).
“Ein Blick vom Berg Olymp in Utah.” In NOVO, No. 39, March/April 1999 (45).
“Chick Corea.” Salt Lake Observer, February 26, 1999 (20).
“Educating Leavitt: Essay on the Western Governors’ University.” Salt Lake Observer,
January 15, 1999 (7 and 17).
“Joshua Payne’s Sweet Jazz Suite.” Salt Lake Observer, January 15, 1999 (20).
“Jazz Cogitation.” Salt Lake Observer, December 4, 1998 (19).
“Poets, Paranoids, Police, Reformers in the Rain: Letter from Belgrade.” Salt Lake
Observer, December 4, 1998 (1 and 21).
“Crossing.” Catalyst, Salt Lake City: December 1998 (14-17). An essay growing out of a
June 1997 trip to a Tarahumara village in central Mexico.
“Gordon and Mike Bring Jazz to the Hilton.” Salt Lake Observer, October 22, 1998 (22).
“Hampton and Zen: Stripped to the Essentials.” Salt Lake Observer, August 28, 1998 (21).
“Immortal Beloved: Celebrity and Death.” Salt Lake Observer, August 28, 1998 (1).
“A Landscape in Tatters: Letter from Bosnia.” Salt Lake Observer, July 31, 1998 (1).
“Timbre and the Jazz Voice.” Salt Lake Observer, July 3, 1998 (21).
“The Cultivation of Page One Hatred.” Salt Lake Observer, June 5, 1998.
“‘Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee’: George Shearing vs. Christian McBride, Brian
Blade, and Joshua Redman.” The Event 18:3, February 6, 1998 (17).
“Monty Alexander, Jeff Hamilton, and John Clayton: Cookin’ at the Hilton.” The Event
17:10, October 23, 1997 (19).
“Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock: Cheek to Cheek at the Hilton.” The Event 17:9,
September 25, 1997 (10).
“Hocus Focus: Mose Allison at Snowbird.” The Event 17:6, August 14, 1997 (11).
“Death and the Harmonica: Toots Thielemans at the Hilton.” The Event 16:26, May 22,
1997 (20).
“Telling Stories: Remembering Brad: On the Loss of a Son to Aids.” Sunstone, 20:2
July 1997 (68-70).
“The Provo Window: Late Night Thoughts on the Purposes of Art and the Decline of a
University.” Annual of the Association for Mormon Letters, 1996 (112-115).
“Performing the Book: A. F. Caldiero’s ‘The Food That Fits The Hunger.’” Catalogue Essay.
Salt Lake Art Center, 1995 (20 pp).
“Intermittent Conversations with A.F. Caldiero.” In The Unclosed Hand. Salt Lake Art
Center, 1994 (5-9).
“Seeing Jazz: A Meandering Essay on Knifer’s Repetitions.” In Julije Knifer: Mäander 1960-
1990. Ed. Žarko Radaković. Tr. Elmar Schenkel. Stuttgart: Flugasche, 1991 (10).
“From the Diary of a Father of Six and Husband of One.” In a collection of essays on
childhood published at the end of the Serbo-Croatian translation of Peter Handke’s
novel Child Story. Tr. Miloje Radaković. Belgrade: Dezje Novine, 1988 (95-97).
AAUP/AFT REPORTS AND ESSAYS
Work on issues of academic freedom, due process, and shared governance at Utah Valley University.
Unless otherwise noted, all the posts at this site were authored by me:
BLOG AND BOOK SITES
“The Goalie’s Anxiety”: http://goaliesanxiety.blogspot.com/ and the more recent
http://thegoaliesanxiety.wordpress.com
The blog includes essays on books and works of art, responses to my travel, and early chapters of my own books. Tabs on the home page lead to descriptions of published and forthcoming books.
Author website:
https://www.scottabbottauthor.com
The website for our The Perfect Fence: Untangling the Meanings of Barbed Wire:
https://doublevisionbooks.wixsite.com/the-perfect-fence
The website for my Immortal for Quite Some Time:
http://doublevisionbooks.wixsite.com/immortal
The website for our Wild Rides and Wildflowers:
http://doublevisionbooks.wix.com/wildridesandflowers
The website for our Yugoslavia books:
http://doublevisionbooks.wix.com/doublevision
BOOK REVIEWS: GERMAN STUDIES
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, The Sufferings of Young Werther. Trans. and ed. Stanley
Corngold. Norton Critical Editions. New York: W.W. Norton, 2012. 238 pp. In the
Goethe Yearbook Vol. XXI, 2014, (255-256).
Stefani Engelstein. Anxious Anatomy: The Conception of the Human Form in Literary and
Naturalist Discourse. Albany: State University of New York P, 2008. Goethe
Yearbook, 2011 (323-325).
Andrew Cusack. The Wanderer in 19th-Century German Literature: Intellectual History
and Cultural Criticism. Rochester, New York: Camden House, 2008. Goethe
Yearbook, 2010 (406-409).
Ehrhard Bahr. Weimar on the Pacific: German Exile Culture in Los Angeles and the
Crisis of Modernism. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007. Goethe
Yearbook, 2010 (412-414).
Jonah Siegel. Haunted Museum: Longing, Travel and the Art-Romance Tradition.
Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005. Goethe Yearbook, 2007 (255-256).
Richard Gray. Stations of the Divided Subject: Contestation and Ideological Legitimation in
German Bourgeois Literature, 1770-1914. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1995.
Michigan German Studies. XX, Fall 1997 (187-193).
Johann Wolfgang Goethe. Wilhelm Meister’s Theatrical Calling. Tr. John R. Russell.
Columbia, S.C.: Camden House. The German Quarterly, 70, Summer 1997 (301).
Kirchen Ohne Dichter. 2 vols. Hans Baenziger. Coloquia Germanica, 28, 1995 (163-164).
Peter Handke. Richard Arthur Firda. Monatshefte, Fall 1995 (394-396).
luslustigtig: Phaenomene deutschsprachiger Lyrik 1945 bis 1980. Peter Pabisch. The German
Quarterly, 68, Spring 1995 (223-224).
Transcending Angels: Rainer Maria Rilke’s Duino Elegies. Kathleen Komar. The German
Quarterly, 63, Summer/Fall 1990 (574-577).
Rilke’s “Duineser Elegien” und die moderne deutsche Lyrik. Manfred Engel. The German
Quarterly, 63, Summer/Fall 1990 (574-577).
Deutsche Romane des 20. Jahrhunderts: Neue Interpretationen. Ed. Paul Michael Lützeler.
The German Quarterly, 58, Spring 1985 (263-265).
Adventures of a Flounder: Critical Essays on Günter Grass’ Der Butt. Ed. Gertrud Bauer Pickar.
The German Quarterly, 57, Fall 1984 (683-685).
The Narrative Works of Günter Grass: A Critical Interpretation. Noel Thomas. The German
Quarterly, 57, Fall 1984 (683-685).