Brian Hensley is a doctoral student in the department of Germanic Studies pursuing his PhD in Modern German Literature and Culture. Before coming to Bloomington, Brian earned both a B.S. and M.A. in German from the University of Kentucky. As an undergraduate, Brian also spent a year at the Universität Heidelberg in Germany.
Brian’s main area of interest is the role of nervousness as both a psychological and social phenomena of the time between the mid-nineteenth and early twentieth century through German-speaking European writers and theorists such as Sigmund Freud, Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Daniel Paul Schreber, and Max Nordau. In addition to this, his current research project also brings these perspectives into dialogue with their American counterparts specifically through George Beard, William James, Henry James and Paul Laurence Dunbar. For Brian, the importance of this project is the investigation of the relationship between culture and mental phenomena through a historical lens which allows us to examine these same issues in our own times. While Nervosität was the popular metaphor of its day to explain all sorts of societal ills and maladies, today’s world has its own metaphors. Prior to this project, Brian has also presented on the influence of psychoanalysis in the works of Franz Kafka, Freud’s social theory in the context of Red Vienna, and the role of melancholia and storytelling in Anna Seghers’ Überfahrt.
Brian has taught German language courses at the beginning and intermediate levels at University of Kentucky and Indiana University Bloomington. Additionally, he has assisted in larger content-courses with themes focusing on horror films and fairy tales. Through his pedogogical interests, he has researched the impact of emotions in the classroom, specifically how the emotions of stress and anxiety impact the individual learner’s ability in the second-language classroom and how this affects group dynamic in the classroom. This research culminated in a presentation at the University of Alabama Language Conference in early 2020.
While Brian enjoys both teaching and his research, outside of academia he likes playing chess, watching David Lynch films, and listening to Kate Bush.
The College of Arts