PREETHAM SRIDHARAN
| Department of History | 1180 Patterson Street, Apt 311C |
| 340P McKenzie Hall | Eugene, OR 97401 |
| University of Oregon | 1-732-585-3006 |
| Eugene, OR 97401 | preetham@uoregon.edu |
EDUCATION
University of Oregon, Eugene, OR. Seventh-year PhD candidate in History. Advanced to doctoral candidacy on September 13th, 2022 (PhD expected in 2025/2026)
Dissertation: “Enchanted Tongues: Ideas of Linguistic Perfectibility and Theology in German Romantic Thought from Hamann to Schleiermacher (1760– 1840).” Prospectus defended on April 4th, 2023.
Fields of Study: Modern European history (late eighteenth century to the present), intellectual history, modern German history, history of religious and linguistic thought.
Portland State University, Portland, OR. MA in History (2018)
Thesis: “‘Agglutinating’ a Family: Friedrich Max Müller and the Development of the Turanian Language Family Theory in Nineteenth-Century European Linguistics and other Human Sciences.”
Fields of Study: Modern European intellectual history and history of science in Europe
Lewis and Clark College, Portland, OR. BA in Economics with Honours, summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa (2013)
Thesis: “Geopolitics and the Origins of National States in Europe: The Cases of Iberia and Italy.”
RECENT RESEARCH PAPERS IN PROGRESS
“An Encyclopaedia of the Infinite: Friedrich von Hardenberg’s (Novalis’) Linguistic Aesthetics and Theological Mathematics in Theory and Fiction (1772–1801).”
“‘Bud of a Future Flower’: Johann Gottfried Herder’s Ideals of Beautiful Prose and
Progressionist Perfection as a Lutheran Pastor (1744–1803).”
“Humble Enlightenment: Johann Georg Hamann’s Receptivity to the ‘Poetic Language’ of Nature and History in German Pietist Theology (1730–88).”
“The Idea of Perfection in Languages: Wilhelm von Humboldt’s Philosophy of Language, Umberto Eco’s Theories of Semiotics, and the Longue Durée.”
“Translating the Correspondences between Wilhelm von Humboldt and August Wilhelm Schlegel (1793–1830)—Four Letters.”
“Idealistic and Ironic Readings of Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s Biographia Literaria (1817) and Implications for his Philosophy of Language.”
“Mediating the Semantic Cold War: Walther Dieckmann, the ‘Two German Languages Problem’ in West and East German Linguistics, and the Rise of Political Linguistics as a Field (1960s–1980s).”
“From the History of Ideas and Science to broader Culture: Recent Transformations in the Historiography of Linguistics.”
“The Branching Tree Metaphor in Nineteenth-Century Philology and Life Sciences: Independence and Interdependence between the two ‘Sciences.’”
“Romanticism and Orientalism: August von Haxthausen’s Nineteenth-Century Travelogue on Transcaucasia under Imperial Russia.”
CONFERENCES AND GUEST LECTURES
“Humble Enlightenment: Johann Georg Hamann’s Receptivity to the ‘Poetic Language’ of Nature and History in German Pietist Theology (1730–88),” presented at the University of Oregon’s Departmental Workshop in History, Spring 2024
“Enchanted Tongues: Religion and Ideas of Linguistic Perfection in German Romantic Thought from Hamann to the Brothers Schlegel (1760–1840),” presented at the Fifth West Coast Germanists’ Workshop, Vancouver, April 2023, and at the Columbia History of Science Conference, Friday Harbour, March 2023.
“Enchanted Tongues: Religion and Ideas of Linguistic Perfection in German Romantic Thought from Hamann to the Brothers Schlegel (1760–1840),” poster presentation, University of Oregon Graduate Research Forum, Winter 2023.
“Statistical Language and Silences in the Shaping of a Public Sphere in the European and Oregon Land Company’s Railroad Lands in Western Oregon (1872),” University of Oregon public conference, Winter 2022.
“The Idea of Perfection in Languages: Wilhelm von Humboldt’s Philosophy of Language, Umberto Eco’s Theories of Semiotics, and the Longue Durée,” at the Annual History Graduate Conference, University of Oregon, Spring 2021.
“Seeing ‘Twoness’ in the World: Translating Wilhelm von Humboldt’s “Über den Dualis” (1827),” University of Oregon’s Translation Studies Colloquium, Fall 2019.
“The Severans, the Soldier Emperors, and Constantine,” Guest Lecture in History 101: Ancient Mediterranean, University of Oregon, Fall 2019.
“Estates (sosloviia) Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Memoirs of Two Russian Serf-Businessmen,” Richard Robinson Business History Workshop at Portland State University, Spring 2014.
GRANTS, HONOURS, AND AWARDS
Dissertation and Thesis Award, University of Oregon (2024)
Richard M. Brown Award, History Department, University of Oregon (2024)
Thomas Turner Prize, History Department, University of Oregon (2024)
Thomas Turner Prize, History Department, University of Oregon (2023)
Leah Kirker Award for Graduate Students, University of Oregon (2020)
German Historical Institute’s (West) Pre-Dissertation Fellowship (2019)
Graduate School Promising Scholar Award, University of Oregon (2018–19)
Phi Alpha Theta History Honour Society, Portland State University (2015)
Frederick Tudor Business History Award, Portland State University (2014)
Phi Beta Kappa Honour Society Membership, Lewis and Clark College (2013)
Barbara Hirschi Neely Scholarship, Lewis and Clark College (2009–13)
State-level Rank in Class X Academics, Government of Tamil Nadu (2006)
TEACHING AND EMPLOYMENT HISTORY
University of Oregon, Departments of History and Religious Studies, Eugene, OR (2018–Present)
Graduate Employee (Teaching and Grading), September 2018–Present
- Nineteenth-century Europe (Summer 2024 and 2023) (Instructor of record)
- Beginning German 103 (Spring 2025) (Instructor of Record)
- Intermediate German 203 (Spring 2021) (Instructor of record)
- Near Eastern Religions (Winter 2024 and Spring 2023) (Discussion leader)
- Asian Religions (Fall 2022 and Fall 2023) (Discussion leader)
- World History (Spring 2022) (Discussion leader)
- Making Modern Europe (Winter 2022 and 2021) (Discussion leader)
- Cultures of India (Spring 2020) (Discussion leader)
- Ancient Mediterranean (Fall 2019) (Discussion leader)
- Themes in the Bible (Spring 2024) (Grader)
- Nineteenth-century Europe (Winter 2023 and 2020) (Grader)
- Twentieth-century Europe (Fall 2021 and Spring 2019) (Grader)
- Twentieth-century Latin America (Fall 2020) (Grader)
- U.S. Military History (Winter 2019) (Grader)
- War in the Modern World (Fall 2018) (Grader).
University of Oregon, Department of History, Eugene, OR (2021-23)
Co-President of the History Guild and Steward for History in the Graduate Teaching Fellows Federation, Fall 2021–Spring 2023.
Pacific Historical Review, Department of History, Portland State University, Portland OR (2015–16)
Student Editorial Intern, October 2015–September 2016.
Venkatalakshmi Matriculation School, Coimbatore, India (2011–13)
English Communication Teaching Assistant (English as a Second Language), Summers of 2011, 2012, 2013 (Nine months in total).
The William Stafford Archives, Lewis and Clark College, Portland, OR (2010)
Student Archival Intern, August–December 2010.
LANGUAGES
Tamil (native), English (fluent), German (advanced proficiency—B2 Goethe Certificate in 2018), French (intermediate reading knowledge).
Certificate in Teaching English as a Foreign Language, Ninja Teacher Academy. Completed in August 2020.
Computer skills: HTML5, CSS3, Javascript, Python, SQL, IT technical support, and cybersecurity.
PROFESSIONAL MEMBERSHIPS
American Historical Association
Phi Alpha Theta National History Honour Society
The Phi Beta Kappa Society
DISSERTATION COMMITTEE
Dr. John McCole. Associate Professor, Department of History, University of Oregon. E-mail: mccole@uoregon.edu. Ph: 541-346-5906.
Dr. Ian McNeely. Professor, Department of History, University of Oregon. E-mail: mcneely@uoregon.edu. Ph: 541-346-4791.
Dr. Daniel Rosenberg. Professor, Department of History, University of Oregon. E-mail: dbr@uoregon.edu. Ph: 541-346-0520.
Dr. George Sheridan. Professor Emeritus, Department of History, University of Oregon. E-mail: gjs@uoregon.edu. Ph: 541-346-4832.
Dr. Forest Pyle. Professor, Department of English and Comparative Literature, University of Oregon. E-mail: trespyle@uoregon.edu. Ph: 541-346-4832.
Preetham Sridharan's website 