About SBU

Natter, Wolfgang

Name:
Dr. Wolfgang Natter
Wolfgang Natter, Ph.D.

Academic School:
School of Arts and Sciences

Academic Department:

Titles/Responsibilities:
Dean of the School of Arts and Sciences

Contact Information:
Office phone: (716) 375-2136
E-mail: wnatter@sbu.edu 

Office Location/Hours:
Plassmann 109

Courses Taught:

Courses taught at Virginia Tech or the University of Kentucky: 

  • Democracy and Democratic Theory
  • The Social and Political Body
  • Alternative Political Theory
  • Space, Identity, and Representation
  • Neo-liberalism and Society
  • Social and Ecological Justice
  • Classic and Contemporary Social Theory
  • Cultural and Literary Theory
  • Frankfurt School Theory
  • Walter Benjamin
  • Spatial Theory and Cultural Analysis
  • Critical Whiteness Studies
  • Poststructural Social Science
  • Interdisciplinary Methodology
  • Film and Society
  • Critical Geopolitics
  • Participatory Research Methodologies
  • Nation Theory
  • Globalization and Democracy

Academic Degrees:
  • Ph.D., The Johns Hopkins University
  • M.A., The Johns Hopkins University
  • B.A., Wesleyan University  

Other Education:
  • Undergraduate education at Fairfield University
  • Post-baccalaureate education as a Fulbright Student Fellow and DAAD Student Fellow in Mainz, Stuttgart, and Tubingen.  

Professional Background:
  • Tenured Full Professor of Political Science, Virginia Tech
  • Tenured Full Professor of Geography and Tenured Full Professor of German Studies, University of Kentucky
  • Founding Director of The Alliance for Social and Political Thought at Virginia Tech
  • Co-founder and long-term director of the The Committee on Social Theory, University of Kentucky

Accomplishments:

Research Accomplishments 

  • 30 articles in English and German, one edited journal issue, three edited books, and a monograph.
  • Recent articles have focused on film and critical whiteness studies; on identity and globalization ‘from below;’ on civil society and democracy; on the ‘old’ and the ‘new cultural geography;’ on German Geopolitics of the 1920s and 1930s; on Interdisciplinary Studies, on Friedrich Ratzel and the Spaces of Geography; on Political Ecology; and on the topic, Is Universality the Object of Globalization: Political Geographies of Contingent Universality.
  • Author of Literature at War, 1914-1940: Representing the “time of greatness” in Germany,Yale.
  • Co-editor of Postmodern Contentions: Politics, Epochs, Space; Objectivity and its Other; and The Social and Political Body,Guilford Press.
     

Guest Professorships 

  • Leibniz Professor, Center for Advanced Study, Leipzig University
  • Visiting Professor, Universities of Jena
  • Senior Research Fellow, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science
  • Visiting Fulbright Professor, Leipzig University
     

Research Support 

  • The Fulbright Commission
  • The National Endowment for the Humanities
  • The Deutsche Akademische Austauschdienst
  • The American Council of Learned Societies
  • The National Science Foundation
  • The Max Planck Institute
  • The Rockefeller Foundation
     

Service Activities 

  • Organizer of 15 national and international conferences and more than a dozen workshops.
  • Previously on the editorial boards of
    • The Publications of the Modern Language Association 
    • The Annals of American Geography 
    • German Studies Review 
    • disclosure.
  • Currently on the editorial boards of
    • Social Geography 
    • Aether 
    • Ethics, Place, Environment 
    • The Minnesota Review 
    • Culture, Theory, Critique. 
  • Advisor to 41 Ph.D., 31 M.A., and 6 honors students.
     

Awards 

  • Three college- or university-wide teaching awards.