Dr. Ryan Plumley

Ryan Plumley first pursued a liberal education with a B.A. at Rice University (Houston, USA). Beginning as an engineering student, he switched in his second year to major in History and started learning German. He continued his education with an M.A. and Ph.D. from Cornell University (Ithaca, USA) where he combined research fields in Modern European History, Philosophy, and German Studies.

• 2012–present Lecturer and Coordinator for Culture and History, University College Freiburg
• 2009–2011 Visiting Faculty, European College of Liberal Arts, Berlin (now Bard College Berlin)
• 2009 PhD in History, Cornell University. Dissertation: “The Romantic Subject of Textuality: German Literate Culture in the Late Eighteenth Century.”

I enjoy teaching courses where both the students and I are challenged to grapple with a perplexing text or art work, to practice an unfamiliar skill, or to inhabit an unaccustomed perspective.

In the classroom, I see my role as helping others to learn by structuring their exploration and analysis of challenging and complex materials, especially philosophical and literary texts but also visual culture.

At UCF, I have taught the following:

Core

• Community, Migration, Identity (Research and Presentation Seminar)
• The Public Sphere in the Digital Age (Research and Presentation Seminar)
• Humans and Other-Than-Humans (Research and Presentation Seminar)

Culture & History

• Introduction to Culture & History
• Theory of History
• Political Pedagogues: German Intellectual Culture Around 1800
• An Intellectual History of Feminist Thought
• Freud and Psychoanalysis
• Reading: History, Theory, Practice
• Reading Ecology

Electives and Excursions

• Beer Brewing: Craft and Taste
• Greece Excursion: Culture, History, Environment
• Memory and Memorialization in Berlin
• Nature and Culture (Research Design Seminar)

• 2024 Pop Culture and Democracy, FRIAS Conference, Panel Moderator
• 2020 “Liberal Education and Interdisciplinarity: Friends or Foes?” Liberal Education Talk Leuphana University, Lüneburg
• 2019 “Perspektiven auf 20 Jahre Vagina Monologues. Eine Gesprächsrunde” [“Perspectives on 20 Years of Vagina Monologues. A Roundtable”], Freiburg, Germany.
• 2019 “Master Individuale – Chance or Challenge of a Liberal Graduate Education? Roundtable Discussion,” Leuphana University, Lüneburg
• 2018 Rocking Islam Conference, Panel Moderator
• 2018 “Confusion and Conviction,” keynote address at the Liberal Education Student Symposium, Vöhrenbach, Germany
• 2017 Bertha Ottenstein Prize for contributions to gender equality at the University of Freiburg