Dr. Ari Linden
- Interim Director, Jewish Studies
- Associate Professor
- German Jewish thought and literature | Marxism, the Frankfurt School and Critical Theory | 20th c. German and Austrian literary and visual culture | Literatures and philosophies of exile | Theories of comedy and satire
Contact Info
Personal Links
Biography —
Ari Linden earned his PhD in German Studies from Cornell University in 2013 and began his career at the University of Kansas that fall. Ari enjoys teaching a wide range of courses on modern German culture and the German language. His first book, Karl Kraus and the Discourse of Modernity (Northwestern University Press, 2020), treats the twentieth-century Austrian satirist Karl Kraus as a critical yet overlooked theorist of modernity, as it re-envisions Kraus as an interlocutor of Søren Kierkegaard, Walter Benjamin, and Theodor Adorno. Ari has also published articles and book chapters on Karl Marx, Theodor Adorno, Sigmund Freud, Walter Benjamin, Else Lasker-Schüler, Bertolt Brecht, G.W.F. Hegel, and Leo Strauss. His current book project, tentatively titled On the Dialectics of Nature and Need, reconstructs an intellectual history of the dialectical concepts of ‘nature’ and ‘need’ in Marx/Engels, the Frankfurt School, and contemporary ecosocialism.
Education —
Research —
Research interests:
- German Jewish thought and literature
- Marxism, The Frankfurt School and Critical Theory
- 20th c. German and Austrian literary and visual culture
- Literatures and philosophies of exile
- Theories of comedy and satire
Teaching —
Dr. Linden teaches courses on Critical Theory, German and Austrian literature and culture from 1750 to the present, German film, the literature of exile, European comic literature and film, and German language at the upper intermediate level.
Selected Publications —
Linden, Ari. “Adorno on Actually Existing Socialism.” New German Critique 155 (August 2025): 159-184.
“Jargon, Journalism, and Heideggerese: Adorno and Kraus.” In Karl Kraus 1933: Citing Violence, Inciting Critique. De Gruyter 2025. 83-105.
Linden, Ari. “Vogelfrei: Marx and the Worker in Exile.” The Germanic Review (USA) 98.3 (Fall 2023): 264-280.
Linden, Ari. “Freud’s Moses and the Critique of Nationalist Origins.” Nexus 6: Essays in German Jewish Studies. (Camden House, 2023): 153-178.
Linden, Ari. Karl Kraus and the Discourse of Modernity. Northwestern University Press, 2020.
Linden, Ari. “‘Teaching to Interrupt: Satire in Brecht’s Arturo Ui and Chaplin’s The Great Dictator.’” The Brecht Yearbook, vol. 41, Nov. 2017, pp. 23–42.
Linden, Ari. “Thinking Through the Clouds: Comedy in Hegel and Strauss.” The German Quarterly, vol. 90, no. 4, 2017, pp. 423–38.
Linden, Ari. “‘“Wo Das Ungesetz Gesetzlich Überwaltet”: Karl Kraus’s Reading of National Socialism.’” Oxford German Studies, edited by Helena Tomko, vol. 46, no. 1, 2017, pp. 75–91.
Linden, Ari. “Staging German-Jewish Exile in Else Lasker-Schüler’s IchundIch.” Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook, vol. 60, no. 1, Oxford Journals, Nov. 2015.
Selected Presentations —
Linden, A. “Lukács as Theorist of Cringe.” Presented at 49th Annual German Studies Association Conference. Crystal City, VA. September 2025.
Linden, A. “Marx on the Dialectics of Need.” Presented at 48th Annual German Studies Association Conference. Atlanta, GA. September 2024.
Linden, A. (11/30/2017). From Black Magic to Jargon: Adorno's Dialogue with Kraus. Citing Violence, Inciting Critique: Karl Kraus, 1933. University of Antwerp (Belgium)
Linden, A. (2/28/2017). Thinking through the Remainder: Negative Dialektik as a Work of German Jewish Thought. 5th Biennial Meeting of the German Jewish Studies Workshop. Notre Dame University
Linden, A. (10/31/2016). Authorship and Authority in Arendt, Kierkegaard, and Benjamin. 40th Annual German Studies Association Conference. San Diego, CA
Awards & Honors —
Hall Center Humanities Research Fellowship, Hall Center for the Humanities, 2017