Niklaus Largier, internationally renowned expert on mystical traditions in German literature and thought, explores the invention of modern aesthetics, the understanding of sensation and cognition, and the intersection of the "real" and the "possible" in a lecture titled "A 'Sense of Possibility': Robert Musil, Mysticism, and the Invention of Aesthetic Experience."

His talk will be held Sept. 13 at 4:30 p.m. at Cornell's Hollis E. Cornell Auditorium in Goldwin Smith Hall, as part of the College of Arts and Sciences Humanities Lecture series. A reception at A.D. White House will follow the lecture. Both events are free and open to the public.

"Largier is a distinguished scholar whose research and teaching interests have a broad interdisciplinary appeal and who connects important areas of the humanities with each other in innovative and unique ways," said Leslie Adelson, the Jacob Gould Schurman Professor of German Studies.

Largier, author of 70 articles and five books and editor or translator of five additional books, is professor of German and comparative literature at the University of California-Berkeley. He is internationally recognized for his research on the history of medieval and early modern German literature with an emphasis on the relations among literature, philosophy and theology. His most recent research projects explore the multiple intersections of religious practices and the literary imagination, especially in the context of sensation, the emotions and the rhetoric of love.

These projects have resulted in two recent groundbreaking book publications: "In Praise of the Whip: A Cultural History of Arousal," which explores the relation between bodily ascetic practices (in particular flagellation), eroticism and its representation/performance in literature; and "The Art of Desire: Decadence, Sensuality and Asceticism," which deals with the fascination of decadent literature with such religious practices.

Largier received his Ph.D. from the University of Zurich in 1989. He is a member of the editorial board of the journal Representations, of the book series New Trends in Medieval Philology and also of the series "Deutsche Literatur von den Anfaengen bis 1700." He is the recipient of a Swiss National Research Foundation Grant, a fellowship in residence at the Getty Center for the History of Art and the Humanities, and a Guggenheim fellowship. He was a visiting professor at Harvard University in 2006, and last year he was a fellow at the Wissenschaftskolleg in Berlin.

The Arts and Sciences Humanities Lectures are presented with support from the Office of the President and the College of Arts and Sciences.