Robin Clouser loves talking to students about the history of ideas as seen in German literature.  He grew up in the Philadelphia area, has travelled extensively in Germany and Europe, and has taken Ursinus students to Tübingen and Florence for summer and semester programs.

Dr. Clouser’s classrooms are active and focused on student interests. In his “Germany Today” courses, students explore current political, economic, cultural and scientific news by accessing articles and research online and using their German-language skills. Through student presentations on music, art, geography and history, the sweep of German centuries of religious and secular ideas come alive. He enjoys helping students find study abroad opportunities and design independent study courses on their special interests. He encourages students to double-major for maximum educational breadth.

Dr. Clouser has conducted research at the Goethe Archives in Weimar as well as in Tübingen and Wuppertal.  He received research fellowships and grants from The National Endowment for the Humanities, The American Council of Learned Societies, and The American Philosophical Society, and published scholarly articles on Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Heinrich von Kleist, Gerhard Hauptmann, and Gottfried Keller.  His book Love and Social Contracts analyzes men and women’s relationships in Goethe’s Unterhaltungen deutscher Ausgewanderten, a book of framed tales depicting German refugees after Napoleon’s invasion of Germany.