Dr. DS Mayfield studied American, English, and Spanish Literature at Würzburg University, and Comparative Literature in Berlin and Cambridge (UK). In 2015, he was Global Humanities Junior Research and Teaching Fellow at Johns Hopkins University (Baltimore, MA) with the Principles of Cultural Dynamics network (PCD).

      An alumnus of the Friedrich Schlegel Graduate School and the ERC-funded DramaNet project (both at Freie Universität Berlin), he currently holds a research position funded by the Fritz Thyssen Stiftung.

      The respective project focuses on “Delegation in Early Modern Rhetoric and Drama” (DRD) by recourse to Petrarca (Secretum), Rojas (Celestina), Machiavelli (Mandragola), Montaigne (Essais), Shakespeare (Measure for Measure); with Blumenberg qua theoretical framework (Beschreibung des Menschen, et al.).

      A monograph entitled Artful Immorality – Variants of Cynicism. Machiavelli, Gracián, Diderot, Nietzsche was published in 2015; the edited volume Rhetoric and Drama in 2017; the book-length study Variants of Rhetorical Ventriloquism in 2018—all with de Gruyter (Berlin).

Winter 2016/17              Hauptseminar “Poetik der Kürze”; Department of Comparative Literature, Freie Universitaet Berlin, Germany.

Summer 2016                Hauptseminar “Hans Blumenberg’s Œuvre from the Perspective of Literary Studies”; Department of Comparative Literature, Freie Universitaet Berlin, Germany.

                                   Proseminar “Transformations of Ancient Philosophy, Poetics and Rhetoric in Gracián’s El Criticón and Oráculo manual y arte de prudencia”; Department of Romance Studies, Freie Universitaet Berlin, Germany.

Winter 2015/16              Proseminar Comparative Literature, “Symbioses and Interplays of Poetics, Rhetoric and Politics in Machiavelli’s The Prince (Il Principe) and Mandragola”; Department of Comparative Literature, Freie Universitaet Berlin, Germany.

Summer 2015                Proseminar Comparative Literature, “The American Renaissance (Emerson, Poe, Melville)”; Department of Comparative Literature, Freie Universitaet Berlin, Germany.

Winter 2014/15              “Introductory Course to Spanish Literature”; Department of Romance Studies, Freie Universitaet Berlin, Germany.

Summer 2013                Proseminar Spanish Literature, “Poetry of the Siglo de Oro: Garcilaso de la Vega, Góngora, Quevedo”; Department of Romance Studies, Freie Universitaet Berlin, Germany.

Winter 2012/13              “Introductory Course to Spanish Literature”; Department of Romance Studies, Freie Universitaet Berlin, Germany.

Research Foci

Current Project:                 “Delegation in Early Modern Rhetoric and Drama” (DRD)

Authors Treated:               Petrarca (Secretum); Rojas (Celestina); Machiavelli (Mandragola); Montaigne (Essais); Shakespeare (Measure for Measure); Blumenberg (Beschreibung des Menschen, et al.).

General Research Foci:   Ancient and (Early) Modern Rhetoric.

                                           The Nexus of Rhetoric and Drama.

                                           Rhetorical Ventriloquism.

                                           Processes of Cultural Hypolepsis.

                                           Rhetorico-Philosophical Anthropistics.

                                           (Ancient) Cynicism.