Paul Kurek

Paul Kurek received his Ph.D. in Germanic Languages and Literatures from the Department of European Languages and Transcultural Studies at UCLA, where he also completed a certificate in Urban Humanities. His research focuses on German modernity, with particular attention to the intersections of architecture, material culture, and environmental thought. His work examines architecture and its relationship to nature as a layered construction of space, time, and identity, which he approaches through the concept of cultural geology.

He is currently a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Michigan Society of Fellows and an Assistant Professor of German at the University of Michigan.

His current book project, Heavy Load-Bearing Modernity: A Cultural Geology of Albert Speer’s Berlin/Germania, examines the Schwerbelastungskörper (heavy load-bearing cylinder) constructed in Nazi Berlin as a starting point for analyzing the entangled histories of architecture, geotechnical engineering, and political violence. The project explores the material and symbolic dimensions of architectural planning under National Socialism and the broader connections between technology, aesthetics, and ideology in twentieth-century German fascism.

His research has been supported by fellowships and programs including the Berlin Program for Advanced German and European Studies at Freie Universität Berlin, the UCLA Urban Humanities Initiative, the Mellon EPIC Fellowship in Environmental and Urban Humanities, the Alan D. Leve Center for Jewish Studies, the Ernst Adolf Marum Fellowship, the Pauline Yu Fellowship, the DAAD PROMOS Scholarship, and the University of Michigan Weiser Center for Europe and Eurasia.

In addition to his academic work, he has experience as a film curator, public speaker, performer, and community event organizer.