Nicholas Vazsonyi is an American academic, author, and artistic director. Since 2023, he is Dean of the College of Arts and Humanities at Clemson University.
Nicholas has authored articles on German national identity, German literature and culture of the 18th through the 20th centuries, and cultural intersections of music, literature and film. His research interests include composer Richard Wagner and literary figure Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. He is the author of two books Lukács Reads Goethe: From Aestheticism to Stalinism, and Richard Wagner: Self-Promotion and the Making of a Brand, translated into German as Richard Wagner: Die Entstehung einer Marke, and has conceived and edited several volumes, including The Cambridge Wagner Encyclopedia and the Cambridge Companion to Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen. He is also the Writer and Director of the 4-part Video/DVD film series, titled Klassix-13: Mozart – Beethoven – Schubert – Brahms.
He is the Co-Editor of WagnerSpectrum, and serves on the advisory board of the Wagner Society of New York and the journal Leitmotive.
“Belonging” and its opposite, not belonging, were central preoccupations for Wagner lifelong, saturating questions of his own identity as well as haunting protagonists in every one of his mature works. There is even a musical trademark he uses across his works to convey belonging and rootedness. This talk will provide a brief introduction to this surprisingly rich and as yet unexplored topic that has become so important in today’s conversations about inclusivity.
