Denis Kitzinger
Thesis title: An Intellectual Biography of the German Catholic Philosopher Dietrich von Hildebrand.
Supervisor: Dr. Riccardo Bavaj
Denis studied Political Science at the Johannes Gutenberg University at Mainz before he received a Bachelor of Arts (Political Science) from Lipscomb University in Nashville and a Master’s (History of Ideas/International Relations) from Pepperdine University in Malibu. Denis pursues his PhD research on a part-time basis and is currently on leave due to his full-time teaching position in the United States.
His PhD project is an intellectual biography of the German catholic philosopher and émigré Dietrich von Hildebrand (1887-1977). Denis examines von Hildebrand as an intellectual, that is, as a critic and commentator of cultural and intellectual trends within 20th century Catholicism in the context of both German and US American society as well as the transnational context of the Catholic Church. To that end he investigates Hildebrand’s participation in critical discourses between the years immediately after the First World War until Hildebrand’s passing in 1977. He investigates the structural parameters of Hildebrand’s social function as an intellectual—e.g. what media channels did he use? Who constituted his audience? Such discourse history permits him to establish Hildebrand’s fundamental topoi and by tracing the trajectory of these ideas to assess their impact.
Publications
“Towards a Model of Transnational Agency: the Case of Dietrich von Hildebrand” The International History Review, Vol. 33, Issue 4, 12/2011
Presentations/Conferences
- “Towards a Model of Transnational Agency: the Case of Dietrich von Hildebrand” University of St Andrews, Workshop 'The Individual and the Local in Transnational and Comparative History,' 05/2010
- “Recovering the depth of the human heart --- Dietrich von Hildebrand’s thought on the nature of marriage, love and sexuality in the intellectual context of the 1920s”Hildebrand Legacy Project’s 2010 Conference at the Pontifical University of the Holy
Cross, Rome, Italy, 05/2010
- “Personalismus in der Katholischen Publizistik der 1920er Jahre” University of Eichstätt, Germany, 02/2010
- “Dietrich von Hildebrand, Personalism, and the Quarterly Journal Der Katholische Gedanke, 1928-1933” University of St Andrews, Postgraduate Forum, 11/2009
Other
- Co-Coordinator - Postgraduate Forum School of History University of St Andrews, 09/2009-06/2010