On December 17^th, 2019 Anna-Lisa Baumeister successfully defended her dissertation, “Critical Climates: Sturm und Drang and the Radical Poetics of Nature.” Directed by Professor Martin Klebes, Baumeister’s thesis brings continental philosophy, poetics and eco-criticism to bear on an impressive corpus of German writing from the late eighteenth century.  Her article “‘Sie scheint auch mehr zu donnern und zu blitzen, als zu reden.’ Zur Meteorologisierung der Sprache im Drama der 1770er Jahre” (The Germanic Review, vol. 94) was awarded the Goethe Society of North America’s essay prize for 2019, and she has recently been invited to contribute an essay on climate and race to a special issue of German Life and Letters.