WCGS Member Publishes Book on the History of Homeopathy

Thursday, April 13, 2017

Alice Kuzniar's new book, The Birth of Homeopathy out of the Spirit of Romanticism, has just been published by the University of Toronto Press.

Cover art for Alice Kuzniar's

Dr. Kuzniar critically examines the alternative medical practice of homeopathy within the Romantic culture in which it arose. In The Birth of Homeopathy out of the Spirit of Romanticism, Kuzniar argues that Hahnemann was not an iconoclast and visionary, but rather a product of his time with links to his contemporaries such as Goethe and Alexander von Humboldt. It is the first book in English to examine Hahnemann’s unpublished writings, including case journals and self-testings. Kuzniar’s engaging writing style seamlessly weaves together medical, philosophical, semiotic, and literary concerns in order to reveal homeopathy as a phenomenon of its time. The Birth of Homeopathy out of the Spirit of Romanticism sheds light on issues that continue to dominate the controversy surrounding homeopathy to this very day. 

Read also this detailed interview with Kuzniar over on the Faculty of Arts' page.

About the Author

Headshot of University of Waterloo German/English professor Alice Kuzniar

Alice Kuzniar has been Professor of German at the University of Waterloo since 2008 and is cross-appointed with English. As of July 1, Dr. Kuzniar will hold a University Research Chair, and she just received the Arts Research Award for 2017.

She was Professor of German and Comparative Literature at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill 1983-2008; Visiting Guest Professor at Princeton University (1990), Rutgers University (2002), and University of Minnesota (2006); and Guest Lecturer at Harvard University, Cornell University, Indiana University, Washington University, University of Washington, University of California, Davis, University of California, Berkeley, Brandeis University, Iowa State University, University of Pittsburgh, University of Toronto, York University. She is also an Alexander von Humboldt Fellow.

Dr. Kuzniar has published books on subjects ranging from German Romanticism to The Queer German Cinema. She also teaches a variety of classes in cinema, literary and cultural theory, women and gender studies, and Romanticism.