My dissertation research examined the philosophy of the early German Romantic poet, Novalis. I focused on his earliest philosophical text, the Fichte Studien, and reconciled two dominant and mutually contradictory readings of Novalis’ work in my own, different interpretation. Other topics of my presented research have included: the application of Kantian aesthetics to the experience of foreign cultures; Kantian discursivity in the works of Heinrich von Kleist; and the works of East German poet Barbara Köhler.