May Mergenthaler is Associate Professor for German Literature and Culture at the Ohio State University in Columbus Ohio, and 2020-22 also Research Fellow of the Alexander-von-Humboldt Foundation in Germany.
Her current research focuses on the function of light in the emergence of modern, 18th-century poetry, and on contemporary literary criticism, with a focus on the lyric.
Other research and teaching interests include contemporary literary criticism, literary theory, environmental humanities, Early German Romanticism, female authorship, and the cultural public sphere.