Professor McAllister is an associate professor in and chair of the department of German and Russian at Wake Forest University. He joined the faculty in August, 2001. His primary research interests focus on eighteenth and nineteenth century literature, with specific emphasis on Heinrich von Kleist, early Romantic aesthetic and philosophical theory, questions of gender and the formation of the subject. Since 2005 he has also been a participating faculty member of Women's and Gender Studies.

Professor McAllister's research examines how representations of alternative sexualities establish diverse discourses of self-definition that disrupt and challenge heterosexual epistemology and concepts of truth and morality.  His most recent publications are “Romantic Imagery in Tykwer’s Lola rennt,” “The Dagger is the Pen: Violence and Writing in Lessing’s Emilia Galotti,” and “Who’s Dad: Questions of Paternity in Kleist’s Die Marquise von O….”  He has also completed a monograph titled “Kleist Female Leading Characters and the Subversion of Idealist Discourse.”  Currently he is working on a manuscript that studies the role of Goethe’s theory of color as an aesthetic discourse underlying Ludwig Tieck’s representation of sexuality and self-definition. He is also completing an article that examines Luise Adelgunde Gottsched's play der Witzling as a example of performative aesthetics.

Each summer Professor McAllister is also involved with some sort of study abroad program. Each fall semester he leads a pre-orientation study abroad trip for incoming Wake Forest University freshmen to Vienna, Austria. The program is a week-long excursion throughout Vienna and through parts of Niederösterreich. For more information, visit the new student web page for Wake Forest.

This summer Professor McAllister is leading a summer session in Vienna at the Flow House. Click HERE for more info.

In fall 2013 he will also be directing the Flow House in Vienna. Students will be able to receive 9 hrs of credit toward the German major or minor as well as division II and division III credit. Please visit the Wake Forest Center for International Studies for more information.