Department of Comparative Literature

David Michael Hertz is professor and chair of Comparative Literature at Indiana University in Bloomington. His recent book, Eugenio Montale, The Fascist Storm and the Jewish Sunflower, is an exploration of the interconnected nature of art and biography in the works of Eugenio Montale, who is arguably the most significant modern Italian poet. His earlier books include Frank Lloyd Wright in Word and Form;  Angels of Reality: Emersonian Unfoldings in Frank Lloyd Wright, Wallace Stevens and Charles Ives;  and The Tuning of the Word: the Musico-literary Poetics of Symbolist Movement. (See the “Amazon Author’s Page”.)

Hertz has published works on modern poetry written in French, German, Italian, and English, and also music, drama, and architectural history. His latest book, which grew out of his extensive study of the world of song with Indiana University students, is The American Songbook from Vaudeville to Hollywood. A composer and pianist, Hertz studied at Juilliard and the Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University (from which he holds a degree). Among his master teachers were Bernhard Heiden, Marion Hall, Abbey Simon, and Hans Graf. He also studied jazz piano and harmony with the legendary Barry Harris, who worked with Max Roach, Thelonious Monk, Miles Davis, and many more. Hertz has received grants from the Mellon and Graham Foundations and is listed in Who's Who Among College Teachers. From 2003-2006 and 2008-2017, Hertz  was a member of the National Council on the Humanities of the National Endowment for the Humanities in Washington, D.C.