Bryson Tedford

Bryson Headshot
Lecturer, Germanic Studies Department and the College
Cobb 508
Ph.D. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, Columbia University, February 2026; B.A. Barnard College, German Languages and Literatures and Biology, 2010
Teaching at UChicago since 2025
Research Interests: Aesthetic Philosophy, Theater History, Performance Studies, Architecture, German Romanticism

Bryson Tedford teaches elementary German language courses. She is also designing a 300-level course on German architecture for Spring 2026.

Intellectual Profile

Bryson Tedford studied German and Biology at Barnard College. She completed her Ph.D. in the Department of Germanic Languages at Columbia University in 2025. Her dissertation, “Illusion beyond the Fourth Wall: Ludwig Tieck between the Folds of Performance Studies,” seeks to recover the critical value of illusion aesthetics by developing an alternate portrait of theater around 1800 with the writings of Ludwig Tieck. Bryson was an Instructor in the German Department at Hamilton College for two years, where she taught Intermediate German and developed courses on romanticism and environmental thought as well as the German reception of antiquity. Her main field of research is aesthetic philosophy, and she explores this interest primarily in the context of theater and modern architecture. 

Teaching

  • GRMN 10100 (Elementary German 1)