Nicholas Vazsonyi is Professor of German and Comparative Literature at the University of South Carolina and the editor of the Cambridge Wagner Encyclopedia (forthcoming 2013), an international effort involving some 80 scholars from 11 academic disciplines and residing in 9 countries. He teaches and researches on German literature and culture, including music and film, covering the 18th through the 21st centuries. He has published monographs on Wagner and on Goethe, and edited volumes on Wagner’s Meistersinger and on German national identity from 1750 to 1871.