He studied Comparative Literature at New York University and received a Ph.D. in German and Critical Theory from the University of California, Irvine. His current book project, entitled “Nefarious Heathens: Enlightening the Masses in Late Eighteenth-Century Germany,” examines the use of public theological debates to educate Germans during the late eighteenth century. Dr. Fine’s research interests include modern German literature, European and German intellectual history, theories of the public sphere, the Republic of Letters, religious polemic and heretical thought from the Reformation to the Enlightenment, critical theory, and hermeneutics.