Skye Shannon Savage, PhD

Dr. Skye Shannon Savage is a literary scholar, educator, and musician based in New York City. She is currently a Lecturer in Columbia University’s Core Curriculum. In her research and teaching she interrogates the narrative structure of scientific knowledge and its histories. Her dissertation, The Performativity of Diagnosis: Case Writing Between Medicine and Literature in Postwar Germany examines the intertwined histories of medical and literary writing in the German context and culminates in an analysis of clinical files from the Karl-Bonhoeffer-Nervenklinik in Berlin, and new readings of works by Ingeborg Bachmann and Unica Zürn. In 2024-2025 she was awarded a Columbia University GSAS Teaching Scholars Fellowship for the design and instruction of the seminar “The Medical Surreal: Doctor and Patient Narratives.” Her work has been supported by grants from the German Academic Exchange (DAAD), the Institute for Comparative Literature and Society, and the Columbia University Department of Germanic Languages.