Matthew Stoltz received his Ph.D. in German Studies from Cornell University in 2019. His research explores the intersections of literature, theology, and visual culture in the long eighteenth century, with a particular interest in how words and images shape questions of belief, doubt, and historical knowledge. He is currently completing a book, The Pointing Finger: Figuration, Doubt, and the Forms of Faith in German Letters, 1750–1810, which traces how writers from Klopstock to Kleist confronted the problem of religious authority through acts of reading, interpretation, and figuration. His articles have appeared or are forthcoming in The German Quarterly, on Lessing’s Fingerzeig and the politics of figural reading; Religion & Literature, on Novalis, Lessing, and the controversy over visual education; and the Lessing Yearbook, on Klopstock’s Der Messias and the figure of Doubting Thomas. An essay on the legacies of the Reformation in Novalis and Kleist appeared in a volume from Istanbul University Press. He has also translated German scholarship into English, including work for Critical Inquiry. His broader interests include art history, political theory, rhetoric, and the history of the Lutheran Reformation.