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Friederike von Schwerin-High’s research ranges from Gotthold Ephraim Lessing and the Age of Goethe to Thomas Mann. She is particularly interested in translation studies and alterity in narrative and philosophy.

A constant in her research is the question of how cultures and individuals represent difference to themselves. In Shakespeare, Reception and Translation: Germany and Japan (2004), she examined eight German and four Japanese translations of one Shakespearean text, ranging from the 1760s to today. She found that in each of them the magical world of The Tempest came across as very different in spite of the avowed neutral behavior on the part of the translators. 

Her other publications include a book translation of Harald A. Innis’s works (Kreuzwege der Kommunikation) and articles on blank verse, G. E. Lessing, Goethe, Thomas Mann, Heinrich von Kleist, Doris Dörrie, and Judith Hermann. In addition, for the past five years she has been the co-editor of the journal Pacific Coast Philology.

She is currently working on a comparative study of novels that act like biographies and which include works of fiction by Thomas Mann, Natsume Soseki, Christa Wolf, Philip Roth and Orhan Pamuk.