After receiving his PhD at the University of Chicago, he was awarded a fellowship by the Princeton University Society of Fellows in the Liberal Arts.  He currently holds the rank of Associate Professor in the Department of German.

In addition to the study of eighteenth- and early-nineteenth century German literature, especially drama, Lande’s interests and competencies reach into other areas of European literature, especially classical antiquity and its various receptions. He maintains an active interest in the German philosophical tradition from Leibniz to Wittgenstein as well as its contemporary Anglo-American and European interpretation. Recent essays on theater history and aesthetics as well as the history of science and early modern political thought have appeared in journals including MLN, the Goethe Yearbook, the Deutsche Vierteljahrsschrift, and the Zeitschrift für deutsche Philologie.

His first book Persistence of Folly: On the Origins of German Dramatic Literature appeared in Fall 2018 in the Signale Series published by Cornell. Together with Jocelyn Holland, he edited the 2019 German Issue of MLN on the topic of anomalies. In collaboration with Denis Feeney, he co-edited the multiautored volume How Literatures Begin: A Global History, which appeared in Spring 2021 with Princeton University Press. He is currently working on a study of Goethe's literary and autobiographical writings on the French Revolution, provisionally entitled Vagantenweisheit: Goethes Schaffen im Licht der Revolution (under contract with August Verlag, Berlin).