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Department of Germanic Languages
University of North Carolina
438 Dey Hall, CB# 3160
Chapel Hill NC 27599
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After the Zwischenprüfung in Germanistik at Mainz Universität, I spent a year at Middlebury College, Vermont, as an exchange student and a teaching assistant in the German Department, and instead of returning to Germany, I enrolled at the University of Vermont. In 1998, I received my M.A. in German Literature from UVM with a thesis on the question of guilt and punishment in Kleist’s novel Michael Kohlhaas and Droste-Hülshoff’s work Die Judenbuche. In 2004, I received my Ph.D. in German Studies from the University of California, Los Angeles, with a dissertation on Klaus Mann’s intellectual and personal conflict with the faltering of democracy in the Weimar Republic and the subsequent rise of fascism across Europe. My dissertation examined the various stages of Mann’s suicidal crises over the decades as they played out in his political essays and his life.
Since the completion of my doctoral studies, I have developed a thriving interest in contemporary German drama. In particular, I have become interested in collegial theater production in German as a means of fostering foreign language acquisition and comprehension of literary works. I have both directed and co-directed five student productions of plays from the 18th and 19th centuries: Georg Büchner’s Woyzeck, Arthur Schnitzler’s Reigen (two different productions), Curt Goetz’ Der Lampenschirm, and Friedrich Dürrenmatt’s Die Physiker.
After successful runs of these productions at both the University of Kentucky, where I taught from 2004-2006, and Middlebury College, where I taught in Spring 2003 and since Summer 2003 in the Middlebury German Summer School, I am excited to continue my involvement with the theater department and the staging of German language plays at UNC.
My other research interest with regards to the fine arts lies in the integration of classical and popular music into the foreign language classroom to engage students in a critical dialogue with historical, political, social, and intellectual topics from the 18th to the 21st century.
In my role as the Director of Intermediate Language Program, I am responsible for mentoring the teaching assistants teaching Intermediate and Advanced Intermediate German as well as Elementary German for Graduate Students. In Fall 2006, I will teach German 301, a fifth-semester conversation and composition course that focuses on Jugend- und Popkulturen. The other course that I will teach in the fall is German 390: Think Dramatic! German Drama and Theater from the 19th Century to the Present. |
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