History of UNC-Duke Collaborations

For years, faculty at the German departments at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Duke University have worked together to enhance the quality of program at both universities.

Click here for information about the new Carolina-Duke Joint Ph.D. Program in German Studies.

• Especially since 1995, faculty members have regularly served on MA and PhD committees, and graduate students attended courses, at the other institution.
  
  
• Since 2003 collaborative efforts have intensified. On 7 February 2003, faculty, graduate students, and staff from the German departments at both universities held a day-long planning meeting and began the process of formalizing their interactions.
  
• On 16-17 January 2004, German department faculty from UNC-CH and Duke held a joint symposium on the German philosopher Walter Benjamin (1892-1940).
  
• On 2-4 April 2004, the German departments hosted an international, interdisciplinary German Studies conference, "Beginnings and Endings of Modernity in German-Speaking Lands," which was jointly planned and organized.
  
• March 30-April 1 2007: The conference, Visuality and Materiality in the Story of Tristan and Isolde, took place in Chapel Hill and Durham, North Carolina. It was organized by Dr. Jutta Eming (Germanistik, Free University of Berlin), Prof. Ann Marie Rasmussen (Dept. of Germanic Languages and Literature, Duke University), and Prof. Kathryn Starkey (Dept. of Germanic Languages and Literatures, UNC-Chapel Hill) as an integral part of their collaborative research project, Tristan und Isolde und die Gefühlskulturen des Mittelalters, funded by the TransCoop Program of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation.
  
• Together the departments have initiated a relationship with the Max Kade Foundation, whose generous support has allowed them jointly to host for one semester visiting professors from Germany teaching one course at each university:
  - spring 2004 - Dr. PD Jutta Eming, the Free University of Berlin
  - spring 2005 - Dr. PD Hans Richard Brittnacher, the Free University of Berlin
  - fall 2006 - Dr. PD Haiko Wandhoff, the Humboldt University of Berlin
  - fall 2007 - Dr. Edith Wenzel, the Humboldt University of Berlin
  
• Beginning during the academic year 2004, faculty and graduate students of both departments have met monthly for a ”Work in Progress” symposium to hear and discuss presentations of scholarly research that is ongoing in the departments. A schedule for the 2008-9 “Works in Progress” symposium is now in place.
  
• Collection development for holdings in German has been done collaboratively between Davis Library (UNC-CH) and Perkins Library (DU) for the past fifteen years.
  
• Clusters of research strengths represented in the German departments include: European intellectual history; German philosophical traditions; Modernism; Romanticism; gender and sexuality studies; visual culture; medieval and early modern studies; literary theory and poetics; German-Jewish Studies.

  Duke University Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures