Germanic Languages & Literatures

Washington University

314.935.5106; Fax: 314.935.7255; german@artsci.wustl.edu

One Brookings Drive, CB 1104, St. Louis, MO 63130

Denkmal für die ermordeten Juden Europas, Berlin

Announcements

Graduate program applications for Fall 09-10 are due January 15, 2009.

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Graduate Program

Graduate Student Directory

Prospective graduate students interested in more information about our program are invited to contact one of our Graduate Student Representatives directly. The representatives for 2008-09 are Jocelyn Smith and Corey Twitchell.

Russell Alt

Russell Alt

completed undergraduate work at Drake University, Humboldt Universität zu Berlin and received his BA in German Literature from the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities in 2004. In 2006 he earned his MA from Washington University in St. Louis. His principal research interests include representations of the Shoah in film, photography and literature, Jewish Studies, visual theory and contemporary German-language literature.

Chris Bailes

Chris Bailes

entered the Washington University German department in 2005. As an undergraduate at Kansas State University
he majored in philosophy, history and German. He studied abroad at the Universität Giessen in 2002-03 and at the Universität Leipzig in summer 2004. His research interests include intellectual history, the interrelationship between philosophy and literature, Schiller, Nietzsche, Freud, and Kant.

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Bartell Berg

earned a double B.A. in German and International Economics and Cultural Affairs (IECA) from Valparaiso University in 2001 and entered the German Department in the fall of 2001. He has studied in Germany and Austria at universities in Reutlingen, Tübingen, Munich, and Salzburg. In 2005, Bartell received a Fulbright Fellowship for research in Austria on environment and nature in Austrian literature of the nineteenth century. His main research interests include post-Romanticism nineteenth century literature and twentieth century literature as well as eco-criticism and second language acquisition. Bartell's dissertation will examine the relationship between nineteenth century Austrian literature and nature.

Brandi Besalke

Brandi Besalke

is in her first year of study at Washington University. She
earned a B.A. in German and English from the University of Missouri-Columbia in 2007. She studied abroad at the
Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität-München in 2005-2006. Her research interests focus mainly on 20th century German literature, specifically Michael Ende and German dystopic literature.

Patrick Brugh

Patrick Brugh

earned a BA in English and German Literature from the University of Pennsylvania in 2005 and took a Fulbright teaching assistantship in Bamberg, Germany during the 05/06 academic year. He began graduate work at Washington University in 2006. Patrick's research interests include gender studies, aesthetic theory, early modern literature, literature of war from all time periods, and any sort of social upheaval or conflict whether outright or subtle.

Norma Chapple

Norma Chapple

earned a B.A.H. in German and English from Memorial University of Newfoundland, Canada (2004) and her M.A. in German from the University of Waterloo, Canada (2006). Her M.A. thesis focused on questions of authority and autonomy in German intermedial versions of Oscar Wilde’s drama Salomé. Her research interests include the fin-de-siècle, gender and queer theory, and film studies.

Leah Chizek

Leah M. Chizek

earned her B.A. in urban studies and geography at Macalester College (St. Paul, MN). After subsequently learning German at the University of Minnesota, she pursued research on fellowship at the Freie-Universität-Berlin as well as obtaining CELTA certifications in teaching English as a second language. She joined the graduate program at Washington University in 2002. Leah’s research interests include 19th - 21st literature, film studies, aesthetics and phenomenology. Her dissertation focuses on the aesthetics and rhetoric of verticality in postwar literature, film and urban design. Currently, she is also an instructor in business German, having taught modern German literature for the past few semesters.

Necia Chronister

Necia Chronister

is in her fourth year of graduate studies at Washington University. She received her B.A. at the University of Oklahoma in 2003 and spent the 2003-2004 academic year on a research fellowship at the Humboldt University in Berlin studying post-reunification women writers. Her areas of interest include twentieth century literature, film, feminist theory, and literature written by women. She is also pursuing a graduate certificate in Women and Gender Studies.

Viktor Englund

Viktor Englund

is in his first year of graduate studies at the Washington University, and received his BA from the Stockholm University, Sweden. He spent one semester at the Albert-Ludwig-Unversität in Freiburg as an Erasmus exchange student in 2004, and one year at the Freie-Unversität in Berlin in 2002. He also teaches Swedish as a TA. His areas of interest include nineteenth and twentieth century literature.

Anne Fritz

Susanne Sara Fejer

came to Washington University in 2008 to study at the graduate level and serve as a Research Assistant at the Max Kade Center for Contemporary German Literature for Professor Paul Michael Lützeler. Before coming to the German Department she studied German Literature and Art at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe Universität Frankfurt am Main, where she will earn her Magistra Artium and Straatsexamen in 2010. Her research interest focuses on 19th- and 20th-century literature with an emphasis on novellas and lyric poetry of Theodor Stom, Conrad Ferdinand Meyer, and Arthur Schnitzler. Additionally, she is interested in J.W. Goethe's lyric poetry and strategies of narration of writers like Franz Kafka, Judith Hermann, or Inger Edelfeldt.

Anne Fritz

Anne Fritz

received her B.A. from Wesleyan University's College of Letters. She spent a year in Lübeck as a teaching assistant, studied photography and taught music classes before beginning her graduate work at Washington University in St. Louis, where she is in her fifth year in German and Comparative Literature. She earned her M.A. in 2005 and is currently on a research fellowship in Cologne, looking at cartographic elements in contemporary photography. She is interested in the ways that we use images, movement and sound in the process of locating ourselves.

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Tracy Graves

completed her MA at the University of Alabama in 2003. In addition to having studied at DePaul University, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz and Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität Munich, she has also taught English at the Universität-Regensburg. Her principal research interests include representations of science and technology in film, art and literature, intersections of aesthetics and politics, ekphrasis and intermediality.

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Patience Graybill

earned her B.A. in English and German at Hope College, her M.A. in German at Washington University in St. Louis. She received a Fulbright fellowship in 2004-05 to study at the Freie Universität Berlin. Her research interests include 19th -21st century literature and visual culture, with an emphasis on post-Wall literature and photography; archives, libraries, and museums; cultural memory; questions of national identity; new media; globalization; critical theory; travel narratives, and gender studies.

Lisa Haegele

Lisa Haegele

received her BA in French and German literature in 2004 and her MA in German literature in 2006 at the University of Pittsburgh. She studied at the Universität Augsburg in the summer of 2005. Her research interests include 20th and 21st century film and literature, aesthetic theory, trauma studies, and subculture. She is currently pursuing a dual degree in Comparative Literature.

Ted Jackson

Sarah Hillenbrand

earned her BA in English and German (2005) and her MA in German (2008) from the University of Nevada, Reno. She spent the 2005-2006 academic year as a Fulbright teaching assistant in Saarbrücken, Germany. Her MA thesis investigated the use of the play-within-a-play in 18th- and 19th-century German comedies. Sarah's current research interests include folk tales, literary fairy tales, and representations of animals and the role of anthropomorphism in literature.

Ted Jackson

Lukas Hoffmann

is in his first year of graduate studies at Washington University. Before coming to St. Louis, he studied American studies and comparative literature at the University of Tübingen, Germany. After his M.A. in German Studies at Washington University, he will return to Tübingen in order to write his dissertation on Nathaniel Hawthorne and Gustave Flaubert’s female figures. His major interests include gender theory, narratology, and the combination of both in comparative approaches to American, French, and German literature. This work concentrates on mid-19th century and postmodern literature.

Ted Jackson

Ted Jackson

is in his third year of graduate work and his eleventh year of learning German. He earned his BA from Wittenberg University in 2003 and his MA from Washington University in 2005. His academic interests include, but are not limited to, literature of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, gender and queer theory, intellectual history, and second language acquisition. Ted is writing his dissertation on the reception of Hermann Hesse by German youth groups throughout the twentieth century.

Julia Kleinheider

Julia Kleinheider

completed her undergraduate work in Germanic Studies and Anthropology at Indiana University in 2002. She also studied at Albert-Ludwigs Universitaet in Freiburg and taught English at the university and technical school in Erfurt under the auspices of the Bosch Foundation. She earned her M.A. in 2005 from Washington University and is currently preparing to undertake dissertation research. Her interests include the biotechnical body in art and literature of the WWI era, prosthetic theory, theories of the avant-garde, and gender studies.

Anna Leeper

Anna Leeper

graduated with a BA in English and German from the University of Memphis and took a Bosch Fellowship in Magdeburg, Germany during the 2004/2005 academic year. Her research interests include translation theory, book and manuscript production, early modern literature, and representations of mythology and the occult in literature.

Mary LeGierse

Mary LeGierse

earned her BA and MA at the University of Pennsylvania and is in her third year of graduate work at Washington University. Her academic interests include Freemasonry in the German-speaking world of the eighteenth century, the education of women in the early modern period, book production and the impact of technological advances on theology between 1600 and 1800, as well as the development of German-American clubs and organizations in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Sandra Marcu

Sandra Marcu

received her M.A. in German Studies at Bowling Green State University, and spent two years in Salzburg studying at the Paris Lodron Universität (2002-2004) and teaching English at the Fachhochschule Salzburg. She studied French at the Institut de Touraine, Tours in the summer of 2005. She is working on a joint Ph.D. in German and Comparative Literature, with French as her secondary field of study. Her interests include gender studies, aesthetic theory, the nineteenth century and fin-de-siecle, and children’s literature.

Christine McCrory

Christine McCrory

earned her B.A. in German and Anthropology from the University of California at Berkeley (2002) and her M.Phil. in European Literature from Oxford University, England (2006).  Her M.Phil. thesis focused on issues of citation of literary predecessors and German national identity in the works of W.G. Sebald.  Her research interests include contemporary literature, theories of postmemory, and children's media.

Katie McNeill Katie McNeill

earned a B.A. in German and French from the University of Pittsburgh (1998) and an M.A. in German from Washington University (2005).  She is currently working on a joint PhD in German and Comparative Literature.  Her interests include 20th century literature, theories of time and memory, and narrative theory.

 

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Suzuko Mousel Knott

"Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity." - Horace Mann (1796-1859)

Caroline Muegge

Caroline Muegge

earned her BA at Davidson College in 2005 and is in her second year of graduate work at Washington University. She studied at the Julius-Maximilians-Universität-Würzburg in WS03/04 and SS04. Her academic interests include twentieth and twenty-first century literature and film, translation theory, and representations of mathematical thought in art, film and literature.

Faruk Pasic

Melissa Olson

received her B.A. from Creighton University where she studied German and English. She has studied at Philips-Universität Marburg and Dortmund Universität where she spent one year as a Fulbright fellow researching Walt Whitman’s influence on German Expressionist painters. Melissa is an Olin Fellow working toward a joint M.A./Ph.D. in German and Comparative Literature at Washington University Fall ’08. Her research interests include early twentieth-century German and American literature and visual art, inter-cultural transfer and visual culture studies.

   

Faruk Pasic

Faruk Pasic

is in his first year of study at Washington University. He earned his B.A. in German and economics from the University of Virginia in 2006. His interests include German fin-de-siècle and early twentieth century literature, pop music, computer design, and the Deutsche Bundesliga.

Shane D. Peterson

Shane D. Peterson

came to Washington University in 2006 after receiving BA and MA degrees in German Literature from Brigham Young University. He resided in Rheinland-Pfalz for two years and studied in Vienna for one semester. His MA thesis explored visual and rhetorical constructs of postwar Austria in Heimatfilme and a variety of other popular texts. Besides an affinity for 1950s film, his interests include 19th century, postwar and contemporary German and Austrian literature.

Anne Popiel

Anne Popiel

received her BA from Kenyon College in Modern Languages and Literatures (German and Russian). She studied in Berlin and Florence and taught English in Italy and Poland, as well as two years in Austria as a Fulbright TA. She received her MA from Washington University in St. Louis in 2007 and is interested in connecting art, philosophy, science and geometry in maps, diagrams and blueprints. She is also pursuing a graduate certificate in translation studies.

Jocelyn Smith

Jocelyn Smith

received a B.A. in German and a B.M. in music from Southern Methodist University in 2005 and began graduate studies at Washington University the following year. As a high school student, she received a Congress-Bundestag Exchange scholarship and spent a year in Munich. Jocelyn is currently taking a Turkish language course in Istanbul and will begin her second year of graduate studies in Fall 2007. Turkish-German literature is one of her primary academic interests, but other interests include Early Romanticism, particularly the interplay between politics and poetry in the works of Novalis.

Magdalen Stanley

Magdalen Stanley

earned a BA in German and English Literature from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Before coming to St. Louis, she served as a Fulbright Teaching Assistant at the Ilmenau-Kolleg in Thuringia, Germany, where she was also an honorary student of Maschinenbau. Her academic interests include library and museum culture, poetry and politics in the GDR, postwar and contemporary German art, aesthetic theory and intersections of art, architecture and memory. She also enjoys translation, PowerPoint and cemeteries.

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Richard Strudell

 

Nancy Twilley

Nancy Twilley

received her B.A. from Vanderbilt University in 2004, and her M.A. from Washington University in 2006. She has also studied at the Universität Regensburg. She is currently working on her comprehensive exams, and will soon begin work on her dissertation. Nancy enjoys teaching for both the German department and the Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies department, and is in the WGSS certificate program. Her interests include transgender studies, gay and lesbian studies, queer theory, and late 18th and 19th century literature--especially literature by women writers of the fin-de-siècle.

Corey Twitchell

Corey Twitchell

is in his first year of graduate work at Washington University. After completing a BA in Classics at Grinnell College in 1999, he changed directions and decided to pursue German and art history. He received his MA in German in 2004 from the University of Oklahoma, where he wrote a master’s thesis on the short stories of Wolfgang Hildesheimer and their relationship to discourses of art in the cultural landscape of 1950s Germany. He spent 2004-2005 as a Fulbright Teaching Assistant in Bremen at the aptly named Hermann-Böse-Gymnasium. In addition, he has also taught German and English as a Second Language at the college level. His academic interests include postwar German literature, art, film, and media, as well as the works of contemporary authors, such as Christian Kracht, Yoko Tawada, and Raul Zelik.

Erik Varela

Erik Varela

earned BA degrees in German and Spanish from the University of Toledo in 2004 and received his MA in German Literature from Washington University in 2007. He has spent time studying abroad in Tübingen, Darmstadt, Madrid and Toledo, Spain. His academic interests include Romanticism, the uncanny, supernatural and occult in literature, translation studies and horror in art.

Erik Varela

Jonathan Voges

 

Victoria Vygodskaia-Rust

Victoria Vygodskaia-Rust

received her MA in German from Washington University in 2007 and is currently finishing her PhD coursework for the Joint Degree in German and Comparative Literature. During her undergraduate study at Southeast Missouri State University (majoring in German and International Business), Rust studied in Hogeschool van Amsterdam in the Netherlands and Universität Dortmund in Germany. Her research interests include the social history of fashion, literature for girls in nineteenth century Germany, and issues of literary translation from Russian and German into English. Rust is a native of Minsk, Belarus.

B. Thomas Watkins

B. Thomas Watkins

earned his BA and MA in German Literature from the University of Alabama. He has spent time studying abroad in Weingarten, Mannheim, Klagenfurt and Berlin. His current concentration is on the interrelation of women, spiritualism and travel in the prose work of Gerhart Hauptmann, though recent projects have included an examination of power structures in Heinrich Mann’s Der Untertan and a study of scatology as a means of expression in Ein kurtzweilig Lesen von Dyl Ulenspiegel.

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Germanic Languages & Literatures

314.935.5106; Fax: 314.935.7255; german@artsci.wustl.edu

One Brookings Drive, CB 1104, St. Louis, MO 63130