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The Graduate Program in German

Overview of the GLL Graduate Program

We are proud of a long and strong tradition in Graduate Education here at the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures at the Ohio State University. Professors in the Department have received prestigious Guggenheim Fellowships, NEH, Fulbright, and Alexander von Humboldt grants and Distinguished University Scholar awards. Our faculty includes the only Ohio Eminent Scholar in German and another endowed Chair in Scandinavian. We invite you to peruse the materials linked to these pages and hope that you will contact us directly if they do not answer all of your questions or, better yet, if they make you want to learn more about our program. We would also be happy to get to know prospective students on a campus visit.

Graduate study in German at OSU is pursued in a curriculum that ranges from traditional Germanistik to German Studies. (Graduate courses and degrees in Yiddish and Ashkenazic Studies are also available.) In addition to choosing from a wide array of courses taught by distinguished scholars and award-winning faculty, students receive extensive training and experience as teachers of language. Students completing our MA in German participate in introductory coursework in literary forms and theory, linguistics, genres, and historical surveys, as well as at least one pro-seminar and one seminar, each of which scrutinizes a specific topic in-depth. Regardless of whether they opt to write an MA thesis or take an in-house exam, students receiving an MA at OSU are well prepared as teachers and generalists in literature with a concentration in an area of their special interest. Those who continue in the PhD program take additional seminars in preparation for the candidacy exam, which is designed to develop areas of specific historical and thematic expertise and set the work on the dissertation in motion. We encourage all PhD students to spend at least one year of study at a German university through one of our study-abroad programs.

Areas of Strength

Germanic Languages and Literatures at OSU is fortunate to have a strong and diverse faculty, allowing us to maintain broad coverage in traditional "Germanistik" while developing specific areas of strength. Below are notes about some of those areas, as well as links to faculty member's individual Web pages, which tell you more about their research and courses. Most of our faculty are active in several areas, so what is listed here does not represent their full expertise: it is simply meant as a way to provide you with an initial overview. One of our strengths is undoubtedly our TA-training program, under the direction of Kathryn Corl and Carmen Taleghani-Nikazm, which is one of the most extensive and successful to be found anywhere.

Our faculty has made significant contributions to all areas of twentieth-century studies. Anchoring our strengths in modernist literature is Helen Fehervary, whose standing in GDR studies has been underscored by her role in editing the critical edition of Anna Seghers. Among our many professors working in post-WWII literature, Gregor Hens has earned special recognition in Austrian studies for his monograph on Thomas Bernhard. In addition, he has published three novels and a volume of short stories.

The historical interface between German and Jewish cultural traditions also receives a great deal of attention in our department. In addition to the offerings of Neil Jacobs and David Miller in Yiddish and Ashkenazic studies, Paul Reitter explores the rhetorical and literary results of this interaction in Viennese modernism and in Germany between 1850 and 1950. In another contribution to this area, Bernd Fischer recently offered a seminar on "Jewish Emancipation and German Nation," concentrating on the work of Jewish thinkers of the Berlin Enlightenment. This course drew on Professor Fischer's extensive work on literature and philosophy from the Enlightenment to the present.

Another key figure in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century literature is Barbara Becker-Cantarino, a Distinguished University Research Professor. Professor Becker-Cantarino's pioneering explorations of literary women in the ages of Enlightenment and Romanticism have put her at the forefront of historically grounded feminist work in German and have gained her accolades at home and abroad. The philosophical strains generating from this period are the milieu of Kai Hammermeister, who has published on Hans-Georg Gadamer and German aesthetic theory.

We are also fortunate to count among our faculty Anna Grotans, who works on medieval literary and cultural topics and teaches courses on the history of the German language.

There are other areas in which we have a great deal of support from fine faculty in related fields and programs, such as the Humanities Institute, the Melton Center for Jewish Studies, and Women's Studies. Film studies in Germanic Languages and Literatures benefits from close ties to the Interdisciplinary Film Studies Committee, which includes prominent scholars such as Judith Mayne (French & Italian), Ron Green (History of Art), and Linda Mizejewski (English). They are joined by John Davidson, who writes on German film and film theory and teaches popular courses on these subjects, and by our own Bergman-expert, Marilyn Blackwell, the Vorman-Anderson Professor of Nordic Languages and Literatures. Marilyn's expertise is complemented by Merrill Kaplan, who teaches popular courses in Nordic Mythology and Medieval Culture as well as the Icelandic Sagas.

A 17th and 18th century specialist, May Mergenthaler works on Romantic readings of Romanticism—a deliberate return to the original interplay between author and reader in Friedrich Schlegel and his circle (August Wilhelm Schlegel, Caroline Schlegel, Novalis, Dorothea Veit, and Schleiermacher). Bernhard Malkmus is a student of the picaresque form, with a dissertation from the University of Cambridge on the journeying rogue in Melville, Kafka, Mann, Bellow, Kosinski, Grass, and others.

For more information on our recent scholarly activity, please visit the Newsletter page.

For questions concerning the desire to apply to our Graduate Program, please contact our Graduate Studies Advisor, Barbara Becker-Cantarino.

Financial Support and GTA positions

The Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures considers all of its graduate students for financial support, which is given either via a University Graduate Fellowship, a departmental Fellowship, a Graduate Teaching Associateship, or a Graduate Research Associateship. A tuition and fee waiver would also be provided. Applicants are automatically considered for these forms of support.

The Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures offers the one-year Bernhard Blume Fellowship, with no teaching duties required, to enable incoming graduate students to concentrate fully on their German studies.

Another prestigious funding opportunity is the University Fellowship, which also carries no departmental duties; it is offered by the Graduate School of The Ohio State University. Applicants do not apply directly for the University Fellowship. Rather, the Graduate Studies Advisory Committee, which reviews applications, nominates outstanding candidates in order for them to be considered for this award by the Graduate School. If you hope for the opportunity to be nominated, the Graduate Studies Advisory Committee must have your complete application no later than January 15 (all applicants).

Teaching Associates in our department teach one introductory-level language class per quarter and benefit from an extensive training and mentoring system. Experienced Teaching Associates may go on to work in the Individualized Instruction program.

Currently, all fellowships, those offered by the department as well as by the university, and graduate associateships received by our graduate students range from roughly $18,530 (for 4 quarters) to $13,900 (for 3 quarters) plus a full tuition and fee waiver (approximately $10,440 for Residents of Ohio; approximately $25,302 for Non-residents).

Following the Ohio State links below will provide you with additional important information:

Content Owner: Prof. Becker-Cantarino

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