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Previous editions can be accessed by selecting one of the links above.

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The 2007 Department Newsletter

Prof. Gregor Hens - Editor

TABLE OF CONTENTS

• A Note from the Chair
• Faculty and Staff
• New Faculty
• New Books
• Lectures and Events
• Graduate Student News
• Letter from Berlin
• Goings-on at the German House
• German Day at OSU
• Undergraduate News
• Rilke: Duino Elegy
• Alumna profile and news
• In memoriam Paul Gottwald
• Graduates of the Department, what have you been doing?
• Friends of the Department

A note from the Chair

We are definitely growing ... this year by two marvelous tenure-track hires at the level of assistant professor: May Mergenthaler (Ph.D. 2007, Princeton University) and Bernhard Malkmus (Ph.D. 2006, University of Cambridge). I am also very happy to extend heartfelt congratulations to Brenda Hosey, the Department's Administrative Associate and Fiscal/HR Officer, who was awarded the University Distinguished Staff Award, as well as to Kathy Corl, the Department's Director of Language Instruction and TA Coordinator for the last seventeen years, who received the national Anthony Papalia Award for Excellence in Teacher Education. Please read all about it -- as well as about our colleagues' most recent books and all the other faculty and student achievements -- on the following pages.

Bernd Fischer

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Faculty and Staff

• Barbara Becker-Cantarino, Research Professor

  Barbara Becker-Cantarino just completed a book manuscript on "Meine Liebe zu Büchern: Sophie von La Roche in der Kultur der Empfindsamkeit und Spätaufklärung" to be published by Winter in Heidelberg. Together with Gudrun Loster-Schneider (University of Mannheim) she is organizing a conference on Sophie von La Roche (1730-1807) at the Deutsche Literaturarchiv in Marbach/Neckar to take place in October with a grant from the Deutsche Forschungs-gemeinschaft. Last year she presented a keynote lecture at both the University of Sheffield international conference on "Crossing Boundaries" in April and at a symposium on "Sophie Mereau" at the University of Jena in June. She was invited to present a lecture at a Humboldt-Kolleg at the University of Graz, during the Arnim-Gesellschaft bi-annual meeting in Wesel, and at the international conference "200 Jahre Heidelberger Romantik" at the University of Heidelberg. In January 2007, she traveled to Vancouver to teach a seminar at the University of British Columbia and presented a lecture at the University of Victoria. She looks forward to teaching a graduate seminar on "Emotions" during the coming academic year.

• Nina Berman, Associate Professor

  ... is in the process of completing a manuscript, entitled "Beyond Orientalism: Germany and the Middle East, 900-2000." She co-chaired a committee that wrote a proposal for an interdisciplinary major in Globalization Studies which is currently in the final approval stage.

• Marilyn Johns Blackwell, Vorman-Anderson Professor for Scandinavian Studies, Director of Swedish/Scandinavian Studies

• Kathryn A. Corl, Associate Professor

  ... was awarded the ACTFL-NYSAFLT Anthony Papalia Award for Excellence in Teacher education at the 2006 meeting of the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages in Nashville, TN. She served this past year on a national selection panel for Fulbright Awards to Germany, and at OSU as Chair of the Arts and Sciences Faculty Senate.

• John E. Davidson, Associate Professor

  The past year has left me better rounded as a member of the OSU community. After the successful shepherding of a major in film studies through the approval process, I was rewarded with the directorship of the Film Studies Program, which grew about four times faster than anticipated. So, per force I've learned a lot about advising new undergraduate majors (realizing in the process that my previous grad advising in GLL left me under-prepared for this) and about meeting the needs of a program that --right from the outset--had nearly outgrown the parameters set up for it. During that same period I seem to have landed on somebody's list (those who can get things done? those who can't say 'no'?...), which has subsequently landed me in the University Senate, on the University Rules Committee--which I now chair--and a string of ad hoc committees on issues regarding tenure, titles, and governance rights within the university. My teaching has kept me grounded--mostly culture and film courses in GLL and Film Studies--and my research moves ahead. A couple of articles have appeared in the interim, an anthology has been finished, and progress on a book on auto-mobility in German film has been made. In this space next year I hope to talk about that, as well as the exciting new work I've begun on Ottomar Domnick, father of the "other" German cinema.

• Helen Fehervary, Professor

  ... continues as general editor of the Seghers Werkausgabe (with Bernhard Spies, Universität Mainz). The edition's sixth volume (Bd. II/5) appeared this past spring: Anna Seghers, Erzählungen 1958-1966, Bandbearbeitung Ute Brandes (Berlin: Aufbau Verlag, 2007). Recent publications include: Cultural Politics--The Politics of Culture, ed. Helen Fehervary and Bernd Fischer (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2007), and various essays and reviews. Besides teaching courses and mentoring advisees in Germanic Languages and Literatures, Fehervary is on the Board of the Melton Center for Jewish Studies and an associated faculty member in the Department of Women's Studies where she served on the Graduate Committee and the Search Committee for a new Chair of Women's Studies last year. In Winter 2007 she was a member of the GLL Search Committee for two new faculty in German. Her teaching is primarily concerned with twentieth-century German literature and intellectual history, as well as drama, prose and poetry since the Enlightenment. In 2006-07 she taught a graduate seminar on Women Writers in the GDR; in 2007-08 she will teach a graduate seminar on Colonialism, Postcolonialism and Socialism.

• Bernd Fischer, Professor and Chair

  ... is looking forward to the end of his third term as department chair and a subsequent research quarter in autumn 2008. He hopes to stay busy for a while revising material that, over the years, has accumulated in his draft drawer: papers on political philosophy of religion and culture around 1800, as well as a book manuscript on Saul Ascher. A few articles have already been completed--on Herder and Transculturality (Herder Yearbook) and on Kant and the Neocons (in a forthcoming book on Weltbürger). Additional articles, for instance on the shift from ethical humanism to cultural humanism (Kant and Herder), on reason and religion (Mendelssohn and Kant), and on Heine, should soon follow.

• Anna Grotans, Associate Professor

  ... published Reading in Medieval St. Gall with Cambridge University Press. She received an NEH fellowship for research in the Vatican Film Library on her new project "The Eastern Franks and their Languages." In April, she presented "Language and Ethnogenesis: A Case Study in the East/West Frankish Divide" at the annual meeting of the Medieval Academy of America.

• Kai Hammermeister, Associate Professor

  ... is currently working on two new monographs, the first on the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan for C.H. Beck; the second a study on aesthetics tentatively titled Die Zeit der Kunst und die Zeit danach. Eine Metaphysik der Ästhetik.

• Gregor Hens, Associate Professor

  ... published his latest novel, In diesem neuen Licht (S. Fischer Verlag), in the Fall of 2006. More recently, his translation of Marlon Brando's pirate novel Fan-Tan appeared in Germany under the title Madame Lai. Hens will be spending the Fall in Berlin to work on another novel and participate in a roundtable on contemporary literature organized by the Hans Werner Richter-Foundation. He will also be producing a monthly radio column for Deutsche Welle. He is looking forward to teaching his first-ever poetry course next year.

• Brenda Hosey, Fiscal HR Officer

  ... was awarded the OSU Distinguished Staff Award this year. Congratulations!

• Neil G. Jacobs, Professor

  Neil G. Jacobs is a faculty member in GLL's Yiddish and Ashkenazic Studies Program. He has published extensively in the area of Yiddish linguistics, including his 2005 book Yiddish: A linguistic Introduction (Cambridge University Press). More recently, Professor Jacobs has been conducting research in the area of Ashkenazic Jewish cabaret, as performed in several languages, and has also taught a course on this topic. In addition to courses on Yiddish language and linguistics, Prof. Jacobs has offered courses on Viennese German and on Papiamentu language and culture (taught in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese).

• Steven Joyce, Associate Professor (Mansfield Campus)

  ... is an Associate Professor at OSU-Mansfield and teaches courses in German language and comparative studies. He was the recipient of the OSU-M campus Outstanding Teaching award in 1996 and 2000, the OSU-M award for Excellence in Research as well as several Fulbright scholarships. Research interests include Thomas Bernhard, Judith Hermann, Susanna Piontek and Daniel Kehlmann. He published "Literary Value and Sublime Irrelevance in Judith Hermann's Summerhouse, Later: Stories" (The International Journal of the Humanities 3.7, 2006) and "Kismet and Continuities: Postmodernism and Thomas Bernhard's Der Theatermacher." (Twentieth Century Literature Criticism 165, 2005). Currently he is working on a book of essays entitled A Surplus of Seeing: Essays in Literary Criticism and is finishing a book of poems entitled Afternoons in the Scriptorium. His poem "The Pelion" was published in the Red River Review in November 2006. He is assistant soccer coach for the OSU-M club teams and Fulbright campus liason.

• Merrill Kaplan, Assistant Professor

  This year Prof. Kaplan presented conference papers about lesser-known runestones, an Icelandic chatboard, a ghost story, and an obscene stanza in the Old Norse poem Hárbarðsljóð. She was also elected to the Advisory Board of the Society for the Advancement of Scandinavian Study. Her first year teaching at OSU was very enjoyable. Especially rewarding was developing a Scandinavian topic for German 250: Vikings and the North in Popular Culture. She now knows more about Norwegian Black Metal music than she ever thought possible. Prof. Kaplan is hoping for the speedy approval of a newly proposed General Education course on the Icelandic Saga, and looks forward to teaching mythology again in the fall. She is currently scheming to include as much Faroese material in next year's folklore classes as she can without attracting suspicion.

• David Neal Miller, Associate Professor

• Natascha Miller, Graduate Secretary and Web Manager

  ... joined the Department in 2000. This year she served as chair of the College of Humanities Staff Advisory Committee.

• Kerstin Mueller, Visiting Assistant Professor

• Paul Reitter, Associate Professor

  ... presented work at the GSA and the MLA, and he published essays in the Times Literary Supplement on Freud's notion of transience and Otto Weininger's Sex and Character. He is currently working on two projects: a book about Jewish self-hatred and a translation of Solomon Maimon's Lebensgeschichte.

• Brikena Ribaj, Visiting Assistant Professor

• Andy Spencer, Senior Lecturer

  ... will be directing the Summer Study in Dresden Program for the tenth consecutive year, thereby becoming the longest continuously serving Resident Director at OSU. Keeping with the Dresden theme, he reviewed Paul Addison and Jeremy A. Crang's "Firestorm: The Bombing of Dresden, 1945" for H-Net. In April he presented the paper "European Émigré Directors: Fighting the Nazis with Genre" at the European Cinema Research Forum held at Ohio State.

• Alexander Stephan, Professor and Ohio Eminent Scholar

  ... is the Ohio Eminent Scholar of German and a Senior Fellow at the Mershon Center for International Security Studies. His research interests include transatlantic studies (European-American relations, American culture and anti-Americanism in Europe and the developing world), security studies, area studies (migration and exile, cultural politics, German cultural relations with Eastern Europe, Marxist aesthetics) and German literature in historical context.

• Carmen Taleghani-Nikazm, Associate Professor

  In fall 2006, Carmen Taleghani-Nikazm published a study in collaboration with Andrea Golato (University of Illinois) on Negotiation of face in web chats in Multilingua, Politeness Special Issue. She also published an article with Thorsten Huth (University of Southern Illinois) entitled How can insights from conversation analysis be directly applied to teaching L2 pragmatics? in Language Teaching Research.

  
  
  
  
  Kathy Corl,
  recipient of the ACTFL Anthony Papalia Award
  for Excellence in Teacher Education

Professors Emeriti

Ilsedore Edse
Werner Haas
Chuck Hoffmann
Donald C. Riechel
Heimy F. Taylor
Gisela Vitt
Harry Vredeveld

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New faculty

Bernhard Malkmus, Assistant Professor

This photograph was taken in Siena/Italy, in a tiny cobble-stoned thoroughfare halfway between the Piazza del Campo and the Cathedral. The green screen with "Wunderkammer" written across it is part of a Renaissance façade. None of the passers-by can resist the compulsion to peep inside, but there is nothing to see: we cannot pigeonhole the Renaissance in a cabinet of curiosities, the owner of this house seems to say, poking fun at our historical voyeurism.

And yet, working on literature and intellectual history, we know that cabinets of curiosities are all we have of the past, and we are supposed to make sense of them as curators, archivists and interpreters. My "Wunderkammer" is mostly equipped with exhibits of 19th and 20th-century literature. Particularly delightful, yet utterly unreliable tenants in my lodgings are the pícaro and the pícara, i.e. literary tricksters, confidence men and imposters, and I am interested in tracing back their journey through European and American literature from Günter Grass' Die Blechtrommel to the German Baroque and the Spanish Renaissance.

My own academic itinerary led me from Würzburg in Northern Bavaria (where Dirk Nowitzki was born) to Konstanz on the Swiss border (where Jan Hus was burnt). After a teaching stint at the Charles University in Prague and a research semester at Harvard, I did my PhD in German and Comparative Literature at Cambridge University, before working as a postdoctoral fellow at Goldsmiths College (University of London). If you are interested in my research you will be able to find a list of publications on the departmental webpage soon. I just finished editing a paper on Alexander Kluge, which will appear in New German Critique, and my next research project will take me to Africa: I want to explore narrative patterns of bourgeois self-advancement and their religious underpinnings in travelogues, letters and diaries from German colonies.

If I am not working in my "Wunderkammer", you will most likely find me riding a bike, climbing a mountain, playing music or hanging out with friends. I also enjoy traveling, and usually it is easier to find me in a place like the little thoroughfare rather than on plazas or in cathedrals--in places which tell their own stories beyond or against History.

May Mergenthaler, Assistant Professor

During my studies in German literature and philosophy at the University of Hamburg (B.A. 1995), Johns Hopkins University (M.A. 1998) and Princeton University (Ph.D. 2007), I became increasingly intrigued by the questions "What is 'literature'?" and "How can we read it?"

My dissertation entitled "Ein unendlicher Dialog: Das Projekt der Frühromantik in den 'Athenaeums-Fragmen-ten,'" which I am currently revising for publication, investigates a prominent answer to those questions. I argue that the project of "Romantic Poesy," initiated by Friedrich Schlegel, is an attempt to create a process of "complete" and "perfect communication" between individuals by means of written dialogue, which takes as its prime model Plato's Symposium. Moreover, I claim that Schlegel's written dialogue can only be adequately understood by participating in it as a reader. I test this hypothesis by reading, in a participatory manner, the conversation that can be reconstructed between the 451 aphorisms written by the brothers Schlegel, Novalis, and Schleiermacher and published in 1798 under the title "Fragmente." In this conversation of "Fragments" I include writings by Dorothea Veit, Caroline Schlegel and August Böhmer who, as I would argue, hold crucial positions in the Early Romantic project. My reading of the universal Romantic dialogue shows that the more nearly perfect this dialogue becomes, the more it must exclude that which does not fit it, especially women's writings, and the more it consequently disintegrates. Hence, the Early Romantic project of literature enables potent linguistic encounters, while at the same time calling into question the possibility of communication as such.

In my new research project, I am exploring the representation of divine authority as a guarantor of successful communication in 17th and 18th century poetry. I am especially interested in how the divine helps the poet and his readers to overcome their fears life and death, and what strategies for facing these fears in poetic language emerge when religious belief disappears.

I hope I can inspire enthusiasm for my research and other interests in the students and I look forward to discovering new areas and questions in the process of teaching. Courses that I would like to offer include The Legacy of Socrates in Literature and Philosophy, The Secularization of Aesthetics, Fear and Literature, The Cultural Imagination of War, German-Jewish Acculturation, Poetry and Mathematics, and an Introduction to Literary and Aesthetic Theory. I look very much forward to conducting research and teaching in dialogue with the faculty and students at OSU.

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New Books

Carmen Taleghani-Nikazm, Request sentences: The intersection of grammar, interaction, and social context. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2006.

This monograph provides a micro-analytic description of instances of requests in everyday German conversation. Using the framework of CA, the study systematically analyzes the grammatical and syntactical structure of the request-turn and its response and of the conversational exchanges before and within the request base sequence, and the placement of the request sequence within the larger social interaction. Through an empirical analysis of individual cases of request sequences in German, the monograph describes in detail: (a) how speakers employ grammar and syntax as resources to construct turns at talk and accomplish the social action of request; (b) how speakers use grammatical and syntactical forms of the language to coordinate the production of the social action of requests; (c) how speakers use grammar and syntax as interactional resources to manage affiliative and remedial work (i.e., face work) when performing delicate social actions such as requests; and (d) how the context of the request activity impacts the grammatical and syntactical constructions of speakers' utterances. Additionally, the monograph demonstrates that both the grammatical construction of turns and their placement within the talk are oriented to the sequential context of the interaction.

Anna Grotans, Reading in Medieval St. Gall. Cambridge Studies in Palaeo-graphy and Codicology 13. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2006.

Learning to read in medieval Germany meant learning to read and understand Latin as well as the pupils' own language. The teaching methods used in the medieval Abbey of St. Gall survive in the translations and commentaries of the monk, scholar and teacher Notker Labeo (ca. 950 1022). Notker's pedagogic method, although deeply rooted in classical and monastic traditions, demonstrates revolutionary innovations that include providing translations in the pupils' native German, supplying structural commentary in the form of simplified word order and punctuation, and furnishing special markers that helped readers to perform texts out loud. Anna Grotans examines this unique interplay between orality and literacy in Latin and Old High German, and illustrates her study with many examples from Notker's manuscripts. This study has much to contribute to our knowledge of medieval reading, and of the relationship between Latin and the vernacular in a variety of formal and informal contexts.

Kai Hammermeister, Kleine Systematik der Kunstfeindschaft. Zur Geschichte und Theorie der Ästhetik. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2007.

"Ein vorläufige Definition der Kunstfeindschaft lautet also folgendermaβen: Kunstfeindlich ist jeder Diskurs, der eine Begrenzung der Kunstpraxis dann ansinnt, wenn Werte, die der Kunst übergeordnet sind, von künstlerischen Werken und Darstellungen verletzt werden. Dass ein Verletzungsverbot umgekehrt die Irritation dieser nicht-ästhetischen Werte durch die Kunst aber durchaus in vielen Fällen zulässt, ist ebenso unbestreitbar. Gleichfalls darf nicht übersehen werden, dass von Kunstfeindschaft nur dort gesprochen werden kann, wo die Kunst zuerst als Wert anerkannt wird, der anschlieβend anderen Werten untergeordnet, bisweilen auch aufgeopfert wird. So ist der Begriff "Kunstfeindschaft" auch nicht unbedingt der beste, impliziert er doch scheinbar eine völlige Ablehnung der Kunst. Wer von Feindschaft spricht, kann nur wenig Wertschätzung für das angefeindete Objekt in sich haben, so meint man. Vielleicht aber hilft hier als ein Beispiel die Erinnerung an das durch die technische Kriegführung in Vergessenheit geratene Ethos des Kriegers, bei dem der Feind Wertschätzung erfahren musste, um den Kampf zu rechtfertigen und das eigene Selbstwertgefühl zu erhöhen. Wer gegen einen unwerten Gegner kämpft, erringt keinen nennenswerten Sieg."

Gregor Hens, In diesem neuen Licht. Frankfurt: S. Fischer, 2006.

In diesem neuen Licht ist ein Buch über Männer und Frauen, über unausgesprochene Freundschaft und versehentlichen Verrat, verletzte Liebe und unverbrüchliche Treue, über Prinzessinnen und Pistolen, Sun-Tzu-Schach und D. H. Lawrence, Priester und Pathologen, Südseemythen und Inzest. Mit Schauplätzen vom Rhein bis zum Rio Grande, von Ananasplantagen in Ghana bis in ein Naturreservat in Panama, von 1923 bis ins neue Jahrtausend. Gregor Hens erzählt von einem Netz aus Freundschaft und Liebe, den entgegengesetzten Enden des gleichen Gefühls. (Adapted from the publisher's note.)

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Lectures and Events

From April 27-29, 2007, OSU's Film Studies Program under the direction of GLL's John Davidson, hosted an international conference of the European Cinema Research Forum. The ECRF is the most active academic group fostering the broad study in English of European film. Its members consist primarily of scholars from across Europe, but membership is growing in the US. The theme of "Film Aesthetics and European Cinema" brought participants from around the globe to present on topics ranging from the modernist avant garde to the role of the national in a transnational age. Internationally renowned scholars Tom Gunning (Chicago) and Janet Bergstrom (UCLA) presented keynote speeches that framed the conference's concerns at the beginning and end of the twentieth century. A rare copy of a British version of Emil and the Detectives was screened, which contained footage that came as quite a surprise to those only familiar with the German versions. An anthology and a special issue of Studies in European Cinema will emerge from the scholarly work presented during three days at the Wexner Center, the Blackwell, and in Hagerty Hall. While the conference organization was interdisciplinary in nature, it did feature a marvelous panel on the question of national cinema, using Germany as an example, which included fine papers by GLL alumnae Andy Spencer (OSU) and Jennifer William (Purdue). With the help of such quality papers, and the strong financial support of GLL and other units across campus, the 2007 ECRF conference has set a standard in both scholarship and accommodation that have raised the bar for all sessions to come. (J. Davidson)

Wilhelm Voβkamp, the year's Max Kade Professor, visited in April and May. He taught a graduate course on Goethe's Faust and delivered a lecture entitled "Das Neue als Verheiβung: Über Voraussetzungen des Wandels in der deutschen Literaturwissenschaft." Voβkamp is a Professor of German Literature at the University of Cologne and a member of the Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften. A leading expert on poetics, 17th to 20th-century German literature, literary theory and the history of German Studies, he was a founding member of the Forschungskolleg "Medien und kulturelle Kommunikation", which has been funded continuously since 1999. (gh)

On April 16, 2007, Winfried Menninghaus presented his lecture on "Functional Narratives of Art: Negotiating Transcendental and Evolutionary Aesthestics." Menninghaus offered his audience an update of the work he began with his book Das Versprechen der Schönheit (2003), comparing the narratives offered by Kant and Darwin that seek to answer questions on beauty and its purpose. The foundation for his lecture lay in a comparison between the aesthetic theory in Kant's Critique of Judgment and Darwin's tenets of aesthetics that govern sexual choice in Descent of Man. Dr. Menninghaus plans to extend and test his theories in an interdisciplinary collaboration of evolutionary psychologists, philosophers and literary critics. His other published works include Ekel: Theorie und Geschichte einer starken Empfindung (2002) and Lob des Unsinns: Über Kant, Tieck und Blaubart (1995). Menninghaus' research has helped evolve Germanistik in Berlin into an ever expanding study of literature across disciplines, and it is in this dialectic nature of his work that he has distinguished himself within his field, making him a 'natural selection' for this year's Lübeck Lecture. (K. Richards)

Gail Hart (University of California, Irvine) presented "Queenfight: Confession, Confrontation, and Coercion in Schiller's Maria Stuart" on Friday, May 18, 2007, at the Faculty Club. Gerhild Scholz Williams (Washington University) presented "The Global and the Local: Wonders in the News" on February 9, 2007. Sheila Dickson (University of Strathclyde, Scotland) spoke on "Achim von Arnim: A German Poet in Scotland" on November 16, 2006. Brikena Ribaj discussed "A Wife Errant: Human Desire and the Desire to Be Human in Dietrich von der Glezze's Der Borte" on November 13, 2006. Neil G. Jacobs gave his inaugural lecture on "Jews, Ethnicity, and Language" on November 6, 2006. With participation from Nina Berman, a roundtable on the Nobel Prize winner Orhan Pamuk was held on October 31, 2006. On October 13, 2006, Kai Hammermeister presented "Shiny Boots of Leather: Perversion in Warhol's Factory." (gh)

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Graduate students in the department

Sai Bhatawadekar, Anna Beckhoff, Alex Brewer, C.J. Brown, Erin Cary, Addie Cheney, Kris Fromm, Doug Gill, Svetlana Gordon, Andreas Grieger, Kevin Herzner, Kristen Hetrick, Ola Iwanik, Michael Kovnat, Saskia Kraemer, Annett Krause, Jaclyn Kurash, Weijia Li, Linda Long-Van Brocklyn, Sara Luly, Colleen McCallum-Bonar, Katie Mader, Jennifer Magro Algarotti, Neha Malshe, Andrea Payk-Heitmann, Kevin Richards, Daniela Roschinski, Nicholas Spitulski, Thomas Stefaniuk, Ulrike Stoll, Wray Stretch, Charlie Vannette, Jesse Wood.

New graduate students joining us in autumn 2007: Cornelia Bock, Ingrid Fraser, Trent Hudson, Berit Jany, Dorothea Kirschbaum, Vincent Reis, Karolina Suchowolec, Amber Suggitt, Kristen White.

Congratulations to our new MAs

Ola Iwanik, M.A.
Katie Mader, M.A.
Neha Malshe, M.A.
Tom Stefaniuk, M.A.
Ulrike Stoll, M.A.

Congratulations to our new PhD candidates

Svetlana Gordon, ABD
Annett Krause, ABD
Weijia Li, ABD

Congratulations to our new PhDs

Sai Bhatawadekar, PhD. "Symptoms of Withdrawal: The Threefold Structure of Hegel's and Schopenhauer's Interpretation of Hindu Religion and Philosophy." (Advisors: Nina Berman, Thomas Kasulis)

Andrea Payk-Heitmann, PhD. "Fortschreiben, Vermeiden, Erneuern: Der Amerikadiskurs deutscher Schriftsteller nach dem 11. September 2001." (Advisor: Bernd Fischer)

More Graduate Student News ...

Douglas Gill presented the paper "From Heimatroman to Minor Literature: Multiple Identities in Jens Sparschuh's 'Zimmerspringbrunnen'" during a graduate student panel at the Kentucky Foreign Language Conference at the University of Kentucky on April 19, 2007. He also published an editorial May 7, 2007 in the OSU daily, "The Lantern," entitled "Movie Violence not Funny," a response to the violent humor in the movie "Hot Fuzz" which opened the week of the Virginia Tech shootings.

Saskia Kraemer is an international student from the University of Bonn, Germany. She has been at the Ohio State University for 3 years now and finished her Master's Degree in the spring of last year. After that she entered the Ph.D. program and is now working towards her Candidacy Exam. Her area of research is the period of German Romanticism and she is particularly interested in the author E.T.A. Hoffmann.

It has been a busy year for Weijia Li. Among other activities, he advanced to Ph.D. Candidacy in the spring quarter. Li is anticipating a fruitful summer, as he will be doing dissertation research in Germany. For this research, he received an International Dissertation Research Travel Grant from the Office of International Affairs. Li was also awarded this year's Graduate Service Award.

Linda Long-Van Brocklyn presented her paper "[Jewish] Girls on Film: Representing Modern Women in Yiddish Films in the 1920s and '30s" at the the Midwestern Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association Conference.

Sara Luly presented the paper "The Horror of Gregor Samsa" at the Kentucky Foreign Language Conference in April of 2007.

Katie Mader has really enjoyed all of the teaching opportunities she has had in the Department this year, both with beginning language courses and in an apprenticeship with Gregor Hens. The other major highlight for her was the successful completion of her Master's exam. Whoohoo! Although she has decided to take a break from German studies to pursue an MFA in Creative Writing at Hamline University next fall, she is still highly interested in continuing her studies at OSU in the future and hopes to be able to teach German in some capacity during the interim.

Colleen McCallum-Bonar, PhD candidate in the Yiddish and Ashkenazic Studies Program, presented a paper at the 2007 Hawaii International Conference in Arts and Humanities in January: "On The Power Play: Foreign Languages at OSU and The Columbus Blue Jackets" (co-authored with Karen Sobul), which explored the possibility of utilizing a unique community resource in a new way. The presentation addressed the way in which students engaged in Czech language and culture studies could expand their developing skills in their interaction with Columbus Blue Jackets professional hockey player and native Czech speaker, Rostislav Klesla.

Kevin Richards: The past year had some definite highlights for me, the interdisciplinary seminar was one of them, the Saga Club, Religions reading group, and discovering Elias were others. For the coming academic year, I would like to devote more time to a comparative analysis on the reception of the Nibelungenlied and the Volsungssaga, theoretically using speculative research on metaphors and cognition to track shifts in cultural marking. I also plan to explore a Folklore minor through comparative studies and complete my German PhD requirements. Last year was a promising year, and the next horizon looks to be just as challenging and rewarding.

Ulrike Stoll: This past year was mostly spent on my preparation for the MA exam, which meant I read as much as I could with just enough time to comprehend what I just read and to still remember it as well! However, as little social life as I had and as stressful as this time has been, I think it has furthered my intellectual development. I also really enjoyed the classes, the reading hours and the teaching apprenticeship. Next year, I plan to take advantage of my OPT and teach German as a foreign language before I continue with the PhD program.

Charlie Vannette is a PhD candidate who spent the last year as an exchange student at the Freie Universität in Berlin. He has sent us a "Letter from Abroad".

Jesse Wood has spent the last year getting settled into the doctoral program at OSU. He enjoys reading German literature from various periods and authors, but his primary area of interest lies in the first half of the twentieth century, particularly in the works of Bertolt Brecht and Gottfried Benn. He hopes to be able to read a lot over the summer in order to begin developing a dissertation topic.

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Letter from Berlin

Well, I guess it's appropriate that I am sitting here in an internet cafe, late at night, typing this letter the day before it is due. This is how the year has gone. Each day filled with exciting adventures, leaving little time for anything else. It didn't start out this way however. When I arrived in Charlottenburg my reaction was lukewarm at best. "Why do people rave about this city?" I couldn't see the appeal of rich retired Germans out walking their poodles after having downed a 3 Euro coffee at the spectacularly overpriced cafe next to my dorm. I needed a change of scene and landed in Friedrichshain. A friend once said, "Wer Friedrichshain nicht kennt, kennt nicht Berlin." He was right. In Friedrichshain geht's ab. From the moment of my arrival in the east, I've not once been wanting for entertainment. The theater, in particular, has become an addiction and will be terribly missed when I return to Columbus. When not in the theater, I've found myself dodging bottles thrown by angry mobs, sitting in on Terry Gilliam film festivals and frequenting the bars all throughout the eastern side of the city. But none of this can compare to the people in the city. The Berliner's tendency towards duzen is refreshing. His sarcastic wit endearing. And his heritage a hodgepodge of every imaginable land, so that Jean Paul in the Warschauerstraβe is as much a Berliner as Thorston up in Wedding. What a wonderful mix of cultures this city is! But despite being out at all hours of the night, I've also managed to get my work done. Taking advantage of the course offerings in these huge German departments has been as much of an adventure as any night out in Neu Kölln. Needless to say, the only thing I've not managed to do much here in Berlin is sleep. There simply isn't time. I'm planning a two week hibernation when I return to Columbus, but that is still two months away. Until then, I've got a cup of coffee in my hand and a train to catch. It's the U5 to Alex ... gotta run!

Gruβ aus Berlin,
Charlie (Vannette)

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Goings-on at the German House

By Sierra Reyes

In May, about 18 Ohio State students were given the chance to practice their foreign language skills with native German speakers. OSU tennis stars and fluent German speakers Chris Klingemann and Steven Moneke met with students taking intermediate German courses on a Wednesday at the Max Kade German House to discuss German culture, language and personal interests.

Klingemann, a senior in communication, and Moneke, a sophomore in international business, volunteered to appear as part of a series hosted by the foreign language center GOAL: go local, go global. The purpose of GOAL is to allow students to use and develop the language skills they have learned in upper-level classes by speaking with local celebrities who are native speakers of that particular language. The highlighted language for a program is based upon what native speakers they can find to attend.

Moneke came from Germany to the U.S. in January 2006. "I want people to be able to learn about German culture because I can tell them what life is really like there," he said.

To keep the conversations going, students and the speakers prepared questions and topics to chat about prior to the event. Students gathered around a dinner table or lounged on sofas and discussed everything from favorite foods to the cultural differences in Germany. "It was very interesting to meet these people and hear what their native countries think of our culture," said Katherine Frake, a senior in international studies and also a student taking German 550. Tom Eckardt, a junior majoring in welding engineering and German said he believes the event was most helpful when it came to practicing the language. "To be able to hear someone speak with a German accent was much better for practice than to hear an American speaker try to talk in a German accent," Eckardt said.

(Adapted from The Lantern, May 11, 2007.)

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German Day at OSU

This year, the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures invited German high school teachers and their students to participate in the Department's German Day. On May 18th, 65 students from four area high schools arrived at Hagerty Hall to participate in a variety of creative activities that focused on German language and culture. The program began with German-language tours of Campus, guided by faculty and GTA volunteers, followed by sessions with competitive and non-competitive activities for every interest: a poster competition, lip-synching to German pop music, a variety of German-language card and board games, and a chance to try out OSU's MultiCAT multimedia placement test. The event ended with lunch in the Hagerty Hall Courtyard, where participants socialized with German majors and minors from our program and took part in a Tombola and awards ceremony. We are very pleased that the German Day was a big success and that students had a memorable experience at GLL. (C. Taleghani-Nikazm)

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Undergraduate News

Betsy Hickey performed her senior viola recital at Hughes Auditorium on May 4, with a program of Bach, Bruch, Brahms, and Hindemith. Anna Messinger, a student in Merrill Kaplan's Scandinavian 222: Nordic Mythology (Fall 2006), received CMRS's 2006-07 Kahrl Award for the best undergraduate paper on a medieval subject. Matthew Bauman received a Fulbright grant and a Wolfe Scholarship and will be an English Teaching Assistant in Germany in 2007-08. Joseph Andrew Woodmansee graduated with Distinction in November 2006. His thesis, directed by Kai Hammermeister, is entitled "A Study in Seduction: An analysis of what the concept means and a discussion of it in the context of Enlightenment thought as seen in Mozart's opera, Don Giovanni." Andy received a Fulbright fellowship to spend next year in Spain. Elodie B. Dupuy graduated with Distinction in November 2006. Her thesis, directed by Neil Jacobs, is entitled "American Foreign Policy and Representation of Germans and French in Animated Feature Films since World War II: The Little Mermaid's Pact with the Devil." Adam Malone is a participant in the Transatlantic Program 2007.

Another 2007 Wolfe Scholarship winner is Andrew Rigney, an alumnus of the Summer Program in Dresden. Gretchen Brandt, who graduated in the spring of 2007, was accepted into the Bush School Masters Program at Texas A&M. Ashley Bender and Wendy Dray received Fulbrights; Wendy will be teaching in Limbach-Oberfrohna, near Chemnitz. Ashley is going to Klosterneuburg near Vienna. Nikolai Bogomolov was awarded the departmental Dieter Cunz Award, a Neckermann Scholarship, the Robert and Mary Reusché Scholarship, and various other grants in support of his studies. Reusché scholarships were also awarded to Stacy Hoenig, Sarah Sherren, Rebecca Langenderfer, and Matthew Jepsen. Genevieve Baer was awarded the Donald and Sydney Brandt Memorial Scholarship. Alyson Sewell is the recipient of the Ilsedore Edse Scholarship for travel to Germany, given out by the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures. (nm)

On May 4, two undergraduate majors, Nikolai Bogomolov and Paul Krause took the Goethe Institute's Zentrale Mittelstufenprüfung (ZMP), and on June 2, undergraduate students of Business German David Blanton, Mark Esser, Anais Flores, Brian Hanna and Christopher Shulby took the Zertifikat Deutsch für den Beruf (ZDfB). We wish to thank OSU's Center for International Business Education and Research (CIBER) for providing stipends to help defray the costs of the ZDfB, and those donors to the Department's Friends of German Fund whose contributions provided support for undergraduate majors who participated in the ZMP. The students' voluntary participation and high rate of success in the Goethe Institute's certification testing programs provides us with external validation of the effectiveness of our program.

Congratulations!

Britton Crum, B.A.
Elodie B. Dupuy, B.A.
Rachel Fouts, B.A.
Daniel Malone, B.A.
Andrew Niehus, B.A.
Jamie Lee Stacey, B.A.
Craig Dunbar, B.A.
Rebecca Langenderfer, B.A.
Samantha Mowrer, B.A.
William H. Noble IV, B.A.
Austen Rau, B.A.
Marisa Sarringhaus, B.A.
Nicholas Schuck, B.A.
Joseph Andrew Woodmansee, B.A.

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The Ninth Duino Elegy
Rainer Maria Rilke

WHY, if we may face the term of our existence like laurel, just darker than all else green,
the edges of each leaf softly flitting
(like the wind smiles) -: why then,
this need to be human? And, trying to avoid fate,
then even long for fate?
          Oh, not because happiness is,
this too hasty gain of an approaching loss.
Not curiosity nor strengthening the heart
which too would be laurelled ...

But because to be here matters so and because it seems that all here need us; this, which, waning,
strangely concerns us who are nearest to disappearance. Once
each, only once. Once and no more. And we also
once. Not again. But
to have been this once, even if just once,
to have been earthly cannot be revocable.
And so we press upon each other and want to achieve it,
want to comprehend it in our simple hands,
in our overcrowded sight and in our mute hearts.
Want to become it. - Whom to give it? Best
to keep hold of it for ever ... Ah, and concerning this,
woe! What can a man take with him? Not the beholding, learned slowly here, and nothing occurring here.
Nothing.
Thus pain. Thus above all gravity,
thus love's long experience, - thus
unspeakable any louder. But later,
under the stars, what it should: they are better unspoken.
So the wanderer does bring from the sloping mountain's margin
not a handful of earth, unspeakable to all, but
a word purchased, uncorrupted, the yellow and blue
Gentian. Could we be here, so to speak: house,
bridge, brook, gate, jar, fruit tree, window, -
highest: pillar, tower ... but to speak, you must understand -
or to say like this, like the things themselves never
dearly mean to be. Isn't it the stealthy guile
of this silenced earth, if it pressures those who love,
that captivates each and every one in its own feeling?
Threshold: what is it for two
who love, that they exhaust a little of their own elders' threshold; they too, after the many that were,
and before what will come ... softly.

Here is the time of the speakable; here its home.
Speak and confess. More than ever
things fall away, things we can experience;
what is displaced and replaced is invisibly done.
What is done and scabbed over and willingly bursts forth
as soon as the action, outgrown, defines itself anew.
Our heart exists between
the hammers, as the tongue
between the teeth - which,
however, keeps with the hymn-singers.

Glorify the world to the angel, not the unspeakable. For him
grand displays have no meaning; in heaven,
where he senses more keenly, you are a newcomer. So show
him what is simple, what is molded through the generations,
how one of us lives, beside the hand and in an instant.
Tell him the things. He will stand astounded, as you
before the ropemaker in Rome or the potter on the Nile. Show him how happy a thing can be, how innocent and all our own -
like wailing grief resolves itself starkly to its form,
serves as an object or in one dies - and on the other side
escapes the violin in bliss. And these, the things living
after death, understand that you praise them; fleetingly
they dare us, most fleeting of all, when redeeming.
Want that we should completely transform them in an invisible heart,
in - o eternal, in us! whoever we be in the end.

Earth, is it not this that you will: to arise
in us invisibly? Is it not your dream,
to be invisible once? Earth! Invisible!
What mission urges you on if not transformation?
Earth, beloved, I wish it. Believe me, your Spring
is no longer needed to win me to you - one,
ah, one alone already overpowers the blood.
From now on I am resolved to you anonymously.
Your truth has ever been, and your sacred beginning
is the familiar death.

Behold - I live. Out of what? Nor childhood nor future
will diminish ... Overflowing existence wells up in my heart.

Leo Eisenlohr, who is majoring in Arabic and Chinese, prepared this translation as a final project in Prof. Hens' course "The Practice of Translation" (Winter 2007).

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Alumna Profile: Jennifer Marston William

Jennifer Marston William received her Ph.D. from Ohio State with her dissertation, "Zeiträume: Time, Space, and Metaphor in German-Language Novels of the Twentieth Century" (2002, advisor Helen Fehervary). Jennifer has an M.A. in German Literature from the University of Georgia (1996) and a B.A. in German from Berry College (1992). She spent two years studying in Germany at the Universität Rostock (1994-95) and at the Freie Universität in Berlin (1998-99).

Jennifer's research, which focuses primarily on twentieth and twenty-first century literature and film, has been featured in journals such as German Studies Review, The Germanic Review, and the Journal of the Kafka Society of America. She has also written several entries for The Literary Encyclopedia and Jewish Women: A Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia.

As a faculty member in the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures at Purdue University since 2002, Jennifer has enjoyed teaching undergraduate courses on German language, culture, literature and film, as well as graduate seminars in the areas of post-1945 literature, Expressionism and drama since Naturalism. She is also affiliated with Purdue's interdisciplinary programs in Women's Studies and Jewish Studies. For the last few years she has served as the Graduate Adviser of the growing MA and PhD programs in German, and has been the faculty adviser to several organizations, including the German Culture Club, the German honor society Delta Phi Alpha and the Friends of Europe Club. Jennifer was promoted to Associate Professor with tenure in Spring 2007 and will be chairing Purdue's German program starting in the Fall.

Jennifer's recreational activities include racquetball, tennis, and playing chase with her three-year-old son, Aidan. Her husband, Colin, is an Associate Professor and chair of the psychology program at Ivy Tech Community College in Lafayette. The family, rounded out by two beagles and a cat, enjoys living near Purdue's campus in West Lafayette, with its proximity to Indianapolis and Chicago.

More alumni news

Kristina (Camp) Musil, M.A. 1999
Kristina Lynn Camp and Georg Alfred Musil exchanged wedding vows in the traditional German fashion in two separate ceremonies in October. The first ceremony was the legal wedding held on October 20 in the town of Fuerstenfeldbruck, near Munich. Matron of Honor at the legal wedding ceremony was Dr. Kathleen Hallihan of Columbus, friend of the bride. The couple resides in Munich, Germany.

David Connolly, Ph.D. 2005
In December, 2006, David Connolly was promoted to Scientific Information Analysis Manager, Department of Synthetic and Polymer Chemistry, Chemical Abstracts Service in Columbus. He remains active in his 2005 dissertation subject area, 16th century German mining and metallurgy, but between his career and hobbies of fishing and kayaking, progress is slow.

Fredrick Hadding, B.A. 2006
I am currently working on my Masters' Degree through Bowling Green State University. It is a two year program and the first and current year has been spent attending classes at the Paris-Lodron Universität in Salzburg. I have begun research for my Master's Thesis on Weimar period film.

Merlyn Enarson Prentice, M.A. 1968
Mrs. Prentice has taught German, French, Spanish, and ESL in high schools and adult education programs. She currently resides in Arlington; however, she is preparing to move to France for one year.

Kristy Boney (PhD 2006) at the Kentucky Foreign Language Conference in Lexington, where she is an Assistant Professor and serves as the Director of Beginning German. Kristy generously provided crash space for two graduate students who presented papers at the conference: Doug Gill and Sara Luly.

Dear friends/alumni/alumnae: Keep in touch! Please send us your news for the next issue of the newsletter. Visit our homepage, where you will find a submission form. As always, we look forward to hearing from you.

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in memoriam Paul Gottwald

Professor Emeritus Paul Gottwald, age 88, died on March 12, 2007. Professor Gottwald held a BA degree from Hope College and an MA and PhD degree from The Ohio State University. He taught for five years at the University of Connecticut before joining the faculty of The Ohio State University in 1955. Paul Gottwald was a professor of German for 34 years. After his retirement in 1984, he continued teaching on a part-time basis for another five years. His teaching and scholarship interest focused on beginning, intermediate, and advanced Language Instruction and Assessment. Professor Gottwald was a dedicated, highly successful and very popular teacher.

Professor Gottwald co-edited various textbooks and developed supplemental materials for existing textbooks. He is also known for a number of book translations into English and German. In 1965, he published an Instructor's Supplement (with tape recordings) to German for Beginners, and in 1971 he edited Hans Fallada, Damals bei uns daheim. In 1970, he published two translations with Ungar: Max Lüthi's Once Upon a Time ... On the Nature of Fairy Tales, and Wolfgang Seiferth's Synagoge and Church in the Middle Ages. Other translations include Hans Bänzinger, Heimat und Fremde (1960) and Hubert Jannach, German for Reading Knowledge (1963).

Paul Gottwald was an active member of the University community and served on numerous committees. He was also engaged in the profession at large as a member of the Modern Language Association and the Association of Teachers of German. At the departmental level, he was in charge of Placement and Proficiency Testing both at the undergraduate and graduate levels for many years.

The members of the Department express their heartfelt sympathy to Professor Gottwald's family and friends. (bf)

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Graduates of the Department, what have you been doing?

Please use our on-line alumni news form: http://germanic.osu.edu/people/alumni/alumninews.cfm if you would like to see your update in next year's GLL Newsletter!

Name:

Degree(s) & Year(s):

Current Title:

2008~09 News:

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of Germanic Languages and Literatures

If you would like to become a friend of the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures and contribute, please make your check payable to the "The Ohio State University," indicate the desired fund (see below), and mail it to the Chair, Dept. of Germanic Languages and Literatures, 498 Hagerty Hall, 1775 College Rd., Columbus, OH 43210-1340. If you prefer to donate through a secure, online connection, you can find the name of each fund on our homepage [http://germanic.osu.edu].
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