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Department Newsletter
Autumn 1999

Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures
The Ohio State University

Editor: Professor Kai Hammermeister

Letter from the Chair

Looking back at the academic year 1998-99 and asking myself what may ultimately be the most important news, it is, in today's world of German Studies, probably the fact that our enrollments continue to grow, as they have in the last three years, by ever increasing margins. Since we have a number of new and exciting courses in store that we will introduce in the coming years, the future of our undergraduate program seems bright indeed.

After completing a review of the German program two years ago, we conducted a review of our Yiddish and Ashkenazic Studies program in 1999. I am happy to report that this review was also very positive, and the three-year merger period of the Department and the Yiddish program has come to a successful completion. Special thanks go to the fellow members of the departmental review committee as well as to the members of the external review team, Professors Daniel Walden, Robert D. King, and Luis A. Jacobs, for the dedication and wisdom they brought to this important task. The presence of Yiddish and Ashkenazic Studies has certainly enriched the Department's offerings and intellectual scope. There is ample reason to hope that, in the coming years, this successful beginning will translate into a further strengthening of all aspects of the Department's programs.

The Department said good-bye to Linda Rugg who joined the Scandinavian Studies Department at the University of California, Berkeley. I would like to thank Linda for all the wonderful things she achieved while a member of our faculty and wish her all the best in her future endeavors. Together with nine promising new graduate students, we welcome three visiting assistant professors: Andy Spencer, who is with us for his third year; Mine Eren, who has just defended her dissertation at Brown University; and Valentina Glajar, who defended her dissertation at the University of Texas, Austin also in summer 1999. In addition, the Department is currently conducting a search to fill a tenure-track Assistant Professor position, as well as the position of Ohio Eminent Scholar in German Studies, a senior endowed appointment. Please check the MLA Job Information List or our web site for details.

The Department's most successful colleagues in 1999 were, without any doubt, Anna Grotans and John Davidson. Both were promoted to Associate Professor with tenure. My heartfelt congratulations!

Bernd Fischer

Feature

The Dresden Summer Program

For each of the past five years groups of Ohio State students have been spending eight weeks during the summer living and studying in Dresden, the sister city of Columbus. 1999 saw the largest such group to date of 19 undergraduate and two graduate students successfully complete a program which combines academic rigor with the opportunity to experience German life and visit not only "Florenz an der Elbe" but also Berlin, Weimar, Meissen, and a host of other sites of interest in the vicinity of the capital of Sachsen.

Administered by Ohio State's Office of International Education (OIE), the Dresden Summer Program is staffed by one faculty member from GLL, two teaching assistants from the department, and two from the Technische Universitt Dresden (TU). For the past two years I have been that faculty member, serving as Resident Director (RD), and am pleased to take this opportunity to update readers on the present state of the Program. Much has been achieved in the five years since the Program's inception but there is, I believe, no better indicator for its success than our close to 100% record in returning students, who it should be remembered are at the beginning stages of their studies of German, firmly resolved to continue their studies of German language and culture beyond the level of fulfilling a language requirement, and in many cases to the level of a minor and indeed a major in German.

In Dresden we offer two levels of instruction: All students are enrolled in German 275 (The Development of Contemporary Germany: Dresden Yesterday and Today), a cultural history/current affairs class with special emphasis on Dresden, taught in english by the RD. The group then splits into two: The two OSU TA's teach the intensive 115 class - a 10 credit hour combination of 103 and 104, while our colleagues from the TU instruct our more advanced students in German in 201 (Intermediate Language) and 230 (Introduction to Literature). All students who successfully complete the program thus return home with 15 hours of OSU credit. But they also return with much more...

Living in dorms our students come into immediate contact with students from the TU and, thanks to the efforts of the staff of the Auslandsamt, we have also been provided for the past two years with a list of potential conversation partners from among the student body who have volunteered their services. This year, an American-style cook-out on the banks of the Elbe to which we invited the conversation partners resulted in a number of lasting friendships.

Dresden, of course, offers a myriad of opportunities for the students, from its world famous art collections to open air cinema on the river, from flea markets to opera, from the nightlife of the distinctly alternative Neustadt area to the baroque splendor of the Zwinger and Pillnitz Palace. In addition to these options there are also the weekly excursions which form an integral part of the 275 course and which, quite literally, take the classroom out into the world. This year we started our investigations into the history of the area with a visit to the nearby city of Meissen, its twelfth century cathedral and fifteenth century Albrechtsburg. The following week we took in the medieval city of Pirna and continued on by boat downriver to Europe's largest fortification, Knigstein. Our third trip saw us spend two days in 1999's European Cultural Capital, Weimar, also celebrating the 250th anniversary of the birth of its most famous son, Goethe. As a group we explored the city on foot and visited Buchenwald concentration camp. Students also had the opportunity to visit other sites, such as Goethe's house, the Bauhaus museum, and the city castle, in smaller groups.

This out of town adventure was followed by one closer to home as we visited the garden city of Hellerau, now a suburb of Dresden, but originally planned at the turn of the century as an escape from urban life. An escape of a different sort can be found at the moated hunting castle of Moritzburg, a retreat favored by August the Strong and our fifth destination, which we travelled to by steam train.

A highlight of each year's program are the four days which we spend in Berlin being shown the city by one-time OSU exchange student from Berlin's Free University and Berlin expert, Stephan Goetz. With the government having just moved to the city and new buildings going up everywhere one looks, now is a particularly exciting time to be there and it was an exhausted group of students (and instructors) which returned to Dresden late Sunday evening.

Tobias Bulang, another former OSU exchange student now writing his dissertation in the TU's German department, took the helm for our final excursion to his home town of Bautzen, center of Sorbian life in the Lausitz area of Sachsen. As befits a last outing we finished the day in style at a traditional Sorbian restaurant where we were treated to a feast of Sorbian culture including dancing and, for the more adventurous, the chance to try on traditional Sorbian dress.

The program is healthier than ever thanks to the efforts of a number of individuals and organizations: The Max Kade Foundation deserves special thanks for its provision of generous financial assistance to students over the years. Additionally, we would not be in the position in which we now find ourselves had it not been for the help which we have received from our colleagues from the Auslandsamt at the TU and the two German TA's who have taught in our program for the past two years, Anne Deckert and Grit Jkel. Previous RD's Candy Bonse, Gregor Hens, and Linda Rugg laid the groundwork on which I have been able to build, ably assisted as I was by OSU TA's Yogini Joglekar, Tim Snider, Josie Taylor, and Jennifer William. It is these folks and the TA's who served before my tenure who have ensured that the OSU Summer Program has become a fixture in the TU landscape. It is with great confidence that we can look forward to summer 2000 and the biggest program yet.

Andy Spencer

Two with New Tenure

Anna Grotans A few days ago I found in my departmental mailbox a crisp white envelope from the college office for the first time addressed to "Associate Professor Anna Grotans." It finally sank in that I did it! I have reached a stage in my professional career toward which I had worked so hard, so long. Technically and officially I was now "joined to" (adsociare) the university faculty and the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures and no longer simply one who "stands near" (adsistere) them. Actually, I felt like anything but a by-stander during my probationary period as Assistant Professor. It was an engaging and exciting, educational and on the whole encouraging time.

I began my scholarly career as an historical linguist and studied at the Universities of Toronto (M.A. 1986) and Minnesota (Ph.D. 1992) with a few informative "Lehrjahre" in between at the Universities of Bonn and Vienna. My dissertation, "Syntax in the St. Gall Classroom: Notker Labeo and the ordo naturalis," investigated the influence of medieval parsing techniques on the Latin and Old High German word order in the works of Notker Labeo. While working on this project, I spent much time investigating unpublished manuscript material in archives in Europe and the United States and discovered a wealth of yet unpublished texts and glosses that elucidate how medieval monks like Notker and his contemporaries viewed language structure and prepared texts for classroom use. In 1995 I published an edition and translation of one of these text, the St. Gall Tractate, together with David Porter.

Deciphering the St. Gall Tractate led me more deeply into the study of medieval literacy, its implications and acquisition. Well into the 12th century, textual culture in Europe was primarily centered in religious institutions and directly related to activity in monastic and cathedral schools. The language of the written word was Latin, a foreign tongue that had to be learned. In the western and southern Frankish Kingdoms, the linguistic obstacle was perhaps not so forbidding, given the similarities between the emerging Romance languages and the lingua latina. In the German-speaking east, the situation was quite different. Here most pupils were confronted in school with a completely foreign idiom. For them, learning to read meant at the same time learning a foreign language. How did they do it? This is one of the questions I attempt to answer in my first book project, Reading in Medieval St. Gall, which I completed during the 1998/99 academic as a Fulbright Junior Researcher in Munich. My book investigates classroom reading, or lectio, as it was practiced in the Abbey School of St. Gall at the turn of the first millennium. Basically, I demonstrate how primary access to texts was facilitated by making them grammatically more straightforward, visually more legible and aurally more comprehensible.

Now I am working on a new book project, with a provisional title Inscribing the Margins. In it, I want to document and analyze early medieval attitudes toward writing and the written preservation of knowledge. My "Fundgrube" this time will the marginal Latin and vernacular glosses, notations, criticism and corrections of early medieval authors, scribes, and textual critics - the text that frames and permeates the main text and has too often been overlooked in the past.

It is no coincidence that much of my research deals with medieval education and the culture that surrounds it. Teaching is the reason that I decided to become a professor nearly twenty years ago. I always knew that successful research and teaching must go hand-in-hand, and my experience in the classroom has confirmed my belief that there is no better reason to learn than for teaching and no better way to learn than by teaching. Over the past six years at OSU I have taught at the undergraduate and graduate levels and learned a lot: intermediate and advanced German language, medieval and early modern German literature and culture, Carolingian history and culture, Structure of Modern German, Middle High German and the History of the German language. This coming spring I will be leading an interdisciplinary seminar in early medieval paleography, a subject particularly dear to my heart.

Finally, the third aspect of being a professor (be it assistant, associate or full): service. I have done my share of it, both in the department and in the college. For me the most gratifying assignment so far was to serve as undergraduate German major advisor, a position I held for three years. What I particularly enjoyed about it was the chance to get to know our students better, to listen to them, to help them find opportunities and develop interests, and to watch them grow. For the 1999/2000 academic year I will be taking a partial 'leave of absence' from the department and have moved down one floor to Cunz 256 to the Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies. There I am serving as Acting Director and will continue next year as Associate Director. I look forward to working with colleagues throughout the University (we have more than 140 affiliates) in strengthening and expanding this important interdisciplinary center, now in its 34th year.

John Davidson: On the morning of my most recent birthday I was occupied with the request to provide an item about myself for this year's Newsletter on the occasion of my promotion. I sat reflecting on the status of being a probationary faculty member, a condition from which I had just been released: an uncertain, but invigorating time to be sure. I then thought back beyond my six years here at OSU, considering my probationary period in the broadest sense, and found I could not reconstruct its exact contours. Suddenly it became clear that, rather than adding up all those years in different programs and schools, the easiest thing would be to count down. On my thirty-ninth birthday (my first -- I won't start my Jack Benny imitation until the year 2000) I realized that I had always been training for the position I now hold, except for the six years before I entered school and a five year break between earning my BA and starting on my MA in Comparative Literature. That boils down to a kind of apprenticeship lasting twenty-eight years, which I found a very sobering bit of arithmetic indeed. This is a long time to struggle to secure a place in a profession that does not reward hard work with the monetary remuneration and the social prestige generally seen as the marks of success in the United States. At least, that's how it seemed to me on that reflective morning, making me want to administer myself a dope-slap accompanied by a heartfelt "d'oh!"

Of course, my path to tenure may not have been entirely typical. Along the way, for instance, I spent time in Alaska learning the truth of what one of our Presidents once remarked: we are all equal in the eyes of fish. On the other hand, my stint as a bartender serving members of several different armed forces taught me that one cannot always count on the fish to see things that way. Anyway, the uncommon nature of this path notwithstanding, what I found myself thinking while looking back over it might not be so unique. Perhaps many of us pause to consider things from inside the institutions of the academic undertaking we have worked so hard to enter and echo the question of the man haunting the cafes on Thomas Mann's San Marcos -- "This is it?"

One often hears that a temporary letdown comes after a big hurtle such as tenure. And so, like many others, I continue to work very hard in order to stave off this momentary sense of disappointment. I have begun to look to the abstraction of "the field" in order to bolster my sense of purpose. To follow up on my recent book, Deterritorializing the New German Cinema, I have embarked on a study of cinema in the post-wall era, as well as a collection of essays on popular Hollywood films. This is work that helps expand the field of German Studies, and excites me because it allows me to draw on my interest in comparative studies and theory. Conveniently, courses I have offered incorporating these interests have enrolled well and drawn intellectually curious students from other parts of the Humanities and beyond. Besides regularly teaching undergraduate and graduate classes on film, literature, and German cultural history, I have been allowed to develop courses on topics including contemporary cultural theory, intellectual history, the fantastic in literature, detective fiction, and self representation. This varied workload has kept things from being anything but boring.

Still, it occurred to me while mulling all this over that neither my conviction about the importance of teaching in the Humanities nor my pleasure in the lonely intensity of intellectual endeavor adequately answers the quandary of having "made it" and finding "it" wanting. But as I had been asked to provide some thoughts for this feature on the occasion of having made it, it would not do simply to leave the matter there. Fortunately, on the morning spent with these ruminations the memory of a different experience came to me, one brought by the mail. It was a beautiful card from a recent degree recipient in our program, who wanted to thank me for my kindness and support over the last two, very difficult years. The student wrote: "No words can possibly describe how much it all means to me. You are such a wonderful -- critical and helpful -- teacher, and I wish for you to help hundreds of other students like you helped me." I sought out and re-read this card. "D'oh," I said to myself, "this is it!"

Visiting Faculty

Mine Eren: Last September, while studying for my doctoral degree, I received a letter from my father which also contained a small business card that was printed for him as a present from a friend in Turkey. My father who received 100 prints of this for him very valuable card was giving them only to his closest friends and relatives. His profession on this card was a Turkish expression which is made up of the two words, namely "emekli gurbetci." There is no equivalent for this term in English or German but the profession my father was given, describes him as a retired immigrant who still is nostalgicly attached to his homeland.

This business card as well as other coincidences in my life were perhaps the reason for my fascination with the theme of migration. Global changes affect many people in today's world and the theme of migration is fascinating and universal in this respect. My family's immigration to West Germany from Istanbul in 1972, my experience with three cultures as well as my unchanging nomadic life-style" were perhaps the triggers for me to become interested in this field. My education in Germany as well as Brown University where I gained insight into the theoretical background in literature and film helped me to understand the relationship of globalization and migratory movements and its long-term effect on the fabric of cities and villages. The earthquake in Turkey on August 17, 1999, where I witnessed the fear and helplessness of people against the power of mother nature, was again another example for how cities are affected by natural disasters and how thousands of people are forced to migrate and to leave there homes and belongings.

The reason for my family's emigration was perhaps the hope for a better life. Since a treaty signed in 1963 began an influx of workers from Mediterranean countries into Germany, elements of these distinct cultures have mingled, culminated in works of art and culture which reflect the unique experience of immigrants in Germany. Yet migration has always been a challenging topic for authors from the 18th to the 20th century. For example Oscar Wilde, Samuell Becket, James Joyce and John Steinbeck were emigrants. The topic of mobility, nostalgia, and hope are the center of many of their novels. Although globalization and the change into global cities give rise to different problems in today's world, I believe that the experience of the individuals who migrate remain the same.

My dissertation's topic Re-thinking Migration: Arabesk practices after thirty years of immigration history of Turks," focuses on the work of women who migrated to Germany in the 1960s and thematizes the subject of Germans and foreigners from a different perspective. In this study, I explore the meaning of arabesk in a German context and examine the literary and cinematic texts by Turkish female authors and immigrants in connection with the German unification.

Most recently, my enthusiasm and interest about film motivated me to organize the first film festival and conference on this topic at Brown University and Rhode Island School of Design from March 2-7, 1999. The festival entitled Culture of Birth, Culture of Migration: Turkish filmmakers and German Society portrayed the literature, film and photographs of Turkish culture in Germany. The questions: What will immigration hold in the 21st century?" and What is the future of the so-called national identity?" were raised many times during this festival.

In fact, my obsession with this theme might inspire me to write a screenplay for a film in the next future. Who knows...?

All in all, prior to my coming to OSU I taught language and literature classes at Brown University, Miami University (Oxford, Ohio), and in Germany. I received my MA from the Ludwig-Maximilians-University in Munich, Germany in 1992 where I studied German as a Foreign Language, Applied Linguistics, and Pedagogy. I have a Ph.D.degree from Brown University in German Studies and my areas of research are German literature from the 19th and 20th century with a focus on literature around unification. I am particularly interested on questions of identity and in feminist and postcolonial approaches to literature.

Valentina Glajar: I joined the faculty of the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures at the Ohio State University in September 1999. In August of 1999, I defended my dissertation under the direction of Professor Nina Berman and Professor Peter Jelavich. My project, titled Communism, National Socialism, and Imperialism: East Central Europe in German-Language Literature (Herta Mller, Erica Pedretti, Gregor von Rezzori), examines German-speaking writers from different multicultural regions in East Central Europe and focuses on the cultural and political history of the German minorities to which these authors belonged. I investigate the legacy of the German and Austrian political and cultural influence in East Central Europe as illustrated in the works of Herta Mller, Erica Pedretti, and Gregor von Rezzori. In my dissertation, I argue for a more inclusive and differentiated understanding of Literature in German--one that takes into consideration the German presence in East Central Europe and opens German cultural history to Eastern contexts (in contrast to the predominantly Western viewpoint).

In addition to investigating the German and Austrian cultural and political presence in East Central Europe, my research interests entail literary translations and Translation Studies. I co-translated with Andr Lefevere Herta Mller's novel Traveling on One Leg (Evanston: Northwestern UP, 1998).

This quarter I teach three undergraduate courses: German 310, 409, and 410. German 301 and Ger 410 focus on the history and culture of the German-speaking countries from 1700 to 1945. I look forward to teaching a translation course in the Winter Quarter and a literature course (in English) in the Spring Quarter.

Last but most certainly not least, I love to spend time with my son. His name is Sergio and he just turned 7. He goes to Clintonville Academy and is eager to make new friends. However, he misses his father, his house, his dogs, his homing pigeons, and his friends back in Austin, Texas.

Andy Spencer: As I begin my third year as Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department I look forward to teaching as wide a variety of classes as I have over the past two years. After concentrating during that time on intermediate language and culture classes it is invigorating to be this quarter once again working with Professor Corl at the beginning language level before returning to the intermediate level in winter. Winter will also see a senior seminar for our literature majors on Heinrich Boell and Guenter Grass, while in spring I am happy to have the opportunity to once again teach 299, the Weimar Republic and Third Reich in film and literature. For each of the past two summers I have served as Resident Director for the OSU in Dresden Summer Program (see report elsewhere). The experience has been greatly rewarding and has enabled me to continue to follow developments in the city in the light of the research which I did for the dissertation ("German Writers and the Bombing of Dresden"). This summer I was also able to further my current research interests while in Germany, including interviewing writer/performer Blixa Bargeld, about whose work I have recently published two essays (one of which in "Theater der Zeit"), essays which will hopefully form chapters of a book-length study on contemporary performance and musical theatre in Germany.

Upcoming Conference on Biography

For the winter quarter we are looking forward to hosting an international conference on biography and biographical approaches to German literature. The event, held February 24-26, 2000 at the Westin Great Southern Hotel in downtown Columbus, will feature a program of lectures on biographical criticism, panels on individual authors, on authorship and women's biography, autobiography, and related issues.

Organization of the conference is proceeding with the help of several of the department's graduate students. Financial support for the meeting comes from the German Academic Exchange Service, the Austrian Cultural Institute, and the OSU College of Humanities.

Interested members of the campus community and students and colleagues from around the country will find up-to-date information on the program at the department Web site.

News from the Faculty

Barbara Becker-Cantarino spent five months last year in Berlin with a Senior Fulbright Research Grant and several weeks this past summer at Oxford University as a Visiting Professor with a grant from the British Academy. Her research focussed on "The Culture of Violence: Wars, Witch Hunts, and Tolerance from Luther to Kant."

She published a reprint edition of Sophie von La Roche. Herbsttage. Karben: Petra Wald Verlag, 1999 with an introduction and a bibliography of La Roche's works. She continues to serve as co-editor of the journal Daphnis. Zeitschrift fr Mittlere Deutsche Literatur. In 1999 she published a new version of the chapter "Leben als Text: Briefe als Ausdrucks- und Verstndigungsmittel in der Briefkultur und Literatur des 18. Jahrhunderts," in: Frauen - Literatur - Geschichte, ed. Hiltrud Gng and Renate Mhrmann, Stuttgart: Metzler, 1999, pp. 129-46, a revised and updated version of 1985 chapter in the earlier edition of this literary history. Her article "Der schne Leib wird Stein. Zur Funktion der poetischen Bilder als Geschlechterdisdurs in Eichendorffs Marmorbild" appeared in: Das Sprach-Bild als textuelle Interaktion, ed. G. Labroisse and D.van Stekelenburg "Die echte Politik mu Erfinderin sein." Beitrge eines Wiepersdorfer Kolloquiums zu Bettina von Arnim, ed. Hartwig Schulz, Berlin: Saint Albin Verlag, 1999, pp. 217-248. Her article "Sophie La Roches Tagebuch einer Reise durch Holland und England (1788)" appeared in Frauen und Mnner. Fr Renate Mhrmann, ed. Elmar Buck, Kln: Theaterwissenschaftliche Sammlung, 1999, pp. 42-53.

Her review of Friederike Eigler and Susanne Kord, The Feminist Encyclopedia of German Literature, Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1997 appeared in: Zeitschrift fr Germanistik (1999), pp.

The volume Schriftstellerinnen der Romantik. Epoche - Werke - Wirkung is in press with Beck Verlag and should appear in 2000.

She participated in a workshop on "Imaginationen des Anderen in der Frhen Neuzeit" at the Herzog August Bibliothek in November 1998 with a lecture on "Hexenkche und Hexensabbat als Vorstellungen des Anderen." She was invited to give a lecture at the University of Marburg in January 1999 and presented "Hexensabbat: Imaginationen der Dmonie in Goethes Faust I." In

April 1999 she participated in the conference "Versuchung und Verfhrung in Mrchen, Romanen und Lyrik" at the Evangelische Akademie, Rothenburg/ Germany and presented a lecture on "Verfhrung in Hexentraktaten der Frhen Neuzeit."

She organized an chaired the meeting of the steering committee of the Wolfenbtteler Arbeitskreis fr Barockforschung on January 28-29, 1999, planning the international congress on: "Artes et Scientiae. Wissenschaften und Knste in der Frhen Neuzeit" to take place in April 2000 at the Herzog August Bibliothek in Wolfenbttel. -- At the German Studies Association Annual meeting at Salt Lake City in October 1998 she served as a respondent to three papers on "Goethe and Violence."--She continues to serve on the MLA Committee on the Status of Women in the Profession.

Hugo Bekker continues his work on Paul Celan.

Marilyn Blackwell has had an extremely active year. While continuing work on her book on Strindberg and spectatorship (resulting in two chapters), she also wrote four articles: "Gender and Subjectivity in Det sjunde inseglet and Fanny och Alexander," (TijdSchrift voor Skandinavistiek 20:1, pp. 121-133), "Lacan's Law of the Father and Strindberg's Early Dramas," (forthcoming in Scandinavian Studies), "Till Damascus and The Disruption of Right Sight," (forthcoming in Strindbergiana), and "Cross Dressing and Subjectivity in Ingmar Bergman's Films," forthcoming in a festskrift for Professor Birgitta Steene. In addition to these, she published or wrote three book reviews: Strindberg och hans versttare, eds. Bjrn Meidal & Nils ke Nilsson, (Scandinavian Studies 71:1, pp. 115-18), Studies in Strindberg, Michael Robinson, (TijdSchrift voor Skandinavistiek 20:1, pp. 170-74), and Strindberg, Ibsen, and Bergman: Essays Offered to Egil Trnqvist, ed. Harry Peridon (Scandinavian Studies, forthcoming). Professor Blackwell was also honored by being appointed chair of the University Senate Steering Committee, one of the two highest governance positions in the university. In this position, Professor Blackwell worked with Executive Vice President and Provost Ed Ray and Senior Vice President Bill Shkurti to forge the university's budget restructuring plan and also took the lead in creating and reshaping various university committees, critiquing various administrative and faculty initiatives, and in general organizing and facilitating the Senate's work for the year. She also served as the department's representative on the College of Humanities Planning and Priorities Committee which made recommendations aimed at strengthening individual departments and the college as a whole. And finally, she served the department as its Director of Graduate Studies.

Kathryn A. Corl continues her work on two long-term projects: the MultiCAT multimedia computer adaptive testing project (assisted by 1997 M.A. Patricia Fellinger,) and the development of new materials for the Department's Individualized Instruction Program (co-written with graduate students Andrea Herzog and Andrea Heitmann.) She also continued to serve on the AATG Testing commission and as a member of the AATG/Goethe-Institut's "Going the Distance" distance-learning teacher development project (assisted by graduate student Cynthia Chalupa). The "Deutsch im Web" virtual audio laboratory Web site, funded by a Faculty Innovator Grant from OSU, is also now available for OSU students and has been updated for the new edition of Deutsch Na klar! used in the 101-103 language courses. Graduate students Andrea Herzog, Andrea Heitmann and Dresden exchange student Tobias Lehnert contributed significantly to this project.

This past summer she joined alumnae colleagues Ilsedore Edse and Werner Haas (Language Program Director) and graduate student Andrea Heitmann on the language faculty of the American Institute for Musical Studies in Graz, Austria.

In spring 1999 Corl and visiting Assistant Professor and alumna Agnes Risko (Ph.D. 1998) accepted on behalf of the Department's Individualized Instruction program a special Recognition for Service and Support from OSU's Office for Disability Services.

Together with Donna van Handle (Mt. Holyoke College) Corl published "Extending the Dialogue: Using Electronic Mail and the Internet to Promote Conversation and Writing in Intermediate-Level German Language Courses" The Calico Journal 15 (1998) 129-143, and she reviewed Lynch, Brian K. Language Program Evaluation: Theory and Practice in the Modern Language Journal 82 (1998), pp. 588-589.

She was invited to lecture on "Words and their Representations: Building the Foreign Language Lexicon" to the Foreign and Second Language Education M.Ed. Class, School of Teaching and Learning, College of Education, OSU, and she gave the following presentations: "Classroom Audio", 1998 Lunch Box Discussions, Humanities Technology Advisory Committee, OSU, November, 1998, "Writing Multiple Choice Items" Collaborative Articulation and Assessment Project (CAAP), Central Ohio Teachers Association Day (COTA), Columbus, OH, October, 1998, "Presentation Software as a Teaching/Learning Tool" Invited lecture/presentation, Harvey Goldberg Program for Excellence in Teaching, Department of History, The Ohio State University, Autumn Quarter, 1998. In spring, 1999 she presented "Multidisciplinary Project Teamwork: The MultiCAT Testing Project", (With Lauren Aland and James Cheng), CALICO 1999 Symposium, Oxford OH, June 1999.

She also served as a panel member, for Revalidation/Standard Setting: The Praxis Series: Professional Assessments for Beginning Teachers, (National Teacher Accreditation Exam) Educational Testing Service (September 1998) and she continued as a member of the AATG Testing Commission .

John E. Davidson was promoted to the rank of Associate Professor and awarded tenure. Since the last edition of this Newsletter, which he edited, he presented a paper on "Cultural Institutions and Aesthetic Texts in the Third Reich and Beyond" at the MLA Division on Twentieth-Century German Literature. He also lectured by invitation at the Cleveland Center for the Creative Arts' Celebration of Gay Pride Week on "Authenticity and Performance?: The Work of Monika Treut in the Course of Time," and at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington on "Cinema Studies and German Studies: Intersections and Implications." His book, Deterritorializing the New German Cinema, appeared with the University of Minnesota Press. He completed a review of "Thomas Saunders, Hollywood in Berlin: American Cinema and Weimar German, which appeared in German Studies Review (February 1999) and the chapter "Working for the Man, Whoever That May Be: The Vocation of Wolfgang Liebeneiner," forthcoming in Cultural History Through a National Socialist Lens ed. Robert Reimer (Camden House). He also placed "Is Sexy Sadie Really The Mother of the Killer? Cynical Reason and the Resurgence of Black Humor in Postwall Cinema" in the Anthology on German Popular Film (Eds. Randall Halle and Margaret McCarthy) and "Like a Dead Man Walking in Chinatown: An Essay on Why Contemporary Cinema Deals Poorly with Ecological Issues" in Water: The Renewable Metaphor, ed. Susan Anderson (Peter Lang).

Mine Eren. Ph.D. (Brown University, Providence, RI, 2000)Visiting Assistant Professor. Specialization: 19th and 20th century German literature and culture (the German Novelle); 20th century minority literature and film; women's and cultural studies; postcolonial criticism; independent cinema; Turkish culture and film. Visiting Appointments: Miami University, Oxford, Ohio, Fall 1992.

Other Experiences: Director and Organizer of the first German-Turkish Film and Video Festival and Conference at Brown University and the Rhode Island School of Design, March 2-7, 1999. Title: "Culture of Birth, Culture of Migration: Turkish Filmmakers in German Society." Publication: "Memories of Turkish immigrants: Seyhan Derin's documentary I'm My Mother's Daughter." (forthcoming). Academic Honors and Awards: Research Fellow Grant, Brown University, Spring and Summer 1999; Doctoral Research Grant, Humboldt University, 1996-97; Center for the Advancement of College Teaching Certification, Brown University, May 1994. DAAD Annual Travel and Teaching Award, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitt, 1992.

Helen Fehervary published, with Jost Hermand, Mit den Toten reden. Fragen an Heiner Mller. (Koeln-Weimar-Wien: Boehlau Verlag, 1999), 218 pp.; and "Mannerism, Modernism, Mueller: 'In der Zeit des Verrats sind die Landschaften schoen'," in Der Fall Heiner Mller. Probleme und Perspektiven, ed. Gerd Labroisse, Dennis Tate, Ian Wallace (Amsterdam: Rodopi Verlag, 1999). She presented the public lecture (Annual Gedenkrede fr Anna Seghers for 1998): "Schauprozess in Prag / Gegenprozess im Berliner Ensemble: Die Zusammenarbeit von Seghers und Brecht bei der Inszenierung von Seghers' 'Der Prozess der Jeanne d'Arc zu Rouen 1431' vom Berliner Ensemble im November 1952," Berlin, November 14, 1998; and "Staging Mannerism: Heiner Mueller and Tintoretto," Comparative Literature Parallel Lines, Ohio state University, February 19, 1999. She received a two-week Research Fellowship from the Humboldt-Universitaet for archival work in Berlin in 1999.

Bernd Fischer published "Achim von Arnims Wintergarten als politischer Kommentar." Universelle Entwrfe - Integration - Rckzug: Arnims Berliner Zeit (1809-1814). Ed. Ulfert Ricklefs. Tbingen: Niemeyer, 1999; and "Peter Turrini." Deutsche Dramatiker des 20. Jahrhunderts. Ed. Alo Allkemper and Norbert Eke. Berlin: Erich Schmidt, 1999.

He presented "Jdische Emanzipation und deutsche Nation: Von Mendelssohn bis Auerbach," 1848, 1949 und das Versprechen der Moderne, Universitt Bonn, Germany, 3 Jul. 1999; "Christoph Heins Kunst der Prosa-Miniatur," Christoph Hein in Perspective, Gesamteuropisches Studienwerk, Vlotho, Germany, 16 Jul. 1999; "Fichte und der andere nationale Weg zur Moderne," Searching for Common Ground: German National Identity 1750-1871, University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC, 10 Apr. 1999; "A Nation within a Nation? Moses Mendelssohn and the Conception of a Multicultural Prussia and Europe," Modern Language Association, Annual Conference, San Francisco, CA, 29 Dec. 1998; and "Die anderen Hauslehrer: Zur Frage eines jdischen Sturm und Drang im Kreis der Berliner Maskilim," German Studies Association, Annual Conference, Salt Lake City, UT, 9 Oct. 1998.

Valentina Glajar (Ph.D., Germanic Studies, University of Texas at Austin, 1999) has joined the faculty for one year as a visiting assistant professor.

Anna A. Grotans was awarded tenure and promoted to the rank of Associate Professor. She presented "Ekkehard IV on Language" at the International Medieval Latin Congress in Cambridge, England and "Glosses in the Classroom" at the International Medieval Vernacular Glosses Conference in Bamberg, Germany. She published: "Simplifying Latin in Notker's Classroom: Tradition and Innovation," American Journal of Germanic Linguistics and Literatures 10.1 (1998): 1-43; "Notker Labeo," in the Neue Deutsche Biographie, vol. 19 (Berlin: Duncker and Humblot, 1999) 362-364; "The Scribes and Notker Labeo," De consolatione Philologiae (Gppingen: Kmmerle, 1999) 101-119 and edited De consolatione Philologiae: Studies in Honor of Evelyn S. Firchow (Gppingen: Kmmerle, 1999) 770pp. This coming academic year she will be serving as Acting Director of the Center for Medieval and Renaissance and will continue as Associate Director for the three years following. She was also elected Vice President of the Society for Germanic Philology.

Kai Hammermeister published his monograph Hans-Georg Gadamer. (C.H.Beck: Munich, 1999). His essays "Aesthetics-An Overview" and "Hans-Georg Gadamer" appeared in Philosophy Now (Vol. 24, Summer 99). His article "Literature between Social Change and the Valuation of Tradition" is forthcoming in the Connecticut Review; the article "Poetic Homecoming: Heimat in Heidegger and Gadamer" will appear in the next issue of Philosophy and Literature.

He reviewed Hermann Glaser's "Deutsche Kultur. Ein historischer berblick von 1945 bis zur Gegenwart," Willi Jasper's "Faust und die Deutschen," Theodor W. Adorno's "Beethoven. The Philosophy of Music," Jeffrey Morrison's "Winckelmann und the Notion of Aesthetic Education" and Ernst Bloch's "Literary Essays" for Germanic Notes and Reviews as well as Jean Grondin's "Hans-Georg Gadamer. Eine Biographie" and Thomas Wgenbaur (ed.) "The Poetics of Memory" for The German Quarterly.

He served as a respondent at the 1998 GSA meeting in Salt Lake City and he presented the paper "The Religious and the Scientific Text" at the 1999 international conference on Religion and Science at The Ohio State University.

He is currently writing a critical history of German philosophical aesthetics, titled The German Aesthetic Tradition, that will be published with Cambridge University Press.

Gregor Hens published "Ekdal oder Edgar? 'Holzfllen' im Spannungsfeld zwischen Ibsen und Strindberg." Thomas Bernhard -- Traditionen und Trabanten. Ed. Joachim Hoell and Kai Luehrs-Kaiser. Wrzburg: Knigshausen & Neumann, 1999, 129-136; and Thomas Bernhards Trilogie der Knste: Der Untergeher, Holzfllen, Alte Meister. Columbia, SC: Boydell & Brewer--Camden House, 1999. He presented at the International Thomas Bernhard Conference in Berlin in 1998, at the annual meeting of SAMLA in Atlanta, and at the annual meeting of the MLA in San Francisco. He is currently working on a psychobiographical project, for which he received a University Seed Grant.

Neil G. Jacobs will be on FPL (sabbatical) during academic year 1999-2000. During the past year his edited volume Studies in Jewish Geography appeared as a Special Issue of Shofar: An interdisciplinary journal of Jewish studies (Vol. 17, No. 1. Fall 1998). The collection included an editor's essay: "Introduction: A field of Jewish geography," pp. 1-19. Professor Jacobs and former GLL colleague Dagmar C.G. Lorenz co-authored the article "If I were king of the Jews: Germanistik and the Judaistikfrage," which appeared in: Dagmar C.G. Lorenz and Renate Posthofen (eds.), Transforming the Center, Eroding the Margins: Essays on Ethnic and Cultural Boundaries in German-Speaking Countries, pp. 185-198. Camden House: Columbia, South Carolina (1998). Prof. Jacobs presented the following conference papers: "The deproblematization of Yiddish in contemporary academe," paper presented at MLA Convention, December 27-30, 1998, San Francisco. "Perceptions of Ashkenazic geography," paper presented at Annual Meeting, Association of American Geographers, Honolulu, Hawaii, March 23-27, 1999. "The syllable in Yiddish: Considerations of prosodic structure and phoneme inventory," paper presented at Fifth Germanic Linguistics Annual Conference (GLAC-5), April 16-18, 1999, University of Texas at Austin. "Areal and contact considerations of syllable and foot in Yiddish," paper presented at Methods X Conference, August 1-6, 1999, Memorial University of Newfoundland, Saint John's, Newfoundland, Canada.

David Miller was Co-coordinator of the international conference on Ashkenaz: Theory and Nation (Krakow, Poland), May 1998, where he also presented the paper "Reconquering Canaan: Ashkenaz in America." He was a panelist in a roundtable on "Teaching the Holocaust" at the "(Re)Presenting the Holocaust," Ohio State University, Feb. 1998. He served as a Co-chair of the Academic Senate Diversity Committee at OSU, and as Secretary (1997) and Chair (1998) of the MLA Discussion Group on Yiddish Literature.

Harry Vredeveld presented "Deaf as Ulysses to the Sirens' Song": A Forgotten Topos," at the Rocky Mountain Medieval and Renaissance Association Annual Conference, Tempe, AZ, May, 1999. He published "Anthologia Latina 873e: Renaissance Latin from Strabo (Geography 14.5.9)" in Classical Philology 93 (1998): 343--344; and "Hippocrates coitum comitiali morbo similem iudicavit: A Note on Marsilio Ficino, De vita I, 7" in Bibliothque d'Humanisme et Renaissance 60 (1998): 741. His annotated edition, with English translation, of The Poetic Works of Helius Eobanus Hessus has been accepted for publication in the Renaissance Texts Series, co-published by the Renaissance Society of America and the Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies. Thanks to a Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities he is using the current academic year to prepare volume II of the Hessus edition.

Emeritus Werner Haas directed again the German Language Program for AIMS (American Institute of Musical Studies) in Graz, Austria (July and August 1999). He has done this since 1982 without any interruptions. Kathy Corl and Andrea Heitmann taught with him in the same program which involves over 200 Americans, mostly opera singers and orchestra musicians. Ilsedore Edse taught German diction . Both Kathy and Ilsedore had been in Graz with the AIMS program before.

Graduate Student News

M.A. s awarded:

  • Sai Bhatawadekar
  • Z. Iosilevich
  • Renee Jenkins
  • Rachel Lindsay
  • Joseph Moser
  • Blake Peters
  • Timo Snyder
  • Patti Spinner

Ph.D. awarded:

  • Elizabeth Loentz

Graduate Student Awards

Research Award
Andrea Heitmann
Jeremy Schreiber
Research Paper
Andrea Heitmann
Jeremy Schreiber
Riley International Travel Award (from College of Humanities)
Kate Vestich
FLAS
Stephanie Libbon
Last year was a relatively busy year for me. Within the department, I served as Peer TA-Coordinator for our intermediate-level German courses. I also team-taught the Faust seminar with Professor Hammermeister and taught evenings for Continuing Education. I was elected as our department's delegate to the Council for Graduate Students. As such, I served on the Graduate Student Orientation Committee and Committee on Academic Misconduct. In the area of research, I presented two papers: "Woman: Site of Contested Positionalities" at the University of Pennsylvania's Fifth Annual Intersections Conference and "Frank Wedekind: Progressive Feminist or Patriarchal Pimp?" at the University of Kentucky's Foreign Language Conference. I also have a publication pending with Camden House: "Frank Wedekind's Prostitutes: Liberating Re-Creation or Male Recreation?" in Commodities of Desire: The Prostitute in German Literature. Ed. Christiane Schnfeld. This year I am on a FLAS-Fellowship to study French. While not teaching in the department, I will still be teaching for Continuing Education and I will continue to serve on the same committees I was elected to last year. In October Colleen McCallum and I will present: "The Foreign Language Student Newspaper: A Tool for Language Learning, Curriculum Building, and Community Outreach" at Youngstown State University's Twenty-Third Annual Conference on the Teaching of Foreign Languages and Literatures
Graduate Student International Travel Grant
Folke-Christine Mller-Sahling
for the summer 1998 from the Office of International Studies to pursue research in Eutin (Schleswig-Holstein) on the Emkendorfer Kreis"

Christine passed her Candidacy Exams on September 15, 1998, was an exchange student at the Humboldt Universitt in Berlin for the academic year 1998-1999 to pursue dissertation research, published research paper Julia Grfin von Reventlow. Versuch einer sozialhistorischen Rekonstruktion', ed. by Dr. Arno Bamm. Heft 21, Literatur und Soziologie (Klagenfurt im Januar 1999): p. 1-60, presented at the Women Writers of the 18th and 19th Century Conference in Glasgow in May 1999: 'wahrlich in den geliebten Zirkel liegt doch meine SeelenHeymath" Ein Beitrag zur Bedeutung des Emkendorfer Musenhofes (1789-1816) in der deutschen Literatur- und Geistesgeschichte', and will present a paper at the GSA Conference in October 1999 in Atlanta: 'Nichts fehlt meinem Glck als die Gegenwart'. Freundschafts-, Liebes- und Ehekonzepte im Briefwechsel zwischen Heinrich Christian Boie und Luise Mejer 1777-1785".

Kate Vestich last year received a FLAS Fellowship for dissertation research. In April she presented the paper, "Playing Chess by Herself:Bettina von Arnim's Private Correspondence with King Friedrich Wilhelm IV of Prussia" at the Kentucky Foreign Language Conference. In May she gave a talk hosted by the West European Studies Program at Ohio State University entitled, "This Book Belongs to the King: Bettina von Arnim, Society and Censorship in Pre-1848 Prussia." She was awarded the 1999-2000 G. Michael Riley International Award for research abroad by the OSU College of Humanities. This coming academic year Ms. Vestich will be serving on the Dean's International Committee for the College of Humanities.

Yogini Joglekar: On March 12, 1999, I presented a paper titled "Country without Nightingales? Kafka's Vision of America" at the conference "Image of America" organized by the Society for the Interdisciplinary Study of Social Imagery in the University of Southern Colorado. This paper was also selected for publication in the conference proceedings.

Within the department, Lori Mushrush and I co-organized several successful sessions of the Reading (Aloud) Group in Winter and Spring 1999, where we read canonical and non-canonical works in German bi-weekly. The sessions were also instrumental in helping M.A. students prepare for their exams.

Sai Bhatawadekar published "Farbenanalyse des Films "The Hudsucker Proxy"" In Jahrbuch, Internationales Studentenwerk Berlin, 1998.

I had an exchange fellowship in the year 1997-98 to study at the Freie Universitaet in Berlin. In Berlin my interest in German film started and developed. I took several courses at the Theater- und Filmwissenschaften, where i decided to work on Peter Handke's "Die Angst des Tormanns beim Elfmeter" and Wim Wenders' film by the same name. I wrote my masters' thesis on the comparison between the two.

Considering that I was born and brought up in Indian culture and that I have an inherent understanding of it, my plans for Ph.D. include comparing and contrasting it with aspects of German expressions of art and philosophy.

Andrea Heitmann received the Department's Graduate Student Research Paper Award in Spring, 1999 for her paper "Prager Deutsch, Kleinseitner Deutsch, Kucheldeutsch und Boehmakeln. Sprache als Kennzeichen der Abgrenzung in Meyrinks 'Der Golem'", she was a member of the language faculty at the American Institute of Musical Studies (AIMS) in Graz, Austria in Summer 1999 and currently serves as peer teaching supervisor for the lower-division undergraduate German program at OSU.

David Connolly presented a paper, "Voice Under Siege: Locating Queen Giburc in Text and Context in Wolfram von Eschenbach's Willehalm", at the 1999 Medieval Congress, Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo in May 1999; he won a stipendium for the German Historical Institute's summer program, with a course on German paleography and tours of archives, in June 1999 in Koblenz and Cologne. In Fall 1999, he will teach German 291, Early German Literature in Cultural Context

Undergraduate News, Activities and Opportunities

Dieter Cunz Award - Kathryn Baltes

Ilsedore Edse Award - Carol Bair

Wells Scholarship for Study Abroad (awarded by the college of Humanities) - Carol Bair

Willershausen Internship - Kevin Horn

Max Kade Grants for the Dresden Summer Program---

Kyle Almgren, Laura Burt, Kendra Davitt, Jeni Dudley, Emily Griesen, Sandra Hotz, Wendy Jackson, Brad Keene, Eric Lief, Bill Melanson, Sherri Miller, Kurt Olson, Carolyn Patton, Nikita Poposki, Cindy Rogers, Kazayuki Sasaki, Jill Stevens, Erika Wehner, Tim Zastudil.
Ted Amstutz and Dan Heck also participated in the program, but didn't apply for grants.

The Max Kade German House offers nine undergraduate students the chance to live and learn in a friendly German-language environment. Native speakers and Resident Director Kristina Camp help ensure the quality of both the spoken Geramn and the camaraderie. This unique housing opportunity is open to students who have successfully complete German 201. Applications for next year will be taken in Winter 1999.

The German Club is a member-oriented society whose main interests are to offer a socially enjoyable, yet educational opportunity to speak German and to learn more about German history, culture, and life. The membership is diverse, consisting of graduate and undergraduate students studying German, native German speakers, and other individuals from the community interested in German. One does not need to speak German to attend, but German conversation is encouraged in this informal setting.

Kaffeestunde, hosted by both faculty members and graduate students, has become something of an institution around Cunz Hall. Once per week anyone interested has an opportunity to practice German conversation with students and faculty, while enjoying coffee, tea, and refreshments provided by the department. The first Kaffeestunde in every month is held at the Max Kade German House, 141 W. 11th St..

Alumnae/i News

Elizabeth Hamilton (Ph.D. 1998) joined the faculty of Oberlin College this year as Visiting Assistant Professor of German. She currently teaches four courses, including one English and one German course on New German Cinema. The German section of that course focuses on filmic adaptations of literary works, an area in which Elizabeth is currently concentrating her research. She is presently preparing an article on disability and subjective agency, focusing on sound sequences from Volker Schloendorff's Die Blechtrommel.

Jenifer Cushman, Assistant Professor of German and Russian at the University of Minnesota, Morris, directed a student production of Bertolt Brecht's "Furcht und Elend des Dritten Reichs" in the spring of 1999. She also presented "Central Europe: Nationalism or Chauvinism? Rilke and the Bohemian Model" at the New Europe at the Crossroads III conference in Berlin, July 1999. During the summer of 1999, she was a participant in the Fulbright Group Project Abroad "Post-Soviet Integration and Disintegration," a six-week study tour of Belarus, Kyrgyzstan, and the Czech Republic.

In Autumn, 1999 she will present "Crossing Aesthetic and Geopolitical Borders: Rilke's 'The Life of Mary'" at the Bordering Europe conference in Canterbury, England, and "Boehmisches Volkslied / Narodni tance na Morave: Czech Nationalism in the Works of Rilke and Janacek during the 1890's" at the Tale of Three Cities: Janacek's Brno Between Vienna and Prague conference in London. She is currently developing two undergraduate study abroad programs to begin May 2000, "Brunnenburg and Beyond" in regions of the former Austro-Hungarian Empire, and "Theory and Practice of Second Language Acquisition" at the Pedagogical University in Chelyabinsk, Russia.

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