This semester, two of our graduate students passed their candidacy exams to move up to ABD  (all but dissertation) status next term.
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Carolin (Caro) Mueller passed her exam on February 16, advised by Prof. Davidson. Her committee members were Prof. Armstrong and Prof. Noyes (CompStd), and Prof. Sellman (NELC). The title of her prospectus is Strategies of Deconstructing Borders and Spaces of Violence: A Case Study of the Work of the German Musician Collective “Banda  Internationale”. She will continue to investigate arts-based practices in pro-immigration activism, community projects, and literature to understand how arts-based strategies define specific political spaces in which claims to religion, ethnicity, democracy, and cultural diversity are negotiated. In 2018-19, Caro will be a fellow at TU Dresden, where she will work on completing extensive ethnographic fieldwork and archival research pivotal to her dissertation. Also, she has been awarded a fellowship to attend the Ibn Haldun University seven-week Summer School Language Program in Modern Turkish where she will attend seminars by renowned scholars on history, politics, and literature and arts, cultural events, movie screenings, field trips to historical sites and archives in Istanbul,Turkey.

Kassi Burnett (pictured above next to her Advisor, Prof. Byram, and below with all of her committee members, Professors Davidson, Mergenthaler, and Birkhold) passed her exam on April 9. The title of her prospectus is Environmental and Social Justice in German Literature. Also, Kassi has been awarded a fellowship to attend Transforming Environments in Europe and North America: Narratives, Histories, Cultures; a Trans-Atlantic Summer Institute (TASI) at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities this summer. She’ll be presenting and getting feedback on preliminary dissertation work, as well as participating in discussions about other participants’ projects.

We extend our sincere congratulations to Caro and Kassi!