Faculty

The Department of German, Nordic, Slavic & Dutch is a dynamic community of faculty, instructors, and graduate students. Our faculty are known nationally and internationally for their research and teaching in the medieval and pre-modern area, transnational interdisciplinary studies (from cultural and gender studies to environmental humanities, intellectual history, Jewish studies, and film), and second-language acquisition.

Faculty

Name Contact Specialties
Benjamin Bigelow
Associate Professor 
Director of Undergraduate Studies
328E Folwell Hall
612-626-3327
bbigelow@umn.edu
Scandinavian literature and culture
Nadya Clayton
Senior Lecturer
320H Folwell Hall
612-626-6335
nclayton@umn.edu
Russian language & literature
Emily Groepper
Lecturer
328B Folwell Hall
groep005@umn.edu
Medieval Germanic languages and literatures; history of emotions; language pedagogy
Thomas Gurke
DAAD Visiting Associate Professor
327B Folwell Hall
tgurke@umn.edu
Intermediality and Word and Music Studies, Popular Culture, Affect, Contemporary fiction, Ecology, (the) Short-story
Ari Hoptman
Senior Lecturer
329B Folwell Hall
612-625-6557
hoptm001@umn.edu
German Language
Arsena Ianeva-Lockney
Senior Lecturer
328B Folwell Hall
612-625-0999
ianev001@umn.edu
German language; business German; beginning Norwegian language
Ingela-Selda Haaland              Instructor   

eile0027@umn.edu

 

Swedish Language 
Elizabeth Kautz
Education Program Specialist
 
328B Folwell Hall
612-625-0738
kautz001@umn.edu

German language

 

Katerina Korola    Assistant Professor 328F Folwell Hall    612-626-1620
kkorola@umn.edu
German Modernism, History of Photography, Early and Silent Cinema, Modern Art, and the Environmental Humanities
Kyle Korynta
Lecturer
327J Folwell Hall
612-625-4059
kory0008@umn.edu
Norwegian language
Anatoly Liberman
Professor
323A Folwell Hall
612-625-5594
aliber@umn.edu
General linguistics; Germanic philology; folklore; poetic translation
Erik McDonald
Senior Lecturer
320K Folwell Hall
612-626-7971
emcdonal@umn.edu
Russian language & literature
Leslie Morris
Chair
Professor
Beverly and Richard Fink Professor in Liberal Arts
327A Folwell Hall
612-624-4047
morri074@umn.edu
German Jewish studies; Holocaust & memory studies; 20th- & 21st-century German and Austrian literature; comparative literature & literary theory; experimental poetry; psychoanalysis; medical humanities
Lily Obeda 
Lecturer
320M Folwell Hall
612-626-1651
obeda003@umn.edu
Finnish Language 
Jenneke Oosterhoff
Senior Lecturer
320N Folwell Hall
612-624-1041
ooste003@umn.edu
Dutch culture and literature; Dutch and German film; turn-of-the-century German and Austrian literature; business German
Jennifer Peterson
Senior Teaching Specialist
328B Folwell Hall
612-625-0738
peter511@umn.edu
German language
Matthias Rothe
Associate Professor
Director of Graduate Studies
328G Folwell Hall
612-625-9034
mrothe@umn.edu
18th-century political philosophy; philosophical and literary presentability of economic practices; Brechtian and contemporary theater
Helena Ruf
Senior Lecturer
Director of Language Instruction
 
327D Folwell Hall
612-625-3380
rahd0001@umn.edu
German language
Virginia Steinhagen
CIS Coordinator 
320J Folwell Hall
612-626-2879
stein093@umn.edu
German language
Jamele Watkins
Assistant Professor
327C Folwell Hall
612-625-4898
watkinsj@umn.edu
20th- and 21st-century German literature and history; Black diasporic studies; performance studies; feminist studies; German film 
Irina Zaykovskaya
Lecturer
320B  Folwell Hall 612-626-1894
irzaykov@umn.edu
Russian language; second language acquisition; sociolinguistics; language ideologies and attitudes
     
     

Affiliate Faculty 

Name Contact Specialties
Matt Bribitzer-Stull
Professor
Music Theory
mpbs@umn.edu Analysis of 18th-through-20th-century Austro-German opera and music
Siobhan Craig
Associate Professor
English
craig026@umn.edu German and Italian cinema; literary, film, feminist, and queer theory
Kirsten Fischer
Professor 
History
kfischer@umn.edu Memory and Memoir in the 20th century; American Social History; Religious Freethought in Early America; Racism and Slavery in Colonial America - current book project is a hybrid family history/memoir about father's German family in 20th-century Germany
Sheer Ganor
Assistant Professor
History
sganor@umn.edu German-speaking Jewry; 20th-century German history; forced migration; Holocaust; memory studies
Sarah Holtman
Professor
Philosophy
holtm001@umn.edu Moral and Political Philosophy; Philosophy of Law; Kant's Practical Philosophy
Michal Kobialka
Professor
Theatre Arts and Dance
kobia001@umn.edu European avant-garde theatre/performance; post-World War II theatre/performance; Tadeusz Kantor's theatre; post-World War II history of Central European visual/performance art; theatre/performance culture of the Enlightenment; theatre/performance historiography
Bernard M. Levinson
Professor
Berman Family Chair in Jewish Studies & Hebrew Bible
Classical & Near Eastern Studies; Law School
levinson@umn.edu Hebrew Bible; ancient Judaism; Bible and Humanities; German intellectual history (Goethe, Kant)
Howard Louthan
Professor
History
hlouthan@umn.edu Early modern Central and Eastern European history; Reformation and Counter-Reformation; history of religion
Alice Lovejoy
Associate Professor
Cultural Studies & Comparative Literature
alovejoy@umn.edu Film and media history and historiography; East Central European film; literature and cultural history
Mary Jo Maynes
Professor
History
mayne001@umn.edu 19th- and 20th-century German history; social history; women’s history
Michael Bennett McNulty
Assistant Professor
Philosophy
mcnu0074@umn.edu Immanuel Kant; history of early modern philosophy; history of philosophy of science
Karen Painter
Associate Professor
Music
kpainter@umn.edu 19th- and 20th-century German and Austrian music history
Dan Philippon
Associate Professor
English
danp@umn.edu Environmental literature, history and ethics; ideas of nature, culture, and place; food studies
Joachim Savelsberg
Professor
Sociology
savel001@umn.edu Human rights; law, collective representation and memory of mass violence
Joachim Savelsberg
Professor
Sociology
savel001@umn.edu Human rights; law, collective representation and memory of mass violence
Andrew Scheil
Professor
English
ascheil@umn.edu Anglo-Saxon language and literature; Middle English and medieval Latin literature
Henning Schroeder
Professor
Department of Pharmaceutics
schro601@umn.edu Education & health care in Germany & the US; history of patriotism & nationalism; constitutions & legal systems in Germany & the US; Rhineland & Rhenish capitalism
Damion Searls
Translator 
dsearls@umn.edu Independent translator from German, Norwegian, French, and Dutch
JB Shank
Professor
History
jbshank@umn.edu Early modern European intellectual history; Renaissance science and culture
Rudy Singer 
Senior Research Fellow Kompetenzzentrum – Trier Center for Digital Humanities
singerr@umn.edu Literature & poetics of the "Goethezeit" & around 1900; European drama, theater, & theater theory; word & image relations; rhetoric & literature; parody & literary nonsense
Igor Tchoukarine
Assistant Professor
History
itchouka@umn.edu 20th c. history of Central and Southeastern Europe; history of tourism and travel; the Cold War; international institutions; maritime cultures and identities; migration; transnational history
Brian Vetruba
Librarian
European Studies & Digital Scholarship
bvetruba@umn.edu European history, languages, and literatures; digital humanities
Christophe Wall-Romana
Professor
French
wallr007@umn.edu Modern European critical theory and philosophy; modern poetry; translation studies
Peter Wells
Professor
Anthropology
wells001@umn.edu Archaeology of Europe-Bronze Age through early medieval; archaeological excavations in Bavaria; visual culture in prehistoric Europe; interaction and trade between societies; practice of ritual 

Faculty Emeriti

Name Contact Specialties
Poul Houe
Professor Emeritus
Cand. mag., Aarhus University
houex001@umn.edu Modern Danish and Swedish literature; European humanism; travel and exile literature
Gary R. Jahn
Professor Emeritus
Ph.D, University of Wisconsin, Madison
gjahn@umn.edu  Russian language & literature
Ruth-Ellen B Joeres
Professor Emerita
PhD, Johns Hopkins
joere001@umn.edu German women's literary, social and cultural history of the18th-20th centuries; feminist/gender theories; cultural studies
Richard McCormick
Professor Emeritus
PhD, University of California-Berkeley
mccor001@umn.edu German film studies and film history; 20th-century German literature; feminism and gender studies
Charlotte Melin
Professor Emerita
PhD, University of Michigan-Ann Arbor
melin005@umn.edu Postwar German poetry; second-language acquisition; transnational literary relations; environmental humanities
James A. Parente, Jr.
Professor Emeritus
PhD, Yale University
paren001@umn.edu Medieval and early modern German, Netherlandic, and Scandinavian literature and culture
Arlene Teraoka
Professor Emerita
PhD, Stanford University
terao001@umn.edu 20th-century and minority German literature; German intellectual history; cultural criticism
Ray Wakefield
Associate Professor Emeritus
PhD, Indiana University
wakef001@umn.edu Second-language acquisition; medieval German literature; Dutch
Monika Zagar
Professor Emerita
PhD, University of California-Berkeley
zagar001@umn.edu Norwegian language & literature; modernism; Scandinavian women writers
Jack Zipes
Professor Emeritus
PhD, Columbia University
zipes001@umn.edu Fairy tales; 20th-century literature; German, GDR, women's and Jewish studies