Department of German, Nordic, Slavic & Dutch 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
Benjamin Bigelow
Specialties
Film and media studies; Scandinavian literature; Scandinavian culture
Andrew Elfenbein
Specialties
British literature, history, and culture, 1700-1900; influence study; queer theory; history of English; cognition and reading; the study of authorship; empirical psychology and literary study
Emily Groepper
Specialties
Collaborative Dialogues; Second Language Acquisition; Medieval Germanic Languages and Literatures; History of Emotions
Thomas Gurke
Specialties
Intermediality (Words and Music); Popular Culture; Music Aesthetics and History; Modern and Contemporary Literature
Elizabeth Kautz
Specialties
Foreign language pedagogy and curriculum development; Academic technology; Virtual exchange; Content-based language instruction; Intercultural competency; TA supervision
Anatoly Liberman
Specialties
Folklore; General linguistics; Germanic philology; Historical phonology and the origin of words; Languages and literature of the Middle Ages; Scandinavian mythology; Poetic translation; Literary criticism; Etymology; Creative witing; Russian literature; English literature
Leslie Morris
Specialties
German Jewish studies; Holocaust and Memory studies; Comparative literature and literary theory; 20th- & 21st-century German and Austrian literature and poetry; Experimental poetry; Narrative medicine; psychoanalysis
Jenneke Oosterhoff
Specialties
Dutch language and literature; German language and literature
Hazel Rhodes
Specialties
Trans & Queer Studies; 20th-Cent. German Literature, Theater & Film; Modernism; Narrative Studies; Affect Studies
Matthias Rothe
Specialties
Modernism; Aesthetics and Political Economy; Marxism; Political Theater and Theater History; DDR Kulturgeschichte
Helena Ruf
Specialties
Second Language Acquisition; Second language writing; Social Justice in Language Education; Study Abroad; Modern German Dialectology; German immigration
Jamele Watkins
Specialties
German literature and history; Black women writers; Black/African Diaspora Studies; Performance studies; German Film
Veronica Williamson
Specialties
Migration, Postmigration, and Refugee Studies; Arab-German Studies; Museum Studies; Post-1945 German Literature and Culture; Mono/Multilingualism and Language Revitalization
Irina Zaykovskaya
Specialties
language ideologies; second language acquisition (study abroad); sociolinguistics (variation in L2); Russian language
Affiliate Faculty
Matt Bribitzer-Stull
Specialties
Richard Strauss; music theory; German Romantic music traditions; french horn; Richard Wagner; theory pedagogy; nineteenth-century theory and analysis; musical form and tonal structure; musical associativity; chromatic harmony; queer theory and subjectivity
Siobhan Craig
Specialties
Fascist-era cinema in Italy and Germany; Italian Neorealism; new German cinema; monsters and hybrids; the cinematic body; literary and cultural theory after 1968: psychoanalysis, queer and feminist theories, post-modern theories of language and meaning, film theory
Kirsten Fischer
Specialties
Memoir and Memory Studies in 20th and 21st century; Autobiography; Colonial America, early US; Race and racial ideologies in early America; American Religious History; Religious Freethought
Sheer Ganor
Specialties
German-Jewish History; Displacement and forced migration; History and Memory; Diaspora Studies; Holocaust and Genocide Studies; Modern Germany; Reparations
Sarah Holtman
Specialties
Moral Philosophy; Kant's Practical Philosophy; Philosophy of Law; Political Philosophy
Michal Kobialka
Specialties
Eastern European theater; Literature; Theatre Historiography; Theatre History; Medieval Theatre; Avant-Garde Theatre and Drama
Bernard M. Levinson
Specialties
Jewish studies; history of interpretation; Hebrew Bible; Deuteronomy; cuneiform law; ancient Near Eastern studies; literary approaches to biblical studies; divine revelation
Dwight K. Lewis, Jr.
Specialties
History of Early Modern Philosophy; Philosophy of Human Difference (e.g., race, gender, sexuality, power, decoloniality, etc.); Philosophy of Race/Africana Philosophy; Social Political Philosophy; Underrepresented Philosophers; Critical Theory
Alice Lovejoy
Specialties
Film and media history and historiography; East European film, literature, and cultural history; Nonfiction and experimental film and literature; Geopolitics and political economy of media; Media technologies and materials; Transnational media histories; Film criticism and filmmaking
Mary Jo Maynes
Specialties
European social history; France; Germany; History of female labor in European textile industries; History of the family; Ireland; Women; Personal narratives; Autobiography; The family in global history; History of childhood, youth, girlhood
Michael Bennett McNulty
Specialties
Immanuel Kant; History and Philosophy of Science; History and Philosophy of Mathematics and Logic; Early Modern Philosophy; Philosophy of Sport
Karen Painter
Specialties
music and politics; music criticism; Jewish studies; social history; German and Austrian history; implicit bias and racism; Chinese music
Daniel Philippon
Specialties
ideas of nature, culture, and place; environmental literature, history, and ethics; human dimensions of conservation biology; food studies and sustainability
Joachim Savelsberg
Specialties
Sociology of Knowledge, Memory & Representations; Law, Crime & Punishment; Human Rights; Comparative; Theory
Andrew Scheil
Specialties
Old English language and literature; literatures and cultures of late antiquity and the early Middle Ages; medieval Latin literature, Celtic and Germanic languages and literatures; Middle English literature and Early Modern/Renaissance literature; folklore and folktales; oral tradition; traditions of exegesis, historiography and geography in the Middle Ages; science-fiction, fantasy, and horror literature/media; reception of classical and biblical literature
JB Shank
Specialties
European Intellectual and Cultural History; The Cultural History of Modern Science; European Thought and Culture before 1850; The "Scientific Revolution," Enlightenment Science, and Newtonianism; Old Regime Society, especially in France and Italy; The History of Silicon Valley
Igor Tchoukarine
Specialties
Modern Europe; Central and Southeastern Europe; Travel and Tourism
Christophe Wall-Romana
Specialties
French cinema; Science and Technology Studies; Media history; Modern French poetry; Silent cinema; Modern French philosophy and theory; 19th- & 20th-century French literature and thought
Meyer Weinshel
Specialties
Modern Yiddish Literature and Culture; German & Austrian Jewish Culture, 18th Century-Present; Translation, Migration, and Multilingualism; Endangered Languages & Language Revitalization; Queer Studies; Archival Studies and Practice
Peter Wells
Specialties
material culture; visual representation; central Europe; culture contact; European prehistory; frontiers; Iron Age; late prehistory; Roman and early medieval periods; Roman Europe; identity; ancient Germans; ancient Celts
Emeriti Faculty
Poul Houe
Specialties
Cultural history and criticism; Danish language; European humanism; Modern Danish and Swedish literature; Scandinavian literature; Travel and exile literature
Gary Jahn
Specialties
Computer technology in language teaching and acquisition; History of Russian literature: origins through 19th century; Tolstoy; Computer technology in literary study
Rick McCormick
Specialties
Brecht; Feminism; Film and cultural history; Film studies; German film history; Nazi cinema; Post-WWII German cinema: New German Cinema, GDR cinema, feminist cinema; Post-WWII West German literature and culture; Weimar film and culture; German-Jewish studies; Films by German and Austrian emigres/exiles
Charlotte Melin
Specialties
Environmental humanities; Foreign language education and program direction; Post-war German poetry; German-American literary relations; Second language acquisition; Translation (theory and practice)
James Parente
Specialties
Early modern German, Dutch, and Nordic literatures and cultural history; Neo-Latin literature, especially drama; Transnational literary history, 1400-1800; Early modern prose; Afterlife of classical antiquity
Ray Wakefield
Specialties
Dutch; Manuscript culture; Medieval German literature; Medieval mystics; Print culture; Second-language acquisition
Monika Zagar
Specialties
Scandinavian women writers; Norwegian language and literature; Modernism in Scandinavia; Knut Hamsun and Dag Solstad; Feminist theory; Contemporary Norway
Jack Zipes
Specialties
children's tales; critical theory of the Frankfurt School; fairy tales for children; German literature; Germany, GDR; Jewish studies; storytelling; the Brothers Grimm