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
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
Arsena Ianeva-Lockney
Specialties
German language: Intermediate and Advanced Levels, Business German; Medieval Studies: Medieval German Literature, The Icelandic Sagas; Norwegian Language: Beginning Level
Elizabeth Kautz
Specialties
Foreign language pedagogy and curriculum development; Academic technology; Virtual exchange; Content-based language instruction; Intercultural competency; TA supervision
Katerina Korola
Specialties
German and Central European Modernism; Modern and Contemporary Art; History of Photography; Film History and Theory; Environmental Humanities
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
Matthias Rothe
Specialties
Modernism; Aesthetics and Political Economy; Marxism; Political Theater and Theater History; DDR Kulturgeschichte
Hazel Rhodes
Specialties
Trans & Queer Studies; 20th-Cent. German Literature, Theater & Film; Modernism; Narrative Studies; Affect Studies
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
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
US social and intellectual history; Colonial and Revolutionary America; Women, gender, and sexuality in early America; Race and racial ideologies in early America; American Religious History; Cultural encounters in early America
Sheer Ganor
Specialties
German-Jewish History; Displacement and forced migration; History and Memory; Diaspora Studies; Holocaust and Genocide Studies; Modern Germany
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 Levinson
Specialties
Jewish studies; history of interpretation; Hebrew Bible; Deuteronomy; cuneiform law; ancient Near Eastern studies; literary approaches to biblical studies; divine revelation
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, implicit bias and racism, Jewish studies, social history, German and Austrian history, and 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
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
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
Faculty Emeriti
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; German studies; 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; Postwar 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