German Program
From the Chair Professor David Pan Those of you who have been following our German program are perhaps familiar with the work of Rebecca Schuman, one of our recent Ph.D.s who has made a career as a journalist covering academia, and in particular its dismal job market, for Slate magazine. As uncomfortable as it has been to see one of our most promising graduates turn her back on academia, we have been nevertheless impressed with her subsequent publishing career. This past year we were pleased to have her support (link) for our upcoming efforts to revitalize graduate education by implementing UCI’s 5+2 fellowship program. Coming after her recent pessimism about the job market, we were gratified to hear this vote of confidence, and we will certainly look forward to hearing more from her at the upcoming GSA in a roundtable concerning the future of graduate education in German. As she has documented in her articles, the academic job market has indeed been disappointing for recent graduates. While tenure-track openings have yet to recover from the economic crisis, departments are increasing their reliance on non-tenure stream positions to meet their staffing needs. This shift toward teaching faculty has translated, however, into an increase in opportunities, stability, and responsibilities for those positions, evident in the experiences of our own graduates. While many of our recent PhDs are now tenure-track professors, we have an equally accomplished group who have distinguished themselves - continued -
in stable, non-tenure stream positions in their institutions. As they continue to take over expanding responsibilities, the status, compensation, and stability of their positions increases. Moreover, their success indicates that there remains strong interest in German and that we should continue to develop ways to meet and encourage that interest in our programs. To support graduate education in German and the profession at large, we have now shortened our time to degree for PhDs to 5 years through earlier mentoring toward the dissertation, a revised exam structure, and increased funding for students, particularly in the summers. At the same time, we are combining the shorter time to degree with an enhanced commitment to support our graduates’ careers following the PhD. Students finishing within the 5 (or in some cases 6) year timelines, will be offered real and meaningful employment as visiting assistant professors for up to two years after graduation to help them compete in the job market. In addition, recognizing the variety of careers available to our graduates, we are developing a new M.A. program in European Intellectual and Cultural History as well as a mentoring program that is oriented toward conventional as well as alternative academic and non-academic career paths. Beyond the graduate program we have been working hard to promote German language and literature in southern California. We hosted several AATG events on campus, including a presentation this past year by AATG President Mohammed Esa. We were also very gratified at the success of our first Southern California High School German Day (see article in this newsletter), at which we oversaw over 450 local German students in a variety events and presentations. In addition, our new Program in International Engineering, jointly established with the School of Engineering and beginning this coming fall, has already led to increasing language enrollments. We welcomed to our teaching staff Philip Broadbent, Sanaz Rezai, Cornelius Ludwig, and now Katarina Winzeler. We have also been expanding our relationships with other departments and disciplines in our recent lectures and conferences. In addition to hosting a special symposium on “Europe after Charlie Hebdo” and an international conference on “World War I as Crisis of Universalism,” we heard lectures from Karen Feldman (UC Berkeley) on Heidegger and Arendt, Marc Crépon (École Normale Supérieure, Paris) on Romain Rolland and Stefan Zweig, and Min Zhou (Shanghai International Studies University) on Chinese and Western Values. We are also very excited that Crépon will be returning in Spring 2016 to teach a graduate seminar in the department on Poetic Deconstructions of Sovereignty: Derrida, Celan, Levinas. The activities of our faculty, students, and alumni speak for themselves (see for yourself below), demonstrating not only their energy but also the vitality of German studies. The shifting job market has not limited but expanded the range of opportunities for our graduates, indicating new ways in which our institutions are moving to properly compensate and recognize the talent, creativity, and commitment of Cash Bar Arranged by the German those who contribute to our field. Graduate Program at the David T. Pan Chair Department of European Languages and Studies
University of California, Irvine from 7 p.m. to 8:15 p.m. Saturday, January 9th, 2016 J.W. Marriot Austin In Austin, Texas We will be meeting at the Brazos Room!
New Initiatives New 5+2 German PhD Program! The UCI German Graduate Program is excited to announce our new 5+2 PhD program, a funding model that provides full financial support for each academic year, and the summers in between, to graduate students who complete the PhD in five years. We have restructured our curriculum and the milestones to degree, as well as the mentoring and advising program, to make the program both feasible and academically rigorous. Upon completion of the PhD degree in the allotted time, graduates will be eligible for up to two years of full-time employment in the UCI School of Humanities as Assistant Adjunct Professors, which entails a lower teaching load than most lecturer positions, allowing time to pursue research and other professional activities. This can be a tremendous advantage for young German Studies scholars, helping them to succeed in a highly competitive academic job market while they gain further and varied university teaching experience. See the recent article in Inside Higher Ed (click here). For further information please contact Professor Gail Hart at gkhart@uci.edu.
Moving Ahead with an MA in European Thought & Culture The German Program, together with faculty within the Department of European Languages and Studies, is proceeding with the approval process of a new Masters in European Thought and Culture. We intend to begin recruitment in Fall of 2016. The objective of this program is to train students in interpreting and writing about cultural products (literature and the arts) and philosophical texts (broadly speaking, including works in political theory, the history of science, and theology) from the European tradition. This training has three goals: (1) attentiveness to the formal structures and languages in which ideas are expressed; (2) location of ideas in larger historical contexts, be they social, economic, or political institutions, cultural developments, or in conversation with other ideas; (3) exploration of ideas and texts that are crucial for understanding the formation of modern critical theory. The program will also emphasize the legacy and transformation of this tradition, in both recent developments in the broad area of “literary and critical theory� and in colonial, postcolonial, and other nonEuropean contexts. This exciting new terminal MA will prepare students either to pursue non-academic positions that will benefit from post-graduate training or to strengthen their applications and background for further academic programs (PhD or professional schools).
Watch Out! UCI German Launches PIE This summer the Program in German and the Henry Samueli School of Engineering have begun recruiting undergraduates for participation in the new Program in International Engineering (PIE). Acknowledging that Engineering is a truly global profession and that experience abroad offers students a decided competitive advantage in their careers, we have established a program that moves the campus definitively toward the internationalization of education. Key components of the program include: v a full double major in German and Engineering; v at least a semester of education abroad at a German university; v an internship with a German firm. Building on similar (and very successful) programs at the University of Rhode Island and the University of Connecticut, PIE at UCI is the only such opportunity for students at a UC campus.
Recent Events Professor Karen Feldman (UC Berkeley) Lectures on “Big Stories: Heidegger, Arendt, and the Plot of Modernity” in “Community after Europe”- Lecture Series The UCI German Program and the Department of European Languages and Studies welcomed Professor Karen Feldman (German, UC Berkeley) to UCI in October 2014, as the inaugural speaker in our “Community after Europe” Lecture Series. The author of the well-received Binding Words: Conscience and Rhetoric in Hobbes, Hegel, and Heidegger (Northwestern, 2006), Feldman is interested in theorizing what “a book can do” and thus in how “reading and criticism” and representation “operate in the world.” Having published widely in leading journals in the U.S., including MLN, the Cardozo Law Review, Philosophy and Rhetoric, and the Journal of the History of Ideas, and in collections in Germany and France on Kant and Hegel through Benjamin, Arendt, and Heidegger as well as on Adorno, Derrida, and Judith Butler, Feldman was well positioned to educate us about the notoriously difficult thought of Martin Heidegger in conversation with the political theorist and philosopher, Hannah Arendt in her lecture, “Big Stories: Heidegger, Arendt, and the Plot of Modernity.” A full room of students and faculty from across the campus was treated to an elegant investigation of two modes of emplotting history, on the one hand, Heidegger’s Seinsgeschichte with its implicit categories of historical necessity, and, on the other, Arendt’s attempt to introduce the possibility of ‘newness’ and the unprecedented into historical thinking. The extremely lively debate that followed in the Q and A testified to the boldness of her thesis.
International & Interdisciplinary Conference on First World War at UCI Etienne Balibar, Annette Becker, Russell Berman, and Susan Grayzel were among twenty-three national and international scholars who gathered on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the beginning of the First World War at UCI. Organized by the Department of European Languages and Studies, the conference “Europe & the World: World War I As Crisis of Universalism” brought together researchers from China, Europe, Russia, and the United States to discuss the continued significance and impact of the First World War on the 20th and 21st century. From December 4 th to 7th, 2014, historians, literary scholars, and political scientists presented papers on a wide range of topics. Annette Becker (University of Paris West, Nanterre) shed light on a long neglected aspect of the First World War, the repeated military targeting of civilians, Nicolas Mariot (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Paris) reconstructed how the French Bourgeoisie of the Belle Époque “discovered” in their social encounters in trenches the ordinary people of France, and Georges Van Den Abbeele (UCI) analyzed how in the case of Belgium stories of atrocities against civilians shaped ideas of national identity. Susan Grayzel (University of Mississippi) followed the story of the civilian body to postwar Imperial Britain and France to demonstrate how the anticipation of aero-chemical attacks against civilian populations in future warfare led to the emergence of civil defense movements in the 1920s and 30s. Frank Biess (UC San Diego) offered a comprehensive narrative of how the violence of the First World impacted the conflicts of the 20th century. Central to the conference became the question of how this history of Europe’s violence, destruction and hegemony related to the European cosmopolitan project with its universalist and emancipatory aspirations. Kevin Olson (UCI) delivered a genealogy of the concept of universalism and Ekaterina Romanova (Lomonosov Moscow State University click here for CV), Emily Rosenberg (UCI), John Kim (UC Riverside), and Wang Ning (Tsinghua University, Beijing) explored how such universalists claims conflicted with the global realities of imperial claims, racists assumptions, and colonial and anti-colonial violence. How the war transformed concepts of sovereignty (David Pan, UCI), shaped the role of public intellectuals in society (Russell Berman, Stanford University), and ended what Etienne Balibar (Columbia University) called provocatively “the European Manifest Destiny” were only a few of the questions that will continue to preoccupy discussion of the legacy of the First World War. Thanks to David Pan’s great organizational leadership and widespread support from on-campus and off-campus resources, including the Telos-Paul Piccone Insitute, the French Embassy, and the German Consulate in Los Angeles, this conference became a great (and well-attended) success. The conference papers are currently being edited for publication. For more complete information, including videos of some of the lectures, check the European Languages and Studies website.
Europe after Charlie Hebdo Following the terrorist attacks on the French magazine Charlie Hebdo in January 2015, Eve Morisi, Assistant Professor in the French program, and Anke Biendarra co-organized a symposium and forum on the topic “Europe after Charlie Hebdo” on February 2. Colleagues from across the campus, among them Luis Avilés (Spanish & Portuguese), Laura Klein (French), Cecelia Lynch (Political Science/International Studies), Zlatina Sandalksa (Russian), Gregory Shaffer (Law), and ELS’s own David Pan and Anke Biendarra presented their reflections on the Paris events and their repercussions for the European project. The event was well attended by both students and faculty. The presentations generated lively discussions among the audience and provided a welcome opportunity to reflect on a number of important issues. David Pan’s contribution is available by clicking here.
First Southern California German Day at UCI! In February 2015, UCI German organized and hosted the first-ever southern California German Day for area high school students! 460 students from twelve SoCal schools participated in events such as a German scavenger hunt, spelling bee, trivia game, and poetry slam, as well as workshops on German rock and pop music, German regional cultures, German fairy tales, studying abroad in Germany and Austria, and what it’s like to study German in college. Special thanks to our undergraduate majors and our Ph.D. students for all their help in creating and hosting the events, and to Liz, Bindya, Suzanne and their student assistants for their amazing work with logistics, organizational details and creating materials for the teachers and students. It was fantastic to meet and get to know our SoCal German teachers and students, and we’re already looking forward to the next German Day event in early 2016!
Professor Marc Crépon (Philosophy, École Supérieure, Paris) Speaks on “The Trial of Hatred” In April of 2015, European Languages and Studies welcomed to the campus Marc Crépon, a member of the National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS, Husserl archives), Chair of the Philosophy Department of the École Normale Supérieure (ENS, Paris) and Director of the Graduate School of Letters and Science of the ENS. Crépon specializes in French and German philosophy (18th to 20th centuries) and contemporary moral and political philosophy, with a focus on the subjects of language, community, and violence. His publications, which are translated into ten languages, include: Les Promesses du langage, Benjamin, Rosenzweig, Heidegger (2001); Nietzsche, l’art de la politique de l’avenir (2003); Terreur et poésie (2004); Langues sans demeure (2005); Altérités de l’Europe (2006); La culture de la peur, identité, sécurité, démocratie (2008); La guerre des civilisations (2010); Le consentement meurtrier (2012); Élections, de la démophobie (2012); The Thought of Death and the Memory of War (2013) and La vocation de l’écriture, la littérature et la philosophie à l’épreuve de la violence (2014). Crépon lectured to a packed audience of undergraduates, graduate students, and faculty from across the campus on Romain Rolland’s and Stephan Zweig’s writings from the fall of 1914 in the context of WWI, the 100th anniversary of which was marked by conferences and exhibits worldwide. Among the multiple legacies of war, one of the most brutal is the spreading of hatred in both the hearts and minds of soldiers and among civilians. But, as Crépon showed, such hatred is never spontaneous. Rather it is part of a “culture of fear” and a “culture of the enemy,” which constitute the first and most daunting challenges facing those who do not only want to make peace heard, but also let it have a future. The talk followed the line of thought developed in Crépon’s The Thought of Death and the Memory of War (2013), where he studies what he calls the mark of the “memory” and “the seal of war” during the twentieth century as it continues to impact our collective forms of judgment and philosophical thinking, of living (and dying) together in the 21st century. Crépon’s visit was co-sponsored by the Office of the Dean of Humanities, the Humanities Commons, the Department of Philosophy, and the Critical Theory Emphasis.
Marc Crépon will be returning to UCI’s Department of European Languages and Studies as a distinguished Visiting Professor in the Spring of 2016 to teach a graduate seminar on “Writing against Violence: Poetic Deconstructions of Sovereignty (Derrida, Celan, Levinas).”
Lecture by Professor Min Zhou, “Under Non-Western Eyes: Chinese Values & Western Values in a 21st-Century Media Ecology On May 4, 2015, Professor Min Zhou from the Shanghai International Studies University spoke about China’s recent moves to restrict the dissemination of “Western values,” suggesting that they are both a remnant of the 20th century imaginary line between West and East and a symptom of a new worldwide global fragmentation. She laid out the ways in which every media environment contains its own unique memory terrain of knowledge and power, indicating, for instance, the ways in which the West includes harsh criticisms of its own history and values but also has its own forms of censorship. She also pointed to the heterogeneity of the Chinese tradition, which includes Marxism as a Western import but has also been integrating Confucianism into the Party’s ideological selfunderstandings. In placing the Chinese opposition to Western values within a larger global trend away from democratization, she also laid out a vision of an “internationalized community of academic cosmopolites” who move from one cultural context to another yet are not defined by any particular one and would be able to address transnational crises such as climate change and environmental degradation. Jeff Wasserstrom from History, James Steintrager from English, and Feng Wang from Sociology provided context and commentary following Min Zhou’s remarks, and the presentation brought together an engaged group of students and faculty from across the campus.
AATG Talks In April 2015, Julia Ibold, the regional representative for the Zentralstelle für das Auslandsschulwesen in Los Angeles, gave a presentation about “Film im Deutschunterricht.” The second presentation was by Jaime Roots, graduate student in the German program of the Department of European Languages and Studies. Jaime gave a presentation on “Teaching Goethe's Faust for the Intermediate-Level German Language Classroom.” The final presenter was Jennifer Gerlach of Whittier High School, who spoke about “TPR Storytelling” and included many practical tips and handouts. The second AATG meeting took place in October. Anke Biendarra had invited current AATG President Professor Mohamed Esa of McDaniel College, who offered a very well received workshop on the topic of “Märchen im Deutschunterricht.” Mohamed Esa’s visit was co-organized with the AATG San Diego and supported by the AATG, Zentralstelle für das Auslandsschulwesen, and the German program.
Faculty News Anke Biendarra Professor Anke Biendarra is in Berlin where she serves as the Faculty Director for the University of California Education Abroad Programs in Northern Europe for 2015-17. In this capacity she oversees the academic programs in Germany, Denmark, and Sweden. Being based in Berlin and the literary center of Germany will benefit research for her book with the working title The European Imaginary in Contemporary German-Language Literature. The study focuses on contemporary prose texts of both ethnic German and transnational language writers and their configurations of European cultural identity and citizenship. A book chapter on “Cultural Dichotomies and Lived Transnationalism in Recent Russian-German Narratives” appeared with Camden House (Transnationalism in Contemporary German-Language Literature, eds. Elisabeth Hermann, Carrie Smith-Prei, and Stuart Taberner, 2015), and an article on the European memories of the 1990s Balkan Wars is forthcoming. Anke also presented her work at the GSA and PAMLA in 2014 and gave invited lectures at York University, Portland State University, and West Los Angeles College. For the GSA in Washington, D.C., she co-organized a seminar on the topic “Assessing the Eastern Turn” in Literature” that will bring together colleagues from Europe, Canada, and the U.S. A publication of the seminar proceedings is planned. In 2014-15, Anke served as AATG President for the Southern California chapter and organized numerous workshops and meetings while continuing to serve as Undergraduate Director for German.
Kai Evers Professor Kai Evers is the director of the German graduate program and the director of the European Studies program. His research develops a new prospective account of Weimar culture and politics that challenges teleological accounts of German cultural history. Rather than looking back at the 1920s and 30s for the sole purpose of retracing and explaining the emergence of Nazi Germany, the Second World War, and the Holocaust, his study focuses on the question how artists, scientists, politicians, militaries, and the public at large anticipated their own, not yet known future during the Weimar years. This study explores in particular how these different groups and discourses sought to prepare society for an already looming war generally expected to be decided by perceptiondefying aero-chemical attacks. Aspects of his current research will be presented at the 2016 European Social Science History Conference in Valencia, Spain. Together with the historians Frank Biess (UC-San Diego) and Arnd Bauerkämper (FU Berlin) he is planning for fall 2016 a workshop on “German Past Futures in the 20th Century.”
Gail Hart Professor Gail Hart will be substituting for Kai Evers as Graduate Advisor this Fall and Winter during Kai's sabbatical. Additionally, she has co-organized the GSA Family and Kinship network's "Alle Menschen werden Schwestern" series on sisters, nuns, and incest. Her paper follows the flickering presence of Gottfried Keller's sister in autobiography and fiction. Her paper for the 2014 conference was "Children and the Sandman: Subjects and Objects in Interspecies Conflict." Her graduate seminar this past winter, "German Freedoms" examined the concept of freedom in the German tradition with assistance from celebrity guests Jeffrey High (Schiller) and Peter Meilaender (Gotthelf). She continues to lecture in UCI's Humanities Core Course (War) on Ruth Kluger's autobiography, the Rape of Nanking, "war gum" cards, and Max Brooks' World War Z. She has expanded her participation in UCI's Uteach Program, and now assists the director. Uteach mentors undergraduates who then teach a 1-credit course on a topic they propose. In late July, the US Government (via CMS) issued her a Medicare card.
Glenn S. Levine Professor Glenn Levine is the German language program director, responsible for coordinating the lowerdivision curriculum and working with the teaching assistants and lecturers teaching in the program. He also offers courses in applied linguistics and language pedagogy, as well as in Germanic linguistics, German-Jewish literature and history, German and European culinary history, and German for the professions. This year he published “The Discourse of Foreignness in U.S. Language Education” in the volume, Transforming Postsecondary Foreign Language Teaching (Janet Swaffar & Per Urlaub, eds., Springer) and “A Nexus Analysis of Code Choice during Study Abroad and Implications for Language Pedagogy” in the volume, Multilingual Education: Between Language Education and Translanguaging (Jasone Cenoz & Dirk Gorter, eds., Cambridge UP). He also co-authored two works with one current and one former UCI German grad student: with Jaime W. Roots, “Performing Poetry in the Foreign Language Classroom: Pedagogical and Language Program Issues” will appear in the volume, Integrating the Arts: Creative Thinking about FL Curricula and Language Program Direction (Lisa Parkes & Colleen Ryan, eds., Cengage); and with Kurt Buhanan, “Woher und wohin? Twenty-Six Years of Die Unterrichtspraxis/Teaching German” will appear in the volume Taking Stock of German Studies in the United States: The New Millennium (Carol Anne Constabile-Heming & Rachel Halverson, eds., Camden House). The latter volume will be released at this year’s GSA conference. In teaching, the highlights of the year included the School-of-Humanities-wide graduate language teaching methods seminar as well as a graduate seminar on “Language Learning with Digital Media” with participants from German, Spanish & Portuguese, East Asian Languages and Literatures, and Education. That course was also enlivened by a virtual class visit by renowned applied linguist Steve Thorne. In the summer, Professor Levine also had the honor and pleasure of teaching at the Middlebury College German Summer School, a seven-week immersion program known for its strict Spracheid which students and faculty follow in and outside the classroom. At Middlebury he taught the level 4 Sprachkurs and Literaturkurs for a phenomenal group of students from around the continental U.S., Puerto Rico, and Russia.
Jane O. Newman Professor Jane O. Newman is a member of the Departments of Comparative Literature and European Languages and Studies and was Chair of the European Languages and Studies in 2014-15. She splits her research and teaching time between two fields, Renaissance and Early Modern Europe (1500-1700) and the reception of the political thought and culture of pre and early modernity in the early 20th century (particularly in Germany and France) by, among others, Hannah Arendt, Erich Auerbach, Walter Benjamin, and Martin Heidegger. She taught a graduate course, “Worlding: Existential Phenomenality,” in the Fall of 2014 and convened a UC-Humanities Research Institute-sponsored Faculty Research Seminar in Winter, 2015, on “Phenomenality, Poeisis, and the Creature” for the UCI Group for the Study of Early Cultures. During 2014-15, she completed essays on the afterlife of the Treaty of Westphalia (1648) in the theater of Andreas Gryphius, on the 1948 celebrations of the Treaty’s 300th anniversary in France and Germany, and on early modern mercantilism and Jean Racine’s play, Bérénice (1670), as well as an essay on translation theory for the forthcoming MLA volume on Teaching Approaches to Translation Studies. Her “Response” to Andrew Cole’s The Birth of Theory (2014), “The ‘German’ Origin of the Birth of Theory,” will be appearing in a forum on Cole’s book in PMLA, and her new translation of twenty of Erich Auerbach’s essays, Time, History, and Literature: Selected Essays of Erich Auerbach, James I. Porter, Ed. (Princeton UP, 2014) will appear in paperback in 2016. During 2014-15, Newman gave lectures on Gryphius, readings of Augustine by Arendt, Auerbach, Blumenberg, and Heidegger, and Auerbach’s Montaigne at the Free University (Berlin), Indiana University (Bloomington), and the MLA; she was also a keynote speaker at the FNI (Frühe Neuzeit Interdisziplinär) at Vanderbilt University. Newman was named the M.H. Abrams Fellow at the National Humanities Center (Research Triangle, North Carolina) for 2015-16, where she will be in residence working on her book, Auerbach’s Worlds: Early / Modern Mimesis between Religion and History. She is looking forward to speaking at a conference on Auerbach at the CUNY Graduate Center in Fall, 2015, as well as at the MLA (Austin) and the RSA (Boston).
David Pan In the past year David Pan has spent much of his time with Telos activities, publishing “Charlie Hebdo and Universal History” on Telosscope as well as “The Transformation of the NSA” in Telos. He edited and introduced a Telos special section on “Chinese Values and Western Values” and is editing and introducing an English translation of Ernst Jünger’s Sturm, which will be appearing in the fall of 2015 at Telos Press. He presented "Does Cosmopolitanism Have a Language?" at Tsinghua University, Beijing, in August 2014; “Europe’s Missing Sovereign: Immanuel Kant on the Relationship of Freedom to Political Representation” at the Telos conference in L’Aquila, Italy, in September 2014; "Reimagining History in the Nazi Era: Walter Benjamin, Gottfried Benn, and Ernst Bloch on Contemporaneity and Noncontemporaneity" at the MLA Convention in January 2015; and “Reconstructing Babel: Universal History, Particular Languages, and Google Translate” at the New York Telos conference in February 2015. He began as Chair of the Department of European Languages and Studies in July 2015 and continues to serve as book review editor at Telos and the Executive Director of the Telos-Paul Piccone Institute. He taught a graduate seminar on “Sovereignty in Early Modern Europe” last year and will teach a graduate course in Fall 2015 on “Hegel, Marx, and Nietzsche: Politics and Representation in Central Europe.”
John H. Smith It has been a time of co-organizing for John H. Smith, which is resulting in a number of events this coming year. First, he worked with Charlotte Lee and Lore Knapp on a conference at Cambridge University, England, on “Embedded Cognition in the Goethezeit” (September 13-15, 2015. Second, together with Fred Amrine (U Michigan) and Astrida Tantillo (U Illinois, Chicago), he has organized a seminar at the GSA, October 2-4, 2015, in Washington, D.C. For three days 20+ scholars will explore the topic, “Science, Nature, and Art in the Goethezeit and Beyond.” Finally, in addition to presenting at the upcoming MLA, he arranged for two panels through the Goethe Society of North America on “Cognition in/and the Goethezeit.” Essays on rhetoric and Hegel’s political philosophy, the mathematical infinite in Kant, dialectics, and Early German Romantics and religion are forthcoming.
German Program Lecturers Philip Broadbent Dr. Philip Broadbent joined the Department of European Languages and Studies in 2014 after moving to California from Austin, Texas. In this past year at UCI he taught accelerated German classes and a European Studies class on the politics and policies of the European Union. This fall term he will be teaching two German literature classes: one on uncanny encounters in German literature from the 18th century to the present and the second class that will explore the themes of love, loss, and madness in contemporary German literature.
Katarina Winzeler Katarina Winzeler completed her Master of Arts degree in Adult Education and German as a Foreign Language at the University of Leipzig in Germany. While a graduate student at Leipzig she was an assistant teacher for the Department of Adult Education, in which she designed, planned and implemented communication skills seminars for undergraduate-level students. Over the past 7 years she has worked for a GermanAmerican Exchange program.
Graduate Student Announcements Kierstin Brehm First year graduate student, Kierstin H. Brehm came to UC Irvine's graduate program in German Studies from a career position in the field of information technology. She was awarded the prestigious Dean's Fellowship from the School of Humanities. At the inaugural 2015 "German Day at UCI," an outreach event for SoCal high schoolers, she presented on the titillating topic, "German Pop, Rock and Hits" to over 120 students. She is an avid contributor to the German department's Facebook page (click here) adding fresh content including clever posts from around campus and across the US. Brehm's interest in broadcast media and transnational film projects led to a summer of "hands on" research within the belly of the beast, the Hollywood television and film industry. Gaining first hand insight to mainstream production culture, she participated as a background actor in productions such as the recently released motion picture Straight Outta Compton and the upcoming detective drama Rosewood. Her college radio program, "The German Radio Broadcast" is currently in its third year on-air at KUCI 88.9FM.
Patrick Carlson The 2014-2015 academic year had a pair of high-points for Patrick. In September he presented a paper at the annual German Studies Association meeting on Der Schweigende Stern, a science fiction film by DDR director Kurt Maetzig. In March, Patrick defended his dissertation prospectus on the representation of atomic weapons in Cold War German culture.
Matt Cooper This summer with the help of the Department of European Languages and Studies 2015 Summer Travel Award and a grant from Middlebury College Matt Cooper attended the Middlebury Intensive German Summer Program, which was quite intense as they were forbidden from using English for 7 weeks. He also spent some time travelling in Germany and writing his Masters Thesis.
David Lamme David Lamme received a BA in Anthropology and German from Southeast Missouri State University. During his studies, he participated in a year-long exchange program at Friedrich-SchillerUniversität Jena studying Deutsch als Fremdsprache, German literature, and applied linguistics. He completed his MA at New York University in the Humanities and Social Thought in 2011. Specializing in German philosophy and its connections to modern cultural theory and economy, much of his graduate work thus far has sought to put 19th and 20th century continental philosophy in conversation with contemporary life. His Master's Thesis, “The Graven Image: Truth, Self, and Identity in Max Frisch's I'm Not Stiller” ,examined Frisch's work as a model of non-identical self-conception. His current research continues to delve into issues at the intersections of theory, economy, and ecology.
Mo Rafi Mo Rafi gave a paper with the title: "Universal Ideology in the Great War: Germany's Role in the Formation of Iranian Nationalism" at the 2015 TELOS Conference in New York (NYU). Further, an article in German with the title: "Die deutsche Kulturarbeit und ihr Einfluss auf den iranischen Nationalismus" submitted to the University of Strasbourg Press' FAUSTUS Collection/Etudes Germaniques was accepted and will be published this year. Another article he originally published in 2013 with the title: "Re-Working the Philosophy of Martin Heidegger: Iran’s Revolution of 1979 and its Quest for Cultural Authenticity" with TELOS Scope was translated and republished into Norwegian for the journal KULTURVERK by Magne Stolpnessæter. Finally, he will be giving a paper in Washington D.C with the title: "Kulturimperialismus and Exceptionalism: Germany's Function in the Formation of Iranian National Ideology" at the Thirty-Ninth Annual German Studies Conference (GSA) in October 2015.
Jaime Roots Jaime Roots recently returned from a summer spent in Berlin on a DAAD research grant. While in Berlin, she completed a full draft of her dissertation on the effects of oral storytelling on collective memory and the influence of new media on the storytelling process. In June she was recognized as an outstanding TA in both the German Department and the School of Humanities. Along with Glenn Levine, she coauthored a chapter entitled “Performing Poetry in the Foreign Language Classroom: Curricular and Language Program Issues” which is forthcoming. In March she was selected for the Center for Engaged Instruction’s highly competitive Pedagogical Fellows program to train new and continuing TAs for the School of Humanities’ language programs. In October and November of 2014 she presented papers at the RMMLA entitled “Translating Orality: Laura Gonzenbach and Storytelling” and at ACTFL entitled, “The Wortkonzert as Language Play in the German Classroom.” She has also been working as an on-line materials developer for a new introductory German text book co-authored by Glenn Levine.
Graduate Student Alumni Jonathan Fine After a year teaching at Gettysburg College, Jonathan Fine has returned to Berlin as a Volkswagen Stiftung and Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow. For the 2015-2016 academic year, he will be affiliated with the Dahlem Humanities Center at the Freie Universit채t Berlin, where he will be revising his dissertation for publication. He has recently published articles in Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture and European Romantic Review.
Rose Jones Most recently, Rose Jones received a Lecturer Professional Development Grant to travel with the Legends of China Foundation to Beijing and Henan Province, China, to participate in the "Martial Arts and World Peace" trip with fellow staff, student, and alumni participants from UCI, UCLA, and Indiana State University. With her own martial arts background, she found training with monks at the Shaolin Temple and doing tai chi on the Great Wall of China, to be some of the most memorable highlights of her trip. Prior to this, in May she received her certificate in Diversity Management with 37 fellow UCI faculty and staff graduates of the Diversity Development Program. Headed by Prany Sananikone, Director of Diversity in the Office of Equal Opportunity and Diversity, this program is a bi-weekly, 10-session program that invites community leaders and experts in their fields to open up, introduce, and explore the various diversity-related topics that directly affect our university community. Both of these experiences will help Rose as she continues teaching the students whose first language is not English who populate her classes in the Program in Academic English/ESL, where she is currently a full-time Lecturer.
Friederike Kaufel Friederike Kaufel has just accepted a postition as Academic Coordinator in Academic English, UCI.
Jason Wilby Dr. Jason Wilby was recently promoted to Senior Lecturer of German at the University of New Mexico, where he has taught since 2008. He received the University of New Mexico Outstanding Lecturer of the Year Award for the 2014-2015 academic year. He was elected the President of the New Mexico / El Paso chapter of the AATG (American Association of Teachers of German).
Undergraduate Student News Mirasol Travel Award Once again we salute UCI alumna Kendra Leindecker Mirasol (BA, German 1988 and MBA, University of Chicago, 1993) who supported another travel award—the 2015-16 Mirasol Travel Award to Germany—with her generous gift and by making a 100% matching gift available from IBM, her husband’s employer. With Kendra’s support, thirty-seven students have enriched their education since the inception of her award in 2001-02. What a legacy she’s leaving the department! Recent winners: • 2015-16 - Jacqueline Ornelas: A major in Art History. She has been accepted to study abroad in Berlin at the Free University for Summer 2015. • 2014-15 - Olivia Schuetz: A major in European Studies and minoring in Management. She was accepted to study abroad in Berlin at the Free University for Fall 2014. Professor Glenn Levine with Alumna Kendra Leindecker Mirasol
German Best Essay Award This is to award students for excellent writing in German. The program awards 1 $250 award to a German Major or minor who is either continuing or graduating. The 2014 – 2015 winner was Graduating Senior Fardin ‘Fred’ Nawabi. When asked about his experience as a UCI major – I used to turn wrenches to fix cars, when I realized that there's more to life besides fixing cars. With hard work, focus and determination, I was able to turn pages of great books at UCI. At times I wanted to give up and quit school, but with a great family behind me and great professors at UCI who kept pushing me not to give up and continue with my journey was a true blessing. I was on the Dean's Honor roll three times in a row and won best German Essay Award. I accomplished all my goals thanks to my family, faculty and staff at UCI. I would like to thank Professors: John Smith, Anke Biendarra, David Pan, Kai Evers, Glen Levine, Patricia Seed, as well as other Professors I had. Also special thanks to Lisa, Erica and Liz. This is for Zach, Yasmin and Michelle.
Contact Information
Department of European Languages & Studies German Program 243 Humanities Instructional Building Irvine, CA 92697 Phone - 949.824.6406 Fax - 949.824.6416 german@uci.edu Website: http://www.humanities.uci.edu/els/german_index.php
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