The View From Here Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures
Dear Friends of the Department, German language, literature and culture are in high demand at the University of Toronto, and our Department continues to be an important part of the University’s powerful humanities division, whose “enduring relevance” was recently highlighted in the President’s message. This year marks the 150th anniversary of the teaching of German at this distinguished institution. We invite you to join us in celebrating this special occasion through attendance at one of the many events we will be hosting. As in past years, our faculty and graduate students continue to excel in various capacities. They are awarded prestigious fellowships, such as the National Endowment of the Humanities Fellowship (John Noyes) or the Amilcare Iannucci Graduate Student Fellowship in the Jackman Humanities Institute (Marlo Burks). They also win prestigious grants, such as CGS Doctoral (William Ohm) as well as SSHRC Insight and SSHRC Connection grants (Anna Shternshis, both). The Department continues to offer undergraduate students research opportunities, which are reaping new benefits: Tobias-René Wilczek, a fourth-year undergraduate major in German Studies and Philosophy, won a University of Toronto Excellence Award for his research. Under his leadership, the German Studies Student Union also won a FAS Dean’s Student Initiative Grant enabling them to launch the undergraduate journal, Zeitgeist. We are thrilled to welcome Hang-Sun Kim as Assistant Professor, Teaching Stream, to our Department. While we had the pleasure of getting to know her in her role as Language Coordinator in a contractually limited position last year, this year we were able to offer her a permanent position. Learn more about her role on page 3. In addition, we celebrated important milestones in the careers of our colleagues: Christine Lehleiter was granted tenure and John Zilcosky was promoted to Full Professor. Due to the generous support of our alumni, emeriti and friends throughout the past year, we were able to provide our students with continuing opportunities to grow and excel. The continuing engagement of donors such as Ms. Bharati Mukherjee, profiled on page 5, is key in enabling us to create undergraduate and graduate scholarships and attract top students to our department. Please continue to keep financial and other forms of support in mind. I thank our readers for their interest in the Department and I hope everyone enjoys this latest newsletter issue. As always, we welcome your feedback, comments and ideas.
NEWSLETTER 2015/16 Rethinking the Undergrad Classroom Undergraduate Research Profile Our Growing Faculty German Theater Donor Profile Graduate Program Updates Graduate Research Profile Yiddish Program Events
Markus Stock Chair of Germanic Languages and Literatures Associate Professor of German & Medieval Studies
Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures University of Toronto 50 St. Joseph Street, 3rd floor, Odette Hall Toronto, Ontario M5S 1J4
www.german.utoronto.ca german@chass.utoronto.ca Tel: 416-926-2324 Fax: 416-926-2329
Rethinking the Undergraduate John Noyes, Professor of German Within the framework of various Faculty and University initiatives addressing undergraduate studies, our program has been redefining the classroom in innovative ways. In the context of teaching language, literature and culture, we have expanded sites of learning to also encompass the theatre, the workplace, and the archives, as well as integrating virtual resources available online. We find evidence of these innovations in Teaching Stream Professor Erol Boran’s adaptation of Günter Grass’ play “Hochwasser” for a cast of undergraduate thespians whose three performances last April attracted large and enthusiastic audiences. Doctoral candidate Andrew Warren, in turn, hosted the new Faculty-wide Explore-It initiative in his Introduction to German Literature course. This program enables current students to visit and observe recent graduates of the German Department at their workplace to discover the variety of transferable skills that emerge from a degree based in German language and culture. With funds awarded from the Germany-Europe Fund, undergraduate German major Tobias Wilczek
Classroom
was able to spend the summer in Berlin and Romania researching the works of Bertolt Brecht and Herta Müller. A grant from the University of Toronto Excellence Award in the Social Sciences and Humanities also supported his collaboration with me in the manuscripts division of the State Library, Berlin (see below). Over the past year we also introduced a twicemonthly Kaffeestunde, which all faculty and students of German are invited to attend. Many undergraduate students regularly availed themselves of this opportunity to come and speak German with other students and their professors while enjoying a light snack. We welcome readers of this newsletter to also join us this year. This Fall our ranks have also expanded to include a new teaching-stream hire, Professor Hang-Sun Kim, who is serving as Language Coordinator, responsible for articulating the language program at all levels. She is a graduate of U of T and Harvard, and brings a wealth of expertise in language pedagogy and literature to the department. We are most fortunate to have her join us: this year more students than ever are enrolling our undergraduate curriculum to acquire or expand skills in German language and culture, with enrollment for our Beginning German courses reaching record numbers!
A Certified “Stabi-Stöberer”
Tobias-Rene Wilczek, Undergraduate Student
Although the Humanities appear to be in a critical situation, when exploring funding opportunities in the discipline of German Studies, I was pleasantly surprised by what was available. As an undergraduate, I never expected to receive support to pursue independent research outside of my coursework. This summer, I was able to do precisely that, along with undertaking a Research Assistantship in Germany under the supervision of Professor John Noyes, with financial support from the DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service), the FAS Germany/ Europe Fund, and the University of Toronto Excellence Award (UTEA). My project drew upon transnational literary theory to study two exilic authors, Herta Müller and Bertolt Brecht, with an eye to the interactions between their respective writings and their use of visual collage. Studying the praxis of making such collages, involving cut-and-paste poems accompanied by collaged images, led to further insight into the philosophical framework of Herta Müller’s writings, particularly with regards to self-censorship. Both Brecht and Müller seem to have employed comparable methods of ‘appropriating’ of externally imposed methods of censorship, as I discovered when visiting literary archives such as the Bertolt-Brecht-Archiv of the Akademie der Künste in Berlin. This opened up an entirely different framework for learning than could the classroom. The UTEA award, for which I was nominated by Professor Noyes, enabled me to assist with his project of
translating Johann Gottfried Herder’s earliest essay, “Versuch über das Seyn.” My task was to transcribe the original, which was written in Kurrentschrift - an archaic form of handwriting distinct from modern German writing. Professor Noyes and I accessed the original manuscript in the Herder Nachlass (literary estate) at the “Stabi” or Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, which in itself was already a great privilege. There I was also able to partake in Schulungen (workshops) that expanded my research skills. In contrast to summer language study abroad, the pursuit of independent research offers direct insight into the working methods of literary scholars. Additionally, the time in Berlin and Bucharest facilitated immersion in specific environments in both cities, including most importantly their artistic and literary cultures. These opportunities have enabled me to put previously acquired theoretical knowledge into action and shown me the practical value and relevance of the humanities. This is in no small part attributable to the support and dedication of faculty and staff of the German Department at the University of Toronto.
Our Growing Faculty
Hang-Sun Kim, Language Coordinator and Assistant Professor of German, Teaching Stream
I am delighted to join the Department in the newly established position of Teaching-Stream Assistant Professor and Language Coordinator. The halls of Odette are very familiar to me, as it was here that I studied both French and German languages and literatures as an undergraduate and was inspired to pursue graduate studies. After my MA in German from the University of Toronto, I pursued doctoral studies at Harvard University, earning my PhD in 2012. My dissertation examines Hugo von Hofmannsthal’s literary representation of the crisis of authorship at the turn of the 20th century. It explores his fictional prose and poetological reflections, and the slippery relationship they reveal between the author and the medium of his art, the origin of the symbol, and the status of literature in an age of growing media competition. I have taught undergraduate, graduate students and adult learners elementary to advanced German at Harvard University, the University of Toronto and the Goethe-Institut Toronto. Whether my students are learning the difference between Sie and du, discussing a German film we’ve viewed without subtitles, debating the challenges and opportunities of renewable energies, or analyzing a short story by Kafka, I find teaching immensely rewarding at all language proficiency levels. I’m thrilled when students discover that a grammatical structure or even a single word can reveal a new intercultural perspective. That the acquisition of a new language opens doors to a whole new culture is something I’ve experienced firsthand, as a somewhat itinerant life has led me from South Korea to Germany, Canada and France.
Language courses play a crucial role in our fouryear undergraduate program, equipping students with the foundational speaking, listening, reading and writing skills needed for them to excel in diverse topic courses also taught in German. But beyond the university, our language courses advance the translingual and transcultural competencies that give students the confidence to travel, study, and work abroad in German-speaking countries. As Language Coordinator, I am responsible for the curricular planning of the language course sequence and I facilitate the design and scheduling of assignments and student assessments across our numerous course sections. I also provide guidance and pedagogical training for our graduate student instructors, and create a framework within which experienced language instructors can fine-tune their individual approaches. When I took up the position of Language Coordinator last year, I was very impressed by the vitality of the language program. It is a great pleasure to work so closely with a team of graduate student instructors who inspire enthusiasm for and interest in the German language and culture amongst our undergraduate students. It is in large part thanks to their serious commitment to teaching that our department attracts hundreds of students, many of whom decide to pursue majors and minors in German Studies. I look forward to continuing the lively exchange of ideas about language learning this year.
Enhancing the Student with German Theatre
Experience
Erol Boran, Associate Professor of German, Teaching Stream German-language theatre is becoming a tradition in our department — and it has the potential to go far! Within the city of Toronto, the former Deutsches Theater Toronto once boasted a longstanding tradition of exciting productions. The German Department at the University of Toronto has begun to fill the void that was created when the German Theater Toronto broke up in the early 2000s. First impulses came from graduate students who staged occasional theatre productions with undergraduates. I remember visiting a rehearsal of Arthur Schnitzler’s Der Reigen when I first came to Toronto in early 2006 for my job talk. It was a pleasure to see how the students interacted and to witness the level of energy the project inspired. I knew immediately that this place would be the right fit for me. Since then, I have also established a theatre production course within the undergraduate curriculum. GER340 premiered in 2010 with Friedrich Dürrenmatt’s Die Physiker staged at Alumni Hall. Two years later, with the help of a generous CRIF grant, we moved to the Ignatieff Theatre to stage Drakul( j)a, my own adaptation of Bram Stoker’s novel, with allusions to Bela Lugosi and the German vampire film tradition. For this year’s production, which seemed to anticipate Günter Grass’ death on April 13, I adapted Hochwasser, his absurdist play about humans and rats stranded together in a house during a flood of biblical proportions. As in Noah’s ark, the characters are presented in pairs. This structural feature proved
pedagogically effective, since each performer was able to rely on a partner to help practice dialogue and pronunciation, delve deeply into the text, and develop his/her character. It was a delight to see students begin to bond and work off of each other’s strengths. The only characters not presented in pairs were five rats, new characters of my invention designed to provide comic relief. The rat quintet worked with a local choreographer (a native German speaker) to embrace and embody their non-human side. Nine weeks of preparation for the three evening performances staged in the George Ignatieff Theatre on March 23, 24, and 25 proved highly rewarding for audiences and students alike. One participant in the Hochwasser production maintainted, “This was the best class in my university career.” On the challenge of performing in German, another student remarked: “I’m no longer afraid to make mistakes in German. For me, that’s the most important aspect.” Of course, graduate students enrolled in the Program in Literature, Culture, and Theory also regularly stage plays in collaboration with undergraduates. Next year, on the occasion of the German Department’s 150th anniversary, they will join forces with the students of GER340 in a production demonstrating how much theatre has become part of our department’s cultural program. Theatre not only enriches the student experience, it also attracts an audience from beyond the university community, bringing together all those with an appreciation for this dynamic living language. Website: http://erolaner.wix.com/theater-du
Ms. Bharati Mukherjee sponsors the
Tagore Scholarship For Language Students
My first acquaintance with the University of Toronto came about through auditing a French course whose first meeting fatefully took place the day after 9/11. I had just recently earned my Diplôme Supérieur in French from the Alliance Française in Paris, France, which had been challenging enough for me - someone first trained as a Barrister in England, and now in retirement, seeking to further expand my horizons. After I passed my French Examinations, I wanted to keep up my skills by continuing to attend French classes somewhere. The University of Toronto’s French, Italian and German Departments offered me a wide range of courses that I attended. My French and Italian classes inspired me to publish collections of essays in French and Italian. Both are currently used in Language Schools in India as reference books, offering reflections on nature, love, French and Italian poetry, drama and history, and my experiences as a native of India living here in the West. Given these joyful experiences, I asked myself how I might ever repay the University of Toronto for the generosity extended to me years earlier and more recently. I resolved this in 2012 by establishing a Scholarship for Language Study - the Tagore Scholarship, named after India’s Nobel Laureate in Literature, Rabindranath Tagore, who earned this distinction in 1913. My one stipulation was for the scholarship to rotate among all seven languages currently available for undergraduate study, so that all recipients might, at very least, have a reason to look up who R. N. Tagore was! In life, happiness and sadness are apportioned us in equal measure by the Almighty. An unbearable tragedy happened in my life last April when I lost my second son Rajeeb. He passed away within minutes after a heart attack. He was my rock, and a part of me died when he passed away so suddenly and so unexpectedly.
All I have left are my tears and the memories of our beautiful times together. As it happens, our last trip together in 2013 was to Munich’s Oktoberfest and to visit the iconic Neuschwanstein Castle, whose image precedes every Walt Disney movie. My son was a bright student who earned his undergraduate degree in Economics from the London School of Economics in the UK. Back in Toronto, he also successfully ran the Half Marathon in 2003, and the Full Marathon in 2006. I decided that a scholarship in his name for a student in the Economics and Commerce Faculties at the University of Toronto would be a wonderful way to keep Rajeeb’s memory alive. Beginning next year, a meritorious student in need will receive this scholarship, which has been set up in perpetuity. I look forward in this way to regularly meeting young students and sharing their dreams while they spend a few years at this prestigious university. I myself am currently a part-time student of inter alia German Language and Culture at the University of Toronto. Last year I studied intermediate German in GER200 and found Professor M. Hager’s classes amazing! I also enjoyed Professor Angelica Fenner’s classes on German films immensely; knowledge gained there aided me with my oral presentation for a fourth year history class (HIS437) that I audited this Spring with Professor Jim Retallack, reflecting how subjects like History, Languages and Literature are interconnected. My experience in my German classes also inspired me to give back: I am in the process of creating a new scholarship for the best fourth-year German student, commencing in 2016. All the classes keep me focused, and both my professors and my fellow students help me to cope with my ongoing grief at losing my dearest son Rajeeb who was, indeed, an angel from God.
Another Productive Year for our Graduate
Program
Stefan Soldovieri, Associate Professor of German
The most recent graduate of our Ph.D. program is Dr. Jason Lieblang, who successfully defended his PhD thesis, “The Representation of Masculinity in Crisis as a Problem: A Prologue and Five Essays.” We wish Jason continued success in his current position as Lecturer at the University of British Columbia. Another doctoral candidate, Nicola Vöhringer, embarked on a new career chapter as DAAD lecturer and Director of the DAAD Information Centre at the Tajik National University in Dushanbe, Tajikistan. Best of luck from all of us, Nicola! Our current cohort has once again successfully secured an array of funding from the Joint Initiative in German and European Studies (JIGES), Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS), School of Graduate Studies (SGS) and other organizations. We are extremely proud of all our award-winners, including Yasmin Aly, Lara Pehar, Veronika Rummel, and Anna Stainton. As well, Marlo Burks was the recipient of a highly competitive International Ontario Graduate Scholarship (OGS), one of only 21 university-wide. Will Ohm garnered a prestigious CGS SSHRC; and Teresa Sudenis a domestic OGS. Christin Bohnke, whose researches took her to Japan last summer, won a fellowship from the Japanese Society for the Promotion of Science and was also distinguished with the Zantop Award of the Coalition of Women in German. This year the Graduate Program Committee also led an initiative to reconfigure the comprehensive examination that serves as gateway to writing the PhD thesis. With feedback from students and faculty, an updated format is now in place that offers students increased flexibility in designing their own reading lists and is intended to facilitate and streamline the path to the thesis. This Fall, we have admitted another
A European
promising and enthusiastic cohort, whose intellectual interests are aligned with the research strengths of our distinguished faculty at the interfaces of literature, philosophy, cinema studies, and postcolonial/ colonial studies. We welcome Katharina Heinz, Vardit Lightstone, Robby Muff, and Bukurije Nimani-Gashi, as well as Ruth D’Souza, who is returning to complete her MA and enter the PhD program. The strike of Unit 1 teaching assistants in Spring 2015 was a trying time and highlighted a number of issues facing our graduate students. The ensuing university-wide dialogue on the state of graduate education and the challenges to the humanities has been necessary and is welcome. An open letter of support on the part of German faculty recognized the concerns of graduate students and the need for a continued conversation about the graduate experience. The Department as a whole is committed to improving the working and learning conditions for our graduate students and has formed a working group to address those issues still unresolved. I am hopeful that the dialogues initiated in the Department and within the University at large will lead to positive, tangible results. Finally, a word of thanks to our indefatigable and resourceful new Graduate Assistant, Helena Juenger, who hit the ground running last year and has quickly become indispensable to our program.
Perspective on German-Japanese Cultural Flows
Christin Bohnke, PhD Candidate
I came to Toronto in 2012 to pursue a PhD in German literature and culture. I had never been to Canada before and had only a vague idea that studying at a Canadian university would be fundamentally different from earning a degree in Germany. I quickly discovered that, while there are unique challenges to the Canadian university system (and to Canadian winters), the German Department’s resources enabled me to freely explore my interests in ways that would not have been possible in Germany. In my dissertation, I am examining the intersectionalities of race and gender as they manifest in cultural production, most
especially novels and films, emerging from a century of transnational flows between Germany and Japan. In the process, I also demonstrate how the German-Japanese context necessarily provokes new and productive readings of existing postcolonial theory. I started learning Japanese years ago while still a student in Berlin, intrigued by a language that looked and sounded so different from my own. I did not know back then that what started as a hobby would come to influence my work and research in a profound way. The more I learned about the language and the culture, the more interested I became in the cultural connections between my native country and Japan. This past summer I was able to continue my research on Germany and Japan as a Fellow of the Japanese Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS). Generous financial support from the JSPS, the Coalition of Women in German and the School of Graduate Studies of the University of Toronto enabled me to travel to Japan for a three-month residency at Rikkyo University in Tokyo, where I also accessed various archives and museums. My stay also proved truly transformational in reviving my interest in the Japanese language and my love for its arts and literature, most especially for kabuki, a unique form of Japanese theatre. Of course, I also spent my spare hours hunting for the best places to enjoy Japanese food. In 2011, I graduated with a Master’s degree in European Literature from the Humboldt University in Berlin. The fundamental questions pressing upon Europe at this time - its relations to others within and beyond its borders, as well as how European culture should shape its foreign policy - have never left me. In 2013, I had the honour of becoming a fellow of the Kolleg Europa for a three-year period. The Kolleg, an interdisciplinary community of researchers funded by the German Exchange Service and the Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes, enables a cadre of over one hundred fellows to meet regularly in different European cities to exchange ideas on the future of the European Union. As I enter my fourth year in the PhD program and begin considering options following the dissertation, I aim to pursue a vocation that combines my researches on Japan, Germany and Europe with my interest in arts and politics.
Al and Malka Green Yiddish
Program
Anna Shternshis, Al and Malka Green Associate Professor of Yiddish Last year, 13 students were enrolled in Elementary, Intermediate and Advanced Yiddish language courses. The Yiddish program is going strong, and is even busier in 2015-16, with a new undergraduate course designed specifically for German speakers - GER463. Graduate students will be able to take a similar course - GER1051Y - that prepares them to successfully pass a Yiddish Reading graduate test. This pilot program in North America will seamlessly integrate Yiddish studies into German graduate education. We have also welcomed two new graduate students planning to work in the field of Yiddish – Vardit Lightstone, who joins us from Hebrew University and our own Ruth D’Souza, who will enroll following completion of our MA program. Both students will also join the collaborative program within the Anne Tanenbaum Centre for Jewish Studies. In April 2015, the Department hosted its 8th Annual Symposium in Germanic Studies, this year devoted to Global Yiddish Culture in the historical years of 1938 – 1948. Co-hosted with the Anne Tanenbaum Centre for Jewish Studies, and co-sponsored by eight other departments, the Symposium was both very well attended and very well received. Co-organizers of the event, Professors Anna Shternshis, Doris Bergen, and Jeffrey Kopstein hosted both senior and emerging scholars from the United States, Israel and Europe.
Press coverage was provided by Yiddish and English Forwards, C a n a d i a n Jewish News and Russianlanguage media of Greater Toronto. Select papers will appear in a special issue of the leading journal East European Jewish Affairs. One conference highlight included a special concert prepared by the Russian-born poet and musician Psoy Korolenko in collaboration with Prof. Anna Shternshis – presenting rare, previously unknown Yiddish songs first recorded in the 1940s in the Ukraine. In collaboration with the Ashkenaz Festival and Miles Nadal Jewish Community Centre, the event was widely publicized and attracted over 250 people. Unfortunately, we also have very sad news to report: Ms. Malka Green, a devoted supporter and friend of the Program, passed away on June 21, 2015. We will never forget what the Green Family has done to support Yiddish at the University of Toronto – everything we do is owing to their generosity.
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SELECTED EVENTS 4 Feb 2016 | 2 p.m. | German Department Library Helmut Schneider (University of Bonn) 25 Feb 2016 | 2 p.m. | German Department Library Auditory Anxieties: The Sounds of German Literary Modernism Rolf Goebel (University of Alabama in Huntsville) 3 Mar | German Department Library Catriona MacLeod (University of Pennsylvania) 17-18 Mar 2016 Sports: Allure and Ethics. 9th Annual Toronto German Studies Symposium 2016 21 Mar 2016 | 4 p.m. Dovid Katz 24 Mar 2016 | 4 p.m. Ilija Trojanow 29 Mar 2016 | George Ignatieff Theatre 150th Anniversary Party of the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures
SPECIAL NOTE Canadians who haven’t claimed a donation tax credit since 2007 can take advantage of the new FirstTime Donors Super Credit. For your donation of $200 and under, you are eligible for a tax credit of 40% and for your donation of $201 to $1,000, you are eligible for a tax credit of 54%. Please consider this benefit when making your gift to the Hermann Boeschenstein Memorial Fellowship in German. Your gift postmarked before December 31, 2015 will be eligible for a 2015 income tax receipt. Faculty Editor: Angelica Fenner Graphic design: Helena Juenger Printed on eco-friendly paper