Curriculum Vitae
Education
Washington University-St. Louis: Ph.D., German, May 1997
Washington University-St. Louis: M.A., German, May 1992
Northwestern University: B.A., International Politics and German Studies, June 1989
Additional study and research at the Universities of Regensburg, Tübingen, and Cologne
Teaching Experience
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign: Professor, Germanic Languages and Literatures; affiliated with the Program in Comparative and World Literature, the Unit for Criticism and Interpretive Theory, the European Union Center, and the Center for Global Studies, 2017-present
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign: Associate Professor, Germanic Languages and Literatures; affiliated with the Program in Comparative and World Literature, the Unit for Criticism and Interpretive Theory, and the European Union Center, 2007-present
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign: Assistant Professor, Germanic Languages and Literatures, 2001-2007
Vanderbilt University: Assistant Professor of German, European Studies, and Comparative Literature, 1997-2001
College of Wooster: Instructor of German, 1997
St. Louis Community College: Instructor of German, 1993-1994
American Association of Teachers of German: Teacher, travel-study programs for
American high school students in Germany, 1991, 1992
Washington University-St. Louis: Graduate Teaching Assistant, German and English, 1991-1995
Awards and Distinctions
Awarded Research Cluster support for project Politics and Narrative: A Narratology of Populism, Illinois Program for Research in the Humanities, 2018-2019
Faculty Fellow in a Second Discipline, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, University of Illinois, 2016
Member, Board of Directors, American Friends of Marbach (Deutsches Literaturarchiv/German Literature Archive), 2016-2024
Member, Executive Committee on Eighteenth- and Early Nineteenth-Century German Literature, Modern Language Association, 2015-2020
Campus Workshop Facilitator, National Center for Faculty Development and Diversity, 2015-2017
DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service) Faculty Research Visit Grant, Berlin, 2015
Visiting Professor, Department of Literary Studies, University of Ghent, Belgium, 2014-2015
Faculty Coach, Faculty Success Program, National Center for Faculty Development and Diversity, 2014, 2015, 2016
Campus Nominee for National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Stipend, 2014
Finalist and Alternate, U.S. Fulbright Scholar Competition, 2014-2015
Mid-Career Faculty Release-Time Program Award (campus-wide competition), 2014
Dean's Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, 2009
Helen Corley Petit Scholar, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, University of Illinois, 2007-2008
James A. Hagan Teaching Fellow, LAS Teaching Academy, University of Illinois, 2006-2007
Dean's Teaching Fellow, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, University of Illinois, 2006-2007
Alexander von Humboldt Foundation Research Fellowship (nine months), awarded 2003
Fellow, Robert Penn Warren Center for the Humanities at Vanderbilt University, 1999-2000
Dean's Dissertation Fellowship at Washington University, 1996
DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service) award for dissertation research in Germany, 1995
Dean's Teaching Award at Washington University, 1995
Fulbright and Pädagogischer Austauschdienst Scholarships, 1989-1990
Farley Memorial Scholarship for Academic Excellence at Northwestern University, 1986-1989
Illinois State Scholar, 1985-1989
Publications
Books
Germany from the Outside: Rethinking German Cultural History in an Age of Displacement. Ed. Laurie Ruth Johnson. Series: New Directions in German Studies (ed. Imke Meyer). New York: Bloomsbury, 2022. Pp. 352. Paperback edition 2024.
Forgotten Dreams: Revisiting Romanticism in the Cinema of Werner Herzog. Series: Screen Cultures: German Film and the Visual (eds. Johannes von Moltke and Gerd Gemünden). Rochester: Camden House, 2016. Pp. 322. Paperback edition 2019.
Aesthetic Anxiety: Uncanny Symptoms in German Literature and Culture. Series: International Studies in Comparative Literature (ed. Alberto Martino). Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, 2010. Pp. 267.
The Art of Recollection in Jena Romanticism: Memory, History, Fiction, and Fragmentation in Texts by Friedrich Schlegel and Novalis. Series: Studien zur deutschen Literatur (eds. Wilfried Barner, Georg Braungart, Richard Brinkmann, and Conrad Wiedemann). Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 2002. Pp. 196.
Journal Issues
Editor, special issue of The German Quarterly, on "German Fairy Tales and Folklore in a Global Context." A crossover project with Die Unterrichtspraxis (ed. Angelika Kraemer). 94.2 (Spring 2021).
Editor, special issue of Seminar: A Journal of Germanic Studies, on “The New German Romanticism.” 50.3 (2014).
Articles/Essays
“Teaching Freud, Dora, and Fin-de-siècle Culture.” With Carl Niekerk. Options for Teaching German Literature and Culture of the 20th and 21st Century. Eds. David Kim and B. Venkat Mani. New York: Publications of the Modern Language Association. Forthcoming in 2024.
“On the Inside Looking Out: Fichte, the University, and the Psychopolitics of German Idealism.” Germany from the Outside: Rethinking German Cultural History in an Age of Displacement. London and New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2022. 61-83.
“Introduction.” Germany from the Outside: Rethinking German Cultural History in an Age of Displacement. London and New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2022. 1-10.
“Introduction: German Fairy Tales and Folklore in a Global Context.” With Angelika Kraemer and Carl Niekerk. The German Quarterly 94.2 (Spring 2021) 160-164.
“The Cinematic Afterlife of German Romanticism.” The Palgrave Handbook of German Romantic Philosophy. Ed. Elizabeth Millán. London and New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2020. 317-344.
“Fascism in the Classroom: Dark Arts in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.” Lessons from Hogwarts: Essays on the Pedagogy of Harry Potter. With Carl Niekerk. Eds. Marcie Panutsos Rovan and Melissa Wehler. London and New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2020. 121-135.
“Romantic Vision as Romantic History in Werner Herzog’s Invincible.” Estetica. Studi e ricerche 1 (2020) 25-41.
"Romantic Apperception in Werner Herzog's Documentary Cinema." Von der Idee zum Medium - Resonanzfelder zwischen Aufklärung und Gegenwart. Eds. Felix Lenz and Christine Schramm. Munich: Fink, 2019. 441-467.
"The Studies on Hysteria and the Haunted Past of Psychoanalysis." Ordnungen des Unheimlichen. Kultur - Literatur - Medien. Ed. Florian Lehmann. Würzburg: Königshausen und Neumann, 2016. 99-113.
"Toward a Psychological History of Philosophy: Kant's Dreams of a Spirit-Seer." PsyArt: Journal for the Psychological Study of the Arts 20 (2016) 69-83. Web.
“Prairie Tales: The Life of the Lecture at Illinois.” An Illinois Sampler: Teaching and Research on the Prairie. Eds. Mary-Ann Winkelmes and Antoinette Burton, with Kyle Mays. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2014. 49-53.
“The Conquest of Dreams.” The Werner Herzog Collection. London: British Film Institute, 2014.
“German Romanticism Renewed.” Seminar: A Journal of Germanic Studies. Special Issue on "The New German Romanticism."
50.3. (2014) 251-257.
“Documentary, Revisited. Claude Lanzmann’s The Last of the Unjust.” Days and Memory. A blog of the Initiative in Holocaust, Genocide, and Memory Studies – University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. March 2014. http://hgmsblog.weebly.com/
“Recovered Voices: Viktor Ullmann’s Der zerbrochene Krug (1942).” Heinrich von Kleist – Style and Concept: Explorations in Literary Dissonance. Eds. Christoph Zeller and Dieter Sevin. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2013. 325-337.
“Werner Herzog’s Romantic Spaces.” A Companion to Werner Herzog. Ed. Brad Prager. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012. 510-527.
“Das 'ewig ringende, nie seyende Sein.' Schelling und das Unheimliche.” Phantasmata. Techniken des Unheimlichen. Eds. Martin Doll, Rupert Gaderer, Fabio Camilletti, and Jan Niklas Howe. Vienna and Berlin: Turia + Kant, 2011. 241-257.
“The Curse of Enthusiasm: William Lovell and Modern Violence.” Violence, Aesthetics, Culture: Germany, 1789-1938. Eds. Carl Niekerk and Stefani Engelstein. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2011. 91-114.
“Uncanny Love: Schelling's Meditations on the Spirit World.” Image & Narrative 11.3 (2010) 64-86.
“Die Lesbarkeit des romantischen Körpers – Über Psychosomatik und Text in Fallstudien von Karl Philipp Moritz und Friedrich Schlegel.” Die Lesbarkeit der Romantik. Material, Medium, Diskurs. Ed. Erich Kleinschmidt. Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2009. 105-135.
“Reading the Excursus on Women as a Model of ‘Modern’ Temporality in Gottfried’s Tristan.” Reprinted in Classical and Medieval Literature Criticism (CMLC) 96. Detroit, New York, London: Thomson Gale, 2008. 153-158.
"Upload Now: On William Gibson's Spook Country." Kritik. The blog for the Unit for Criticism and Interpretive Theory at the University of Illinois. July 2008. http://unitcrit.blogspot.com/2008/07/upload-now-on-william-gibsons-spook.html
“The Romantic and Modern Practice of Animal Magnetism: Friedrich Schlegel's Protocols of the Magnetic Treatment of Countess Lesniowska.” Women in German Yearbook 23 (2007) 10-33.
“’Wozu überhaupt ein Anfang? Memory and History in Heinrich von Ofterdingen.” Reprinted in Nineteenth-Century Literature Criticism (NCLC) 178. Detroit, New York, London: Thomson Gale, 2007. 86-94.
“Enlightenment According to Don Alfonso: Perilous Progress in Mozart's Cosí fan tutte.” Practicing Progress: The Promise and Limitations of Enlightenment, eds. Richard E. Schade, Dieter Sevin, and Frank Trommler. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2007. 59-74.
“Dorothea Veit-Schlegel's Florentin and the Early Romantic Model of Alterity.” Monatshefte 97.1 (2005) 33-62.
“Psychic and Corporeal Displacement in Kleist's Die Familie Schroffenstein.” Kleists Erzählungen und Dramen. Neue Studien. Eds. Paul Michael Lützeler and David Pan. Würzburg: Königshausen und Neumann, 2001. 121-133.
“Geschichte als Erinnerungsfragment in der Philosophie Friedrich Schlegels.” Zeitenwende - Die Germanistik auf dem Weg vom 20. ins 21. Jahrhundert (Akten des X. Internationalen Germanistenkongresses, Wien 2000). Ed. Peter Wiesinger. Bern: Peter Lang, 2002. 201-206.
“Bringing Chaos Into the System: The Aesthetic Authority of Disorder in Friedrich Schlegel's Philosophical Fragments.” Disrupted Patterns: On Chaos and Order in the Enlightenment. Eds. Theodore E. D. Braun and John A. McCarthy. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2000. 119-133.
“‘Wenn man endlich selbst Briefe schreiben will, so vergesse man die Exempel’: The Construction of Imitation as Originality in C. F. Gellert's Epistolary Theory.” Wezel-Jahrbuch (Studien zur europäischen Aufklärung) 2 (1999) 97-114.
“‘Wozu überhaupt ein Anfang? Memory and History in Heinrich von Ofterdingen.” Colloquia Germanica 31.1 (1998) 21-36.
“Reading the Excursus on Women as a Model of 'Modern' Temporality in Gottfried's Tristan.” Neophilologus 82.2 (1998) 247-257.
Translation
English translation of "Die Nähe des Fremden," by Klaus Hoffer. World Literature Today (Norman: Oklahoma University Press, 1995) 517-520.
Lexicon Entries
"Germany, Austria, Switzerland: Romanticism and Life Writing." Encyclopedia of Life Writing: Autobiographical and Biographical Forms. Ed. Margaretta Jolly. London and Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers, 2001. 368-370.
"Heinrich Heine." Encyclopedia of Life Writing: Autobiographical and Biographical Forms. Ed. Margaretta Jolly. London and Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers, 2001. 420-421.
"German Poetry 1750-1850." With Carl Niekerk. Oxford Guide to Literature in English Translation. Ed. Peter France. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. 309-313.
Book Reviews in Monatshefte, The German Quarterly, German Studies Review, Women in German Newsletter, GDR Bulletin
Presentations, Lectures, and Workshops
“Walking the World in Peter Stamm's Weit über das Land," invited paper at the conference “VerfleCHtungen. Schweizer Literatur im transnationalen Kontext,” University of Lausanne, 2024
“The Sinister Promise of German Idealism,” German Studies Association Conference, 2023 (Seminar on “Playing in the German Dark: Our Relationship to the Canon’s Sinistry”)
“Options for Teaching German Literature for the 21st Century,” German Studies Association Conference, 2023 (invited contribution to a PMLA Roundtable)
“Aesthetics and Ethics in Photojournalism and Documentary on Armed Conflict,” invited paper at the conference “Against Exclusivity: New Aesthetics in Literature and Film,” University of Illinois-Chicago, 2021
“What’s Next? Pathways for Thriving After Tenure,” Professional Development Seminar for Faculty in the College of Media, University of Illinois, 2021
"Ethics or Emotion: Documentary and the Work of Empathy," German Studies Association Conference, 2019 (part of Seminar on "The Duty of Art: Ethics and Empathy in Aesthetic Theory")
“Get the Work-Life Balance, Mentorship, and Energy You Need,” Office of the Provost Workshop for Assistant Professors and Specialized Faculty at Illinois, 2018
"Impossible Memories," American Comparative Literature Association Conference, 2018
“‘Purebloods,’ Muggles, and Eugenics in the Harry Potter Series,” Harry Potter Association Forum (Undergraduate Student Group), Illinois, 2017
"Enraged Enlightenment: Disinterest, Passion, and Spectatorship," German Studies Association Conference, 2017
“How Will You Change the World?” lecture at College of Arts and Sciences Discovery Day, 2017
"Romanticism on Film," invited lecture at Clemson University, 2017
“Romantic Apperception in Werner Herzog's Documentary Cinema,” invited paper at the conference “Von der Idee zum Medium. Resonanzfelder zwischen Aufklärung und Gegenwart” (“From Idea to Medium: Resonances between the Enlightenment and the Present”), University of Bamberg, 2016
"The Art of Saying No," Core Curriculum Webinar, National Center for Faculty Development and Diversity, 2016
"'Am I Guilty?' Ethics and Aesthetics in Contemporary Documentary Films About Crime and Punishment," invited paper at the Midwest Symposium for German Studies, Indiana University, 2016
Invited workshops on "Writing Your Next Chapter," "Rethinking Mentoring," and "Writing, Procrastination, and Resistance" for faculty and administrators at Rutgers University, Dartmouth College, and Purdue University, 2016
"The Afterlife of Irony in Romantic Cinema," invited paper at the conference "Contextualizing Irony: Change and Continuity from the 18th Century to the Present," University of Illinois-Chicago, 2015
"Reenactment, Storytelling, and Ethics in The Act of Killing (dir. Joshua Oppenheimer, 2012)," Conference on "Ethics of Storytelling: Historical Imagination in Contemporary Literature, Media, and Visual Arts," University of Turku, 2015
“Animal Magnetism and the Haunted Past of Psychoanalysis,” Conference on “Das Unheimliche, Gespenstische und Spukhafte,” University of Bamberg, 2015
"Documentary and Romanticism," invited presentation for the German program, University of Ghent, 2015
"What Does Romantic Cinema Look Like?", invited presentation in the Department of Literary Studies, University of Ghent, 2015
"Imagining Germany," invited presentation for Notre Dame in London program, 2014
"Forgotten Dreams: Werner Herzog's Romantic Cinema," invited public lecture in the Diefenbaker
Lecture Series "German Studies in the 21st Century," University of Waterloo, 2014
“Werner Herzog's Romantic Vision,” German Studies Association Conference, 2013
“Forgotten Dreams: Werner Herzog’s Documentary and the Lost Past of German Romanticism,” Society for Cinema and Media Studies Conference, 2013
“Nationalism and German Idealism: Fichte and Humboldt on the University,” German Studies Association Conference, 2011
“Recovered Voices: Listening to Viktor Ullmann’s Der zerbrochene Krug (1942),” Conference on “Form – Violence – Meaning: Two Hundred Years Heinrich von Kleist,” Vanderbilt University, 2011
“When the World of Childhood is Over: Rilke on Dolls,” German Studies Association Conference, 2010
“Werner Herzog’s Romantic Spaces,” Invited paper at the Midwest Symposium in German Studies, 2010
"Uncanny Love," presentation at Workshop on "Phantasmata: Techniques of the Uncanny" at the Institute for Cultural Inquiry, Berlin, 2009
“Romanticism as Melancholy Realism: Schelling's Meditations on the Spirit World,” Invited paper at the Midwest Symposium in German Studies, 2009
“German Romanticism in Alaska,” German Studies Association Conference, 2008
"Immanuel Kant," public lecture at the University of Illinois in connection with the seminar in Modern Critical Theory, Unit for Criticism and Interpretive Theory, 2008
“Blaming the Victim, Again and Again: Why Bluebeard Won’t Die,” together with Robert Jenkins, American Association of Comparative Literature Conference, 2008
“Die Lesbarkeit des romantischen Körpers. Über Psychosomatik und Text,” Invited paper at the conference “Die Lesbarkeit der Romantik: Material, Medium und Diskurs” (“The Readability of Romanticism: Material, Medium and Discourse”) at the University of Cologne; 2008
"What Remains is His Footage: Werner Herzog’s Kind of Romanticism,” German Studies Association Conference, 2007 (accepted)
"Uncanny Love and the Principle of the Past in Schelling's Clara," Invited lecture at Vanderbilt University; 2007
"William Lovell and Male Hysteria as Modern Violence," State of the Art Conference on Violence in German Literature, Culture, and Intellectual History 1789-1938, University of Illinois, 2005
"Male Hysteria in Tieck's William Lovell," German Studies Association Conference, 2004
"Art Attacks: The Aestheticization of Illness in Karl Philipp Moritz's Magazin zur Erfahrungsseelenkunde," Kentucky Foreign Language Conference, 2004
"German Romanticism and the Aesthetics of Pseudo-Science," Illinois Program for Research in the Humanities German Colloquium, 2003
“Beautiful Breakdowns: Reading Friedrich Schlegel’s Fascination With Magnetism as a Contribution to the Cultural History of the ‘Uncanny,’” German Studies Association Conference, 2002
“An Aesthetics of Psychoanalytic Healing in Friz Lang’s ‘Metropolis,’” Kentucky Foreign Language Conference, 2002
"On the Tenure Track at Public Versus Private Universities," Invited paper at the Washington University German Department Conference on the Future of the Profession, 2002
“Geschichte als Erinnerungsfragment in der Philosophie Friedrich Schlegels,” Conference of the International Association for Germanic Studies (IVG), 2000
"The Place of 'Humanism' in the Humanities After the Advent of Cultural Studies," Invited lecture at the University of Regensburg, Germany; 2000
"Verbindungen zwischen rhetorischer und ästhetischer Theorie in der Aufklärung," Invited lecture at the University of Regensburg, Germany, 2000
"Psychic and Corporeal Displacement in Kleist's Die Familie Schroffenstein," Invited paper at
the Fifteenth St. Louis Symposium on German Literature, 2000
“‘Spreekbuis van een minderheid’?: Dutch as Strange and Native Language in Hafid Bouazza’s Stories,” Modern Language Association Conference, 1999
“Chaos and the Organization of Knowledge in Friedrich Schlegel’s Transcendental Philosophy,” German Studies Association Conference, 1999
“The Mind-Body Problem and the Dilemma of Women’s Space in Early Romanticism and Idealism,” Kentucky Foreign Language Conference, 1999
“Originality and Reproduction in C.F. Gellert’s Epistolary Theory,” Kentucky Foreign Language Conference, 1999
“The Aesthetic Authority of Chaos in Friedrich Schlegel’s Fragments," lecture in the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1999
“The Reproduction of Gender in the Psychoanalytic Model of Jessica Benjamin," lecture for the Women’s Studies Faculty Seminar on Social Constructions of the Body, Vanderbilt University, 1998
“Suggestions for Preparing Graduate Students for Interviewing for Beginning Assistant Professor Positions in Foreign Language and Literature,” American Association of Teachers of German/American Council of Teachers of Foreign Language Conference, 1998
“Aesthetic Autonomy versus History in Karl Philipp Moritz’s ‘Die Signatur des Schönen,’“ Kentucky Foreign Language Conference, 1998
“A Recent Candidate’s Perspectives on the Job Market in German,” Modern Language Association Conference, 1997
“Another Look at the ‘Confessional’ Romantic: Reading Dorothea Veit-Schlegel’s Florentin as Autobiographical Fiction,” German Studies Association Conference, 1997
“‘Dieses Bewußtsein, daß ich einmal vor Euch treten muß, um Euch zu berichten:’ Problems of and Possibilities for Reading German-Jewish Women’s Memoirs as History and as Literature,” Kentucky Foreign Language Conference, 1997
“‘Mit dieser Stimme eines gefesselten Geschöpfs’: Language and Bondage in Ingeborg Bachmann’s Undine geht,” German Studies Association Conference, 1996
“‘Why Have a Beginning at All?’ Memory as Privileged and Unstable in Novalis’s Heinrich von Ofterdingen,” Kentucky Foreign Language Conference, 1996
“Modernity in 1200: A Model of Historical Time in Gottfried’s Tristan,” Kentucky Foreign Language Conference, 1994
Conferences Organized
"Germany From the Outside." Annual Conference of the American Friends of Marbach. Fall 2019. germanyfromtheoutside.weebly.com
Midwest Symposium in German Studies 2012. www.midwestgermansymposium2012.weebly.com
Midwest Symposium in German Studies 2011.
“Romantic Spaces, Romantic Imaginations.” October 2008.
“Heine, Jewishness, Love: A Colloquium on Heinrich Heine (1797-1856).” November 2006.
Conference Panels Organized
Organizer, Sessions on "Text-Sound-Image: The Materiality of Media Around 1800," Modern Languages Association Conference, 2019
Co-Organizer (with May Mergenthaler), Seminar on “Recycling Romanticism” (part of seminar pilot program), German Studies Association Conference, 2013
Organizer, Session on “Christoph Ransmayr: New Interpretations,” German Studies Association Conference, 2011
Co-organizer (with Isaac Tubb), Session on “Begegnung: Re-Imagining the Encounter in Rilke and Benjamin,” German Studies Assocation Conference, 2010
Organizer, Session on “Werner Herzog’s Films at the Boundaries of the Human,” German Studies Association Conference, 2008
Organizer, Session on "Ecstatic Truth: Looking Again at the Films of Werner Herzog," German Studies Association Conference, 2007
Organizer, Session on "The Curse of Enthusiasm: Sublimity to Sadomasochism in Literature and Philosophy Around 1800," German Studies Association Conference, 2004
Organizer, Session on "New Readings of Dutch Literature and Culture," Modern Language Association Conference, 2003
Organizer, Session on “Philosophical Approaches to Literature after Cultural Studies: German Romanticism,” Modern Language Association Conference, 2001
Organizer, Session on “The Shifting Status of the Object: Ordering and Classifying Knowledge in the Late Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries,” German Studies Association Conference, 1999
Courses Taught (Selection)
At the University of Illinois:
Fictions of Equality: Crime and Punishment in Documentary Film (Grand Challenge Learning curriculum)
Romanticism and its Afterlives
Freud-Nietzsche-Kafka
Introduction to German Literature and Culture 1750-Present
Harry Potter and Western Culture
The Grimms’ Fairy Tales
Modern Critical Theory
German Romanticism
The Dark Side of Modernity
German Conversation and Composition
Realism to Expressionism
German Cultural History 1200-Present
At Vanderbilt University:
Introduction to German Literature and Culture 850-Present
German Conversation and Composition
Jena Romanticism
Literary and Cultural Theory and Criticism
Romanticism to Naturalism
Freshman Seminar on the Uncanny
Early Modern German Literature
Power and Knowledge in the German Cultural Tradition
University Service (Selection)
Director, Campus Honors Program, University of Illinois
Interim Director, Campus Honors Program, University of Illinois
Interim Associate Director, School of Literatures, Cultures, and Linguistics, University of Illinois
Facilitator, Faculty Success@Illinois (faculty development group, under the auspices of the Office of the Executive Vice Provost for Academic Affairs)
Chair, Working Group on Enhancing the Student Experience, College of Arts and Sciences, University of Illinois
Member, Steering Committee on Public Engagement in the Humanities, Illinois Program for Research in the Humanities
Member, Faculty Working Group on Undergraduate Research in the Humanities, Illinois Program for Research in the Humanities and Office of Undergraduate Research
Judge, Undergraduate Research Symposium, University of Illinois
Director of Undergraduate Studies, Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures, University of Illinois
Facilitator, Student Success Initiative, University of Illinois
General Education Board, University of Illinois
Reviewer, Mellon/American Council of Learned Societies Dissertation Fellowship Completion Program
Reviewer, American Academy in Berlin- Berlin Prize Program
Acting Head, Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures, University of Illinois
General Education Committee, College of Arts and Sciences, University of Illinois
Executive Committee, School of Literatures, Cultures, and Linguistics, University of Illinois
Facilitator, Provost’s Office Seminar for Assistant Professors on Preparing the Promotion and Tenure Dossier
Selection Committee, Provost’s Office Support Funds for Faculty Participation in the Faculty Success Program (NCFDD)
Faculty Appeals Committee, School of Literatures, Cultures, and Linguistics, University of Illinois
Educational Policy Committee, Faculty Senate, University of Illinois
Policy and Development Committee, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, University of Illinois
Selection Committee, Whiting Foundation Public Engagement Fellowship, University of Illinois
Evaluator/interviewer of applicants for Fulbright and German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) grants
Participant, Illinois Initiative on Transparency in Learning and Teaching in Higher Education
Undergraduate Matters Committee, Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures, University of Illinois
Graduate Matters Committee and Graduate Recruitment, Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures, University of Illinois
Mediation Committee, Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures, University of Illinois
Director of Graduate Studies, Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures, University of Illinois
Advisory Board, Unit for Criticism and Interpretive Theory, University of Illinois
Admissions and Academic Standards Committee, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, University of Illinois
Faculty Senate, University of Illinois
Director of Undergraduate Studies in German, Department of Germanic and Slavic Languages, Vanderbilt University
Pre-Major Advisor, Arts and Sciences, Vanderbilt University
Faculty Advisor to German Honor Society (Delta Phi Alpha) chapters at University of Illinois and Vanderbilt University
Faculty Advisor, McTyeire International House, Vanderbilt University
Website development for departments at University of Illinois (Germanic) and Vanderbilt University (Germanic and Slavic)
Member of numerous Ph.D. and M.A. committees at the University of Illinois, Vanderbilt University, University of Salzburg
Education
Washington University-St. Louis: Ph.D., German, May 1997
Washington University-St. Louis: M.A., German, May 1992
Northwestern University: B.A., International Politics and German Studies, June 1989
Additional study and research at the Universities of Regensburg, Tübingen, and Cologne
Teaching Experience
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign: Professor, Germanic Languages and Literatures; affiliated with the Program in Comparative and World Literature, the Unit for Criticism and Interpretive Theory, the European Union Center, and the Center for Global Studies, 2017-present
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign: Associate Professor, Germanic Languages and Literatures; affiliated with the Program in Comparative and World Literature, the Unit for Criticism and Interpretive Theory, and the European Union Center, 2007-present
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign: Assistant Professor, Germanic Languages and Literatures, 2001-2007
Vanderbilt University: Assistant Professor of German, European Studies, and Comparative Literature, 1997-2001
College of Wooster: Instructor of German, 1997
St. Louis Community College: Instructor of German, 1993-1994
American Association of Teachers of German: Teacher, travel-study programs for
American high school students in Germany, 1991, 1992
Washington University-St. Louis: Graduate Teaching Assistant, German and English, 1991-1995
Awards and Distinctions
Awarded Research Cluster support for project Politics and Narrative: A Narratology of Populism, Illinois Program for Research in the Humanities, 2018-2019
Faculty Fellow in a Second Discipline, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, University of Illinois, 2016
Member, Board of Directors, American Friends of Marbach (Deutsches Literaturarchiv/German Literature Archive), 2016-2024
Member, Executive Committee on Eighteenth- and Early Nineteenth-Century German Literature, Modern Language Association, 2015-2020
Campus Workshop Facilitator, National Center for Faculty Development and Diversity, 2015-2017
DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service) Faculty Research Visit Grant, Berlin, 2015
Visiting Professor, Department of Literary Studies, University of Ghent, Belgium, 2014-2015
Faculty Coach, Faculty Success Program, National Center for Faculty Development and Diversity, 2014, 2015, 2016
Campus Nominee for National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Stipend, 2014
Finalist and Alternate, U.S. Fulbright Scholar Competition, 2014-2015
Mid-Career Faculty Release-Time Program Award (campus-wide competition), 2014
Dean's Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, 2009
Helen Corley Petit Scholar, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, University of Illinois, 2007-2008
James A. Hagan Teaching Fellow, LAS Teaching Academy, University of Illinois, 2006-2007
Dean's Teaching Fellow, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, University of Illinois, 2006-2007
Alexander von Humboldt Foundation Research Fellowship (nine months), awarded 2003
Fellow, Robert Penn Warren Center for the Humanities at Vanderbilt University, 1999-2000
Dean's Dissertation Fellowship at Washington University, 1996
DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service) award for dissertation research in Germany, 1995
Dean's Teaching Award at Washington University, 1995
Fulbright and Pädagogischer Austauschdienst Scholarships, 1989-1990
Farley Memorial Scholarship for Academic Excellence at Northwestern University, 1986-1989
Illinois State Scholar, 1985-1989
Publications
Books
Germany from the Outside: Rethinking German Cultural History in an Age of Displacement. Ed. Laurie Ruth Johnson. Series: New Directions in German Studies (ed. Imke Meyer). New York: Bloomsbury, 2022. Pp. 352. Paperback edition 2024.
Forgotten Dreams: Revisiting Romanticism in the Cinema of Werner Herzog. Series: Screen Cultures: German Film and the Visual (eds. Johannes von Moltke and Gerd Gemünden). Rochester: Camden House, 2016. Pp. 322. Paperback edition 2019.
Aesthetic Anxiety: Uncanny Symptoms in German Literature and Culture. Series: International Studies in Comparative Literature (ed. Alberto Martino). Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, 2010. Pp. 267.
The Art of Recollection in Jena Romanticism: Memory, History, Fiction, and Fragmentation in Texts by Friedrich Schlegel and Novalis. Series: Studien zur deutschen Literatur (eds. Wilfried Barner, Georg Braungart, Richard Brinkmann, and Conrad Wiedemann). Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 2002. Pp. 196.
Journal Issues
Editor, special issue of The German Quarterly, on "German Fairy Tales and Folklore in a Global Context." A crossover project with Die Unterrichtspraxis (ed. Angelika Kraemer). 94.2 (Spring 2021).
Editor, special issue of Seminar: A Journal of Germanic Studies, on “The New German Romanticism.” 50.3 (2014).
Articles/Essays
“Teaching Freud, Dora, and Fin-de-siècle Culture.” With Carl Niekerk. Options for Teaching German Literature and Culture of the 20th and 21st Century. Eds. David Kim and B. Venkat Mani. New York: Publications of the Modern Language Association. Forthcoming in 2024.
“On the Inside Looking Out: Fichte, the University, and the Psychopolitics of German Idealism.” Germany from the Outside: Rethinking German Cultural History in an Age of Displacement. London and New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2022. 61-83.
“Introduction.” Germany from the Outside: Rethinking German Cultural History in an Age of Displacement. London and New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2022. 1-10.
“Introduction: German Fairy Tales and Folklore in a Global Context.” With Angelika Kraemer and Carl Niekerk. The German Quarterly 94.2 (Spring 2021) 160-164.
“The Cinematic Afterlife of German Romanticism.” The Palgrave Handbook of German Romantic Philosophy. Ed. Elizabeth Millán. London and New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2020. 317-344.
“Fascism in the Classroom: Dark Arts in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.” Lessons from Hogwarts: Essays on the Pedagogy of Harry Potter. With Carl Niekerk. Eds. Marcie Panutsos Rovan and Melissa Wehler. London and New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2020. 121-135.
“Romantic Vision as Romantic History in Werner Herzog’s Invincible.” Estetica. Studi e ricerche 1 (2020) 25-41.
"Romantic Apperception in Werner Herzog's Documentary Cinema." Von der Idee zum Medium - Resonanzfelder zwischen Aufklärung und Gegenwart. Eds. Felix Lenz and Christine Schramm. Munich: Fink, 2019. 441-467.
"The Studies on Hysteria and the Haunted Past of Psychoanalysis." Ordnungen des Unheimlichen. Kultur - Literatur - Medien. Ed. Florian Lehmann. Würzburg: Königshausen und Neumann, 2016. 99-113.
"Toward a Psychological History of Philosophy: Kant's Dreams of a Spirit-Seer." PsyArt: Journal for the Psychological Study of the Arts 20 (2016) 69-83. Web.
“Prairie Tales: The Life of the Lecture at Illinois.” An Illinois Sampler: Teaching and Research on the Prairie. Eds. Mary-Ann Winkelmes and Antoinette Burton, with Kyle Mays. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2014. 49-53.
“The Conquest of Dreams.” The Werner Herzog Collection. London: British Film Institute, 2014.
“German Romanticism Renewed.” Seminar: A Journal of Germanic Studies. Special Issue on "The New German Romanticism."
50.3. (2014) 251-257.
“Documentary, Revisited. Claude Lanzmann’s The Last of the Unjust.” Days and Memory. A blog of the Initiative in Holocaust, Genocide, and Memory Studies – University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. March 2014. http://hgmsblog.weebly.com/
“Recovered Voices: Viktor Ullmann’s Der zerbrochene Krug (1942).” Heinrich von Kleist – Style and Concept: Explorations in Literary Dissonance. Eds. Christoph Zeller and Dieter Sevin. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2013. 325-337.
“Werner Herzog’s Romantic Spaces.” A Companion to Werner Herzog. Ed. Brad Prager. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012. 510-527.
“Das 'ewig ringende, nie seyende Sein.' Schelling und das Unheimliche.” Phantasmata. Techniken des Unheimlichen. Eds. Martin Doll, Rupert Gaderer, Fabio Camilletti, and Jan Niklas Howe. Vienna and Berlin: Turia + Kant, 2011. 241-257.
“The Curse of Enthusiasm: William Lovell and Modern Violence.” Violence, Aesthetics, Culture: Germany, 1789-1938. Eds. Carl Niekerk and Stefani Engelstein. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2011. 91-114.
“Uncanny Love: Schelling's Meditations on the Spirit World.” Image & Narrative 11.3 (2010) 64-86.
“Die Lesbarkeit des romantischen Körpers – Über Psychosomatik und Text in Fallstudien von Karl Philipp Moritz und Friedrich Schlegel.” Die Lesbarkeit der Romantik. Material, Medium, Diskurs. Ed. Erich Kleinschmidt. Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2009. 105-135.
“Reading the Excursus on Women as a Model of ‘Modern’ Temporality in Gottfried’s Tristan.” Reprinted in Classical and Medieval Literature Criticism (CMLC) 96. Detroit, New York, London: Thomson Gale, 2008. 153-158.
"Upload Now: On William Gibson's Spook Country." Kritik. The blog for the Unit for Criticism and Interpretive Theory at the University of Illinois. July 2008. http://unitcrit.blogspot.com/2008/07/upload-now-on-william-gibsons-spook.html
“The Romantic and Modern Practice of Animal Magnetism: Friedrich Schlegel's Protocols of the Magnetic Treatment of Countess Lesniowska.” Women in German Yearbook 23 (2007) 10-33.
“’Wozu überhaupt ein Anfang? Memory and History in Heinrich von Ofterdingen.” Reprinted in Nineteenth-Century Literature Criticism (NCLC) 178. Detroit, New York, London: Thomson Gale, 2007. 86-94.
“Enlightenment According to Don Alfonso: Perilous Progress in Mozart's Cosí fan tutte.” Practicing Progress: The Promise and Limitations of Enlightenment, eds. Richard E. Schade, Dieter Sevin, and Frank Trommler. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2007. 59-74.
“Dorothea Veit-Schlegel's Florentin and the Early Romantic Model of Alterity.” Monatshefte 97.1 (2005) 33-62.
“Psychic and Corporeal Displacement in Kleist's Die Familie Schroffenstein.” Kleists Erzählungen und Dramen. Neue Studien. Eds. Paul Michael Lützeler and David Pan. Würzburg: Königshausen und Neumann, 2001. 121-133.
“Geschichte als Erinnerungsfragment in der Philosophie Friedrich Schlegels.” Zeitenwende - Die Germanistik auf dem Weg vom 20. ins 21. Jahrhundert (Akten des X. Internationalen Germanistenkongresses, Wien 2000). Ed. Peter Wiesinger. Bern: Peter Lang, 2002. 201-206.
“Bringing Chaos Into the System: The Aesthetic Authority of Disorder in Friedrich Schlegel's Philosophical Fragments.” Disrupted Patterns: On Chaos and Order in the Enlightenment. Eds. Theodore E. D. Braun and John A. McCarthy. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2000. 119-133.
“‘Wenn man endlich selbst Briefe schreiben will, so vergesse man die Exempel’: The Construction of Imitation as Originality in C. F. Gellert's Epistolary Theory.” Wezel-Jahrbuch (Studien zur europäischen Aufklärung) 2 (1999) 97-114.
“‘Wozu überhaupt ein Anfang? Memory and History in Heinrich von Ofterdingen.” Colloquia Germanica 31.1 (1998) 21-36.
“Reading the Excursus on Women as a Model of 'Modern' Temporality in Gottfried's Tristan.” Neophilologus 82.2 (1998) 247-257.
Translation
English translation of "Die Nähe des Fremden," by Klaus Hoffer. World Literature Today (Norman: Oklahoma University Press, 1995) 517-520.
Lexicon Entries
"Germany, Austria, Switzerland: Romanticism and Life Writing." Encyclopedia of Life Writing: Autobiographical and Biographical Forms. Ed. Margaretta Jolly. London and Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers, 2001. 368-370.
"Heinrich Heine." Encyclopedia of Life Writing: Autobiographical and Biographical Forms. Ed. Margaretta Jolly. London and Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers, 2001. 420-421.
"German Poetry 1750-1850." With Carl Niekerk. Oxford Guide to Literature in English Translation. Ed. Peter France. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. 309-313.
Book Reviews in Monatshefte, The German Quarterly, German Studies Review, Women in German Newsletter, GDR Bulletin
Presentations, Lectures, and Workshops
“Walking the World in Peter Stamm's Weit über das Land," invited paper at the conference “VerfleCHtungen. Schweizer Literatur im transnationalen Kontext,” University of Lausanne, 2024
“The Sinister Promise of German Idealism,” German Studies Association Conference, 2023 (Seminar on “Playing in the German Dark: Our Relationship to the Canon’s Sinistry”)
“Options for Teaching German Literature for the 21st Century,” German Studies Association Conference, 2023 (invited contribution to a PMLA Roundtable)
“Aesthetics and Ethics in Photojournalism and Documentary on Armed Conflict,” invited paper at the conference “Against Exclusivity: New Aesthetics in Literature and Film,” University of Illinois-Chicago, 2021
“What’s Next? Pathways for Thriving After Tenure,” Professional Development Seminar for Faculty in the College of Media, University of Illinois, 2021
"Ethics or Emotion: Documentary and the Work of Empathy," German Studies Association Conference, 2019 (part of Seminar on "The Duty of Art: Ethics and Empathy in Aesthetic Theory")
“Get the Work-Life Balance, Mentorship, and Energy You Need,” Office of the Provost Workshop for Assistant Professors and Specialized Faculty at Illinois, 2018
"Impossible Memories," American Comparative Literature Association Conference, 2018
“‘Purebloods,’ Muggles, and Eugenics in the Harry Potter Series,” Harry Potter Association Forum (Undergraduate Student Group), Illinois, 2017
"Enraged Enlightenment: Disinterest, Passion, and Spectatorship," German Studies Association Conference, 2017
“How Will You Change the World?” lecture at College of Arts and Sciences Discovery Day, 2017
"Romanticism on Film," invited lecture at Clemson University, 2017
“Romantic Apperception in Werner Herzog's Documentary Cinema,” invited paper at the conference “Von der Idee zum Medium. Resonanzfelder zwischen Aufklärung und Gegenwart” (“From Idea to Medium: Resonances between the Enlightenment and the Present”), University of Bamberg, 2016
"The Art of Saying No," Core Curriculum Webinar, National Center for Faculty Development and Diversity, 2016
"'Am I Guilty?' Ethics and Aesthetics in Contemporary Documentary Films About Crime and Punishment," invited paper at the Midwest Symposium for German Studies, Indiana University, 2016
Invited workshops on "Writing Your Next Chapter," "Rethinking Mentoring," and "Writing, Procrastination, and Resistance" for faculty and administrators at Rutgers University, Dartmouth College, and Purdue University, 2016
"The Afterlife of Irony in Romantic Cinema," invited paper at the conference "Contextualizing Irony: Change and Continuity from the 18th Century to the Present," University of Illinois-Chicago, 2015
"Reenactment, Storytelling, and Ethics in The Act of Killing (dir. Joshua Oppenheimer, 2012)," Conference on "Ethics of Storytelling: Historical Imagination in Contemporary Literature, Media, and Visual Arts," University of Turku, 2015
“Animal Magnetism and the Haunted Past of Psychoanalysis,” Conference on “Das Unheimliche, Gespenstische und Spukhafte,” University of Bamberg, 2015
"Documentary and Romanticism," invited presentation for the German program, University of Ghent, 2015
"What Does Romantic Cinema Look Like?", invited presentation in the Department of Literary Studies, University of Ghent, 2015
"Imagining Germany," invited presentation for Notre Dame in London program, 2014
"Forgotten Dreams: Werner Herzog's Romantic Cinema," invited public lecture in the Diefenbaker
Lecture Series "German Studies in the 21st Century," University of Waterloo, 2014
“Werner Herzog's Romantic Vision,” German Studies Association Conference, 2013
“Forgotten Dreams: Werner Herzog’s Documentary and the Lost Past of German Romanticism,” Society for Cinema and Media Studies Conference, 2013
“Nationalism and German Idealism: Fichte and Humboldt on the University,” German Studies Association Conference, 2011
“Recovered Voices: Listening to Viktor Ullmann’s Der zerbrochene Krug (1942),” Conference on “Form – Violence – Meaning: Two Hundred Years Heinrich von Kleist,” Vanderbilt University, 2011
“When the World of Childhood is Over: Rilke on Dolls,” German Studies Association Conference, 2010
“Werner Herzog’s Romantic Spaces,” Invited paper at the Midwest Symposium in German Studies, 2010
"Uncanny Love," presentation at Workshop on "Phantasmata: Techniques of the Uncanny" at the Institute for Cultural Inquiry, Berlin, 2009
“Romanticism as Melancholy Realism: Schelling's Meditations on the Spirit World,” Invited paper at the Midwest Symposium in German Studies, 2009
“German Romanticism in Alaska,” German Studies Association Conference, 2008
"Immanuel Kant," public lecture at the University of Illinois in connection with the seminar in Modern Critical Theory, Unit for Criticism and Interpretive Theory, 2008
“Blaming the Victim, Again and Again: Why Bluebeard Won’t Die,” together with Robert Jenkins, American Association of Comparative Literature Conference, 2008
“Die Lesbarkeit des romantischen Körpers. Über Psychosomatik und Text,” Invited paper at the conference “Die Lesbarkeit der Romantik: Material, Medium und Diskurs” (“The Readability of Romanticism: Material, Medium and Discourse”) at the University of Cologne; 2008
"What Remains is His Footage: Werner Herzog’s Kind of Romanticism,” German Studies Association Conference, 2007 (accepted)
"Uncanny Love and the Principle of the Past in Schelling's Clara," Invited lecture at Vanderbilt University; 2007
"William Lovell and Male Hysteria as Modern Violence," State of the Art Conference on Violence in German Literature, Culture, and Intellectual History 1789-1938, University of Illinois, 2005
"Male Hysteria in Tieck's William Lovell," German Studies Association Conference, 2004
"Art Attacks: The Aestheticization of Illness in Karl Philipp Moritz's Magazin zur Erfahrungsseelenkunde," Kentucky Foreign Language Conference, 2004
"German Romanticism and the Aesthetics of Pseudo-Science," Illinois Program for Research in the Humanities German Colloquium, 2003
“Beautiful Breakdowns: Reading Friedrich Schlegel’s Fascination With Magnetism as a Contribution to the Cultural History of the ‘Uncanny,’” German Studies Association Conference, 2002
“An Aesthetics of Psychoanalytic Healing in Friz Lang’s ‘Metropolis,’” Kentucky Foreign Language Conference, 2002
"On the Tenure Track at Public Versus Private Universities," Invited paper at the Washington University German Department Conference on the Future of the Profession, 2002
“Geschichte als Erinnerungsfragment in der Philosophie Friedrich Schlegels,” Conference of the International Association for Germanic Studies (IVG), 2000
"The Place of 'Humanism' in the Humanities After the Advent of Cultural Studies," Invited lecture at the University of Regensburg, Germany; 2000
"Verbindungen zwischen rhetorischer und ästhetischer Theorie in der Aufklärung," Invited lecture at the University of Regensburg, Germany, 2000
"Psychic and Corporeal Displacement in Kleist's Die Familie Schroffenstein," Invited paper at
the Fifteenth St. Louis Symposium on German Literature, 2000
“‘Spreekbuis van een minderheid’?: Dutch as Strange and Native Language in Hafid Bouazza’s Stories,” Modern Language Association Conference, 1999
“Chaos and the Organization of Knowledge in Friedrich Schlegel’s Transcendental Philosophy,” German Studies Association Conference, 1999
“The Mind-Body Problem and the Dilemma of Women’s Space in Early Romanticism and Idealism,” Kentucky Foreign Language Conference, 1999
“Originality and Reproduction in C.F. Gellert’s Epistolary Theory,” Kentucky Foreign Language Conference, 1999
“The Aesthetic Authority of Chaos in Friedrich Schlegel’s Fragments," lecture in the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1999
“The Reproduction of Gender in the Psychoanalytic Model of Jessica Benjamin," lecture for the Women’s Studies Faculty Seminar on Social Constructions of the Body, Vanderbilt University, 1998
“Suggestions for Preparing Graduate Students for Interviewing for Beginning Assistant Professor Positions in Foreign Language and Literature,” American Association of Teachers of German/American Council of Teachers of Foreign Language Conference, 1998
“Aesthetic Autonomy versus History in Karl Philipp Moritz’s ‘Die Signatur des Schönen,’“ Kentucky Foreign Language Conference, 1998
“A Recent Candidate’s Perspectives on the Job Market in German,” Modern Language Association Conference, 1997
“Another Look at the ‘Confessional’ Romantic: Reading Dorothea Veit-Schlegel’s Florentin as Autobiographical Fiction,” German Studies Association Conference, 1997
“‘Dieses Bewußtsein, daß ich einmal vor Euch treten muß, um Euch zu berichten:’ Problems of and Possibilities for Reading German-Jewish Women’s Memoirs as History and as Literature,” Kentucky Foreign Language Conference, 1997
“‘Mit dieser Stimme eines gefesselten Geschöpfs’: Language and Bondage in Ingeborg Bachmann’s Undine geht,” German Studies Association Conference, 1996
“‘Why Have a Beginning at All?’ Memory as Privileged and Unstable in Novalis’s Heinrich von Ofterdingen,” Kentucky Foreign Language Conference, 1996
“Modernity in 1200: A Model of Historical Time in Gottfried’s Tristan,” Kentucky Foreign Language Conference, 1994
Conferences Organized
"Germany From the Outside." Annual Conference of the American Friends of Marbach. Fall 2019. germanyfromtheoutside.weebly.com
Midwest Symposium in German Studies 2012. www.midwestgermansymposium2012.weebly.com
Midwest Symposium in German Studies 2011.
“Romantic Spaces, Romantic Imaginations.” October 2008.
“Heine, Jewishness, Love: A Colloquium on Heinrich Heine (1797-1856).” November 2006.
Conference Panels Organized
Organizer, Sessions on "Text-Sound-Image: The Materiality of Media Around 1800," Modern Languages Association Conference, 2019
Co-Organizer (with May Mergenthaler), Seminar on “Recycling Romanticism” (part of seminar pilot program), German Studies Association Conference, 2013
Organizer, Session on “Christoph Ransmayr: New Interpretations,” German Studies Association Conference, 2011
Co-organizer (with Isaac Tubb), Session on “Begegnung: Re-Imagining the Encounter in Rilke and Benjamin,” German Studies Assocation Conference, 2010
Organizer, Session on “Werner Herzog’s Films at the Boundaries of the Human,” German Studies Association Conference, 2008
Organizer, Session on "Ecstatic Truth: Looking Again at the Films of Werner Herzog," German Studies Association Conference, 2007
Organizer, Session on "The Curse of Enthusiasm: Sublimity to Sadomasochism in Literature and Philosophy Around 1800," German Studies Association Conference, 2004
Organizer, Session on "New Readings of Dutch Literature and Culture," Modern Language Association Conference, 2003
Organizer, Session on “Philosophical Approaches to Literature after Cultural Studies: German Romanticism,” Modern Language Association Conference, 2001
Organizer, Session on “The Shifting Status of the Object: Ordering and Classifying Knowledge in the Late Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries,” German Studies Association Conference, 1999
Courses Taught (Selection)
At the University of Illinois:
Fictions of Equality: Crime and Punishment in Documentary Film (Grand Challenge Learning curriculum)
Romanticism and its Afterlives
Freud-Nietzsche-Kafka
Introduction to German Literature and Culture 1750-Present
Harry Potter and Western Culture
The Grimms’ Fairy Tales
Modern Critical Theory
German Romanticism
The Dark Side of Modernity
German Conversation and Composition
Realism to Expressionism
German Cultural History 1200-Present
At Vanderbilt University:
Introduction to German Literature and Culture 850-Present
German Conversation and Composition
Jena Romanticism
Literary and Cultural Theory and Criticism
Romanticism to Naturalism
Freshman Seminar on the Uncanny
Early Modern German Literature
Power and Knowledge in the German Cultural Tradition
University Service (Selection)
Director, Campus Honors Program, University of Illinois
Interim Director, Campus Honors Program, University of Illinois
Interim Associate Director, School of Literatures, Cultures, and Linguistics, University of Illinois
Facilitator, Faculty Success@Illinois (faculty development group, under the auspices of the Office of the Executive Vice Provost for Academic Affairs)
Chair, Working Group on Enhancing the Student Experience, College of Arts and Sciences, University of Illinois
Member, Steering Committee on Public Engagement in the Humanities, Illinois Program for Research in the Humanities
Member, Faculty Working Group on Undergraduate Research in the Humanities, Illinois Program for Research in the Humanities and Office of Undergraduate Research
Judge, Undergraduate Research Symposium, University of Illinois
Director of Undergraduate Studies, Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures, University of Illinois
Facilitator, Student Success Initiative, University of Illinois
General Education Board, University of Illinois
Reviewer, Mellon/American Council of Learned Societies Dissertation Fellowship Completion Program
Reviewer, American Academy in Berlin- Berlin Prize Program
Acting Head, Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures, University of Illinois
General Education Committee, College of Arts and Sciences, University of Illinois
Executive Committee, School of Literatures, Cultures, and Linguistics, University of Illinois
Facilitator, Provost’s Office Seminar for Assistant Professors on Preparing the Promotion and Tenure Dossier
Selection Committee, Provost’s Office Support Funds for Faculty Participation in the Faculty Success Program (NCFDD)
Faculty Appeals Committee, School of Literatures, Cultures, and Linguistics, University of Illinois
Educational Policy Committee, Faculty Senate, University of Illinois
Policy and Development Committee, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, University of Illinois
Selection Committee, Whiting Foundation Public Engagement Fellowship, University of Illinois
Evaluator/interviewer of applicants for Fulbright and German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) grants
Participant, Illinois Initiative on Transparency in Learning and Teaching in Higher Education
Undergraduate Matters Committee, Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures, University of Illinois
Graduate Matters Committee and Graduate Recruitment, Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures, University of Illinois
Mediation Committee, Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures, University of Illinois
Director of Graduate Studies, Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures, University of Illinois
Advisory Board, Unit for Criticism and Interpretive Theory, University of Illinois
Admissions and Academic Standards Committee, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, University of Illinois
Faculty Senate, University of Illinois
Director of Undergraduate Studies in German, Department of Germanic and Slavic Languages, Vanderbilt University
Pre-Major Advisor, Arts and Sciences, Vanderbilt University
Faculty Advisor to German Honor Society (Delta Phi Alpha) chapters at University of Illinois and Vanderbilt University
Faculty Advisor, McTyeire International House, Vanderbilt University
Website development for departments at University of Illinois (Germanic) and Vanderbilt University (Germanic and Slavic)
Member of numerous Ph.D. and M.A. committees at the University of Illinois, Vanderbilt University, University of Salzburg