German Studies Majors 2013

Shemuel Garber
Shemuel
Alle
Professor Leo Lensing addressing German Studies majors and minors and faculty at our luncheon on May 10, 2013.

Shemuel Garber ’13, a double major in German Studies and the College of Letters, wrote his thesis for COL, entitled, The Circular Cut: Problematizing the Longevity of Civilization’s Most Aggressively Defended Amputation.

He will spend this summer in Brooklyn before leaving for Germany with a Fulbright Teaching Assistantship to teach English at a high school in Mainz, Germany.

James Gardner ’13 is a Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellow and a German Studies major. His Senior Honors Thesis explores Afro-German history from 1871 to 2013. He has been awarded the Prentice Prize for his excellent work in German, the Heidemann Award, for helping others in the Wesleyan community, and the Butterfield Prize for his leadership, intellectual commitment and concern for the Wesleyan community.

James Gardner
James

James will continue his work with the Afro-German social work organization, Joliba, in Berlin, where he worked while studying abroad in Berlin in 2012. At Joliba, James will coordinate initiatives, tours, and events in line with his Afro-German academic work. He also hopes to obtain the International Parliamentary Scholarship (IPS), which offers young people the opportunity to gain practical experience in parliamentary work during a 15-week internship under the auspices of a Member of the German Bundestag. James is planning to apply for a DAAD scholarship this fall in order to continue his studies at the Free University of Berlin.

Max Kaplan ’13 will be working at The Fund for the Public Interest in Philadelphia. This is a national non-profit organization that works to build support for progressive organizations across the country. They run campaigns for USPIRG, Environment America, the Human Rights Campaign, and Environmental Action.

Adam Rashkoff
Adam

Adam Rashkoff   ’13, a double major in German Studies and the College of Letters wrote a senior essay for both departments on Freud’s theories of psychological repression to analyze Theodor Adorno’s appropriation of the German Idealist concept of Naturschöne, or natural beauty. He will spend the upcoming academic year teaching English at two secondary schools in Vorarlberg, Austria, under the auspices of USTA-Austria, a program administered by the Fulbright Commission and funded by the Austrian Federal Ministry for Education, the Arts and Culture. This summer, he will split his time between Stanford University, where he will work at a literature and arts summer camp for middle and high school students, and Brooklyn, NY. In New York,  he will intern on a project to develop a humanities curriculum for a network of charter schools. Ultimately, he plans to pursue his interest in German Studies at the graduate level. 

Avery Trufelmann
Avery

Avery Trufelman ’13,  a double major in German Studies and the College of Letters, wrote a senior thesis in both departments. Avery translated the autobiography of Hans Rosenthal, an iconic German gameshow host and holocaust survivor. She received high honors for this work Avery is also the recipient of the Scott Prize, awarded for excellence in foreign-language study. She will go on to intern for NPR Berlin (produced entirely in Washington, DC).

MariJarris
Mari

Mari Jarris ’14 This summer, Mari will conduct her thesis research on the Frankfurt School’s critique of German Idealist philosophy using the archives and libraries at the University of Frankfurt and the Akademie der Künste in Berlin. She received the DAAD Undergraduate Scholarship, the Davenport Grant, and the Blankenagel Prize to support her summer research.

Maddy (R)
Maddy (right)

Maddy Smith-Huemer ’14  She is a German Studies and History major who has been studying at the Free University of Berlin with the Duke in Berlin program since January 2013. She will continue her studies there until the end of July, while also conducting research for her senior year thesis on resistance movements in the former GDR.

Oscar Takabvirwa
Oscar

Oscar Takabvirwa ’14, a double major in German Studies and Mathematics, hopes to be working for a consulting firm in New York City this summer. He will start research for his honors thesis for German, a translation of works by authors whose parents migrated to Germany and who grew up in a multi-cultural environment.

 

 

 

 

Colin, Jackie and Dan
Colin, Steffi and Dan

Jaqueline Heitkamp ‘15,  Colin O’Connor ‘15  and Daniel Hurlbert ‘15 have been studying in Regensburg since January 2013 and will continue their studies there until the end of July.

In the photo below, Colin is joined by former Wesleyan students and  Regensburg exchange students who visited the Regensburg Dult, an annual folk festival, in May 2013.Regensburg Dult 2013

 

Philip Boehm ’80 receives the Kurt and Helene Wolff Translation Prize

Philip Boehm favorite portraitsOur alumnus Philip Boehm ’80 has been awarded the Kurt and Helen Wolff Translation Prize for his translation of Gregor von Rezzori’s An Ermine in Czernopol, published in 2012 by the New York Review of Books. The award will be conferred by the German Consul General on June 3 in Chicago; Krishna Winston will be delivering the laudatio.

Earlier this year Philip Boehm has also been awarded the John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship to assist in his work as a dramatist and translator.

“I am continually struck by new overlaps between staging drama and translating prose. In both cases I first listen to the original voice or voices before attempting any re-creation, and my experience working with actors has taught me the importance of keeping a text alive, and of preserving its energy as it travels from one culture to another, whether on the page or in the theater. It is this fundamental awe of language that steers me from one project to the next.”