Iris Bork-Goldfield

German Studies Seniors about their major(s) and future plans

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William Krieger ’11: Other than German Studies, I also majored in Art History. I wrote a thesis in both departments about the contemporary German artist Martin Kippenberger (1953-1997), focusing on three of his major installation projects from the 1990s.

Next year, I will continue working on my thesis at Humboldt University in Berlin under a Fulbright grant and hope to continue my interest in German studies in a graduate program after that.

Ben LaFirst ’11: I have a double major in German Studies and Sociology. My senior essay in Sociology is entitled “Monopoly Capitalism and Network Neutrality: The Future of the Internet as a Material/Discursive Body”. I studied one semester in Regensburg and am excited to go to Austria, where I will be teaching English to Austrian high school students this fall. This is part of the United States Teaching Assistantship program sponsored by the Fulbright Commission in collaboration with the Austrian-American Educational Commission.  After my year as an ESL Assistant in Linz, Austria, I hope to enroll in a Master’s program to study history and eventually get a job as a history teacher.

Ryan Moses ’11: I am a German Studies and History major with a concentration in European history. My particular interests in history focus on Germany. I wrote an extensive research paper on German companies and their ties to the Nazis, and  another paper that examined the evolution of the relationship between German companies and their Nazi pasts, focusing on certain key events that forced them to reevaluate how they address their troubled history.

After Wesleyan, I’m hoping to pursue a career in finance.

I would recommend to anyone considering studying a foreign language that they study abroad. Living in Germany was one of the best times I’ve ever had. Whether it be for a summer, a semester, or an entire year, you’ll have a great time and learn more about the language and the culture than you can imagine.

Anya Olsen ‘11: I am a College of Letters and German Studies Major.

I wrote my thesis on the portrayal of women and gender in four selected works of German literature in the period after World War II, comparing two from West Germany and two from East Germany.

After I graduate, I will be going to Tübingen and studying there as part of the Connecticut-Baden-Württemberg Exchange Program. I will continue looking at issues of gender within German literature, as well as taking German history courses.

Catherine Steidl ’11: At Wesleyan, I have majored in both German Studies and Archaeology. I wrote my thesis within the Archaeology Department on specific female votive statuary from the Athenian Acropolis and the ways in which we can use them to learn about women’s roles and social experiences in Ancient Greece. My studies in German were extremely critical to my thesis, however, as a good portion of my research relied on German texts and archaeological reports!

Next year, I am taking part in the CT-BW exchange and attending the University of Tübingen to improve my German and continue my studies in Archaeology before applying to PhD programs in Classical Archaeology, for which German is essential.

Celebration and Prizes

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Anya Olson ’11 and William Krieger ’11 present their Honors theses in Uli Plass’ garden to a spellbound audience.

Anya Olson “Gender and Society in Selected Works by Irmtraud Morgner, Christa Wolf, Rainer Werner Fassbinder and Heinrich Böll”

William Lawrence Krieger, IV: “Framing the Dilettante: The Art of Martin Kippenberger”

Anya received a Baden-Württemberg scholarship and will be studying in Tübingen next year. Will received a Fulbright scholarship to study and do research at Humboldt University in Berlin next year.

Will Krieger, Profs. Leo Lensing and Arne Höcker "im Gespräch."
Teaching Assistant Anna Huber and recently reappointed professor Iris Bork
Alexandra Scherbl, Maddie Smith-Huemer, Anya Olson, Catie Steidl

 

We celebrated the following German Studies Majors

Matthew Alexander – COL Short Story Prize

William Krieger – Fulbright Fellowship, Beulah Friedman Prize, Blankenagel Prize

Benjamin LaFirst – Fulbright Teaching Fellowship to teach English at a high school in Linz, Austria, Prentice Prize

Anya Olson – Baden-Württemberg-CT Sister State Exchange, Scott Prize

Catherine Steidl – Baden-Württemberg-CT Sister State Exchange, and Blankenagel Prize

In the back, BBQing - our host and recently tenured professor Uli Plass (right)

The German Consulate Book Awards were presented to

Isadora Danim, Mari Jarris, Steven Le, Hannah Overton, Oscar Takabvirwa, Alexandra Scherbl, and Carmen Yip

Jenseits der Stille (Beyond Silence)

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American Sign Language and German Movie Night with an introduction by Sheila Mullen and Iris Bork-Goldfield

April 6, at 4:30 p.m. – Fisk 302

Beyond SilenceBeyond Silence (1998) directed by Caroline Link. Starring Sylvie Testud, Tatjana Trieb, Howie Seago is a German movie with English subtitles. Acclaimed by critics and audiences everywhere, BEYOND SILENCE is the powerful Academy Award-nominated story of a young woman’s battle for independence and her deaf parents’ struggle to understand her gift for music. Given a clarinet by her free-spirited aunt, Lara is immediately consumed by a new passion her parents cannot share. Determined to follow her dreams, Lara’s ongoing pursuit of music creates an ever-widening rift that eventually threatens to tear apart her once close-knit family.

Law and Literature: Who Owns It? – A Lecture by Eva Geulen (Bonn University, Germany)

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Friday, April 1, 4:30, Russell House

Organized by the Program in Social, Cultural, and Critical Theory. Co-sponsored by German Studies, History, COL, Sociology, English, the Dean of the Social Sciences, and the Center for the Humanities

Eva Geulen’s talk will examine the historically and conceptually fraught relationship between law and literature from four points of view: 1. The common history and shared heritage of law and literature; 2. law as literature; 3. literature vs. law; 4. literature in law.

Eva Geulen received her Ph.D. from the Johns Hopkins University and has taught at the University of Rochester and at New York University. Currently, she is professor of modern German literature at Bonn University. She has published widely in the areas of modern narrative prose, discourses of education, gender studies, and aesthetics. Her books include The End of Art: Readings in a Rumor after Hegel (Stanford UP 2006) and Giorgio Agamben zur Einführung [Introducing Giorgio Agamben] (Junius 2005; second, revised edition 2009).

Prize-winning Austrian novelist Andrea Grill to read at Wesleyan

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The German Studies Department and the Shapiro Creative Writing Center invite you to meet Andrea Grill on Monday, February 21, 2011, at 4:30 p.m. in Downey House Lounge. Come listen to her stories and participate in the discussion to follow.

Andrea Grill will read from her latest novel Das Schöne und das Notwendige (Beauty and Necessity), and other stories in German and English.

In her latest novel, published in 2010, Andrea Grill discovers a new aesthetic for transnational capitalism. In her story two poor but clever friends have an idea how to turn “straw into gold.” Their scheme has only one problem, they need an Asian civet cat. But where can they find one, and will it survive in a small apartment on the fifth floor?

Andrea Grill was born in Bad Ischl in 1975 and studied in Salzburg before earning her doctorate in Biology at the University of Amsterdam with a dissertation on “The Evolution of Butterflies Endemic to Sardinia.” She writes prose, poems and essays and translates from Albanian. In 2010, she was a Max Kade Scholar at Rutgers University, New Jersey.

Kurzfilme im Deutschunterricht

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AATG-CT President Christine Dombrowki

Iris Bork-Goldfield conducted a workshop on “The Use of Short Films in the German Language Classroom”  for German teachers at Wesleyan University on January 29, 2011. The workshop was sponsored by the American Association of Teachers of German (AATG).

Renare Ringstadt, Christi Kochefko
Julia Assaiante, Anna Huber, Vera Grant, Krishna Winston

Björn oder die Hürden der Behörden

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On November 20th, Iris Bork Goldfield presented at the American Council of  Teachers of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) conference in Boston, MA. She talked about  how to successfully integrate Andi Niessner’s  German film Björn und die Hürden der Behörden (Björn or the Hurdles of Bureaucracy) into the German language classroom.