2006 Newsletter

UCI Department of German News Fall 2006

http://www.humanities.uci.edu/german/ DEPARTMENT ANNOUNCEMENTS: The Department of German is pleased that David Pan has joined our faculty this academic year as an associate professor. David taught for seven years at Washington University (St. Louis) and one year at Stanford University. He worked for two years as a management consultant at McKinsey and Company in Los Angeles and was an associate professor at Pennsylvania State University from 2003 to 2006. David’s first book (Primitive Renaissance: Rethinking German Expressionism, University of Nebraska Press, 2001) reinterprets Expressionist art and literature as part of a primitivist movement rather than a modernist one. He has just finished a book project about sacrifice as a trope in German literature entitled “Economies of Sacrifice: Violence and Culture in Modern Germany” and is currently working on a manuscript about the idea of tradition in 18th- century German thought. David’s research and teaching interests include 18th- through 20th-century German intellectual history, German expressionism, primitivism, aesthetics, culture in the Nazi period, Hamann, Herder, Kleist, Kafka, Adorno, Carl Einstein and Carl Schmitt.

David Pan joins UCI German faculty.

FACULTY NEWS: For most of the year, Anke Biendarra focused her energies on her book manuscript, which analyzes how changes in the literary landscape after unification affect the role and understanding of authorship. She read two papers at the PAMLA and GSA, respectively and published two articles. Her essay on the motifs of photography and obstructed gaze in Kafka’s Der Verschollene appeared in Orbis Litterarum (spring 2006). A second essay focuses on the interplay of globalization and post-national identity politics in recent prose by Judith Hermann and Gregor Hens. It is forthcoming in Gegenwartsliteratur (fall 2006). In addition, Anke has started to prepare an edited volume on the nature of pop in contemporary German culture. Research-wise this has been a Benjamin year for Kai Evers. It began with the publication of an article in Telos on Arendt’s and Benjamin’s notions of storytelling and ended with an essay titled “Destructive Satires: Canetti and Benjamin’s Search for the Murderous Substance of Satire” that will be published in the volume The Worlds of Elias Canetti, edited by Julian Preece and William Donahue (Cambridge Scholars Press). He spoke on Musil at the ACLA annual meeting and will present a paper on Peter Weiss at the 2006 MLA Convention in Philadelphia in December and in February 2007 will participate in the “Histories of the Aftermath Conference” in San Diego. Gail Hart was on sabbatical winter and spring 2006 and enjoyed living in Berlin. She wrote an article on Michael Haneke's

UCI Department of German News Fall 2006

http://www.humanities.uci.edu/german/ "Funny Games" and Schiller's Classicism for the spring issue of Modern Austrian Literature and two essays on 18th-century robber fiction that are still in the system. You can still buy her Friedrich Schiller: Crime, Aesthetics, and the Poetics of Punishment (2005) from the University of Delaware Press. Hart was Program Director for the German Studies Association's 30th annual conference (2006), which was the largest ever, and has begun to edit a series of monographs with Professor Irmela von der Lühe of the Free University, Berlin: Berliner Beiträge zur neueren deutschen Literatur- und Kulturgeschichte (submissions in both German and English welcome). She will present some of the material on robbery at the 2006 MLA Convention in a session on narcissism. Her grad seminar in winter 2007, Literary Histories, addresses the organization of literary texts from the eighteenth century to the present. This will be her 7th and last year as director of UCI's Humanities Core Course.

Ruth Kluger receives three more honors! Congratulations to Ruth Kluger who, with her new book, Gelesene Wirklichkeiten

(Wallstein, 2006), adds three more prizes to her already lengthy list of awards! On November 3, 2006, she traveled to Gandersheim in Lower Saxony to receive the Roswitha Prize. The Roswitha is the oldest German-language prize for literature given solely to women. Named for a nun of the tenth century, Roswitha of Gandesheim, who is considered to be the first German female poet, it is awarded yearly. Ruth also received the Käthe Leichter Prize, which is given by the Austrian government. Käthe Leichter, the first Austrian woman to earn a Ph.D. in the social sciences, was very active in women's causes. The prize is given to outstanding women who have also supported women's equality and advancement. In January 2007 Ruth will receive the Lessing Prize of the State of Saxony. This prize, an annual award, is given in honor of the eighteenth-century author Gotthold Ephraim Lessing. Meredith Lee continues as president of the Goethe Society of North America and serves on the board of the international Goethe Gesellschaft in Weimar. In 2005-06 Herbert Lehnert published “Thomas Manns Modernität,” in Thomas Mann Jahrbuch, 18 (2005) and with our doctoral candidate Karen Gallagher, “Elf Briefe Rilkes an Marie Herzfeld (Mit einem Brief Stefan Zweigs an Marie Herzfeld),” in Blätter der Rilke Gesellschaft, 26 (2005). He also published two reviews in Orbis Litterarum: “Zur Biographie Thomas Manns: Der Adorno-Komplex,” 60 (2005) and “Beiträge zur Biographie Thomas Manns in Davoser Vorträgen,” 61 (2006). Herbert is currently doing final revisions on the two volumes of the new edition of

UCI Department of German News Fall 2006

http://www.humanities.uci.edu/german/ Thomas Mann's works, Essays VI. One volume contains the edited texts of Mann's essays written from 1945 to 1949; the other, commentaries to these essays. Publication is planned for 2007. This fall Herbert delivered a public lecture in Lübeck, Germany, "Thomas Mann: Schriftsteller für und gegen deutsche Bildungsbürger." This year Glenn Levine published an article in Die Unterrichtspraxis/Teaching of German entitled “Problematizing the Teaching and Learning of Grammar in the Intermediate German Classroom: A Sociocultural Approach” (39.2), to appear this fall. He continues to serve on the steering committee of the UC Consortium for Language Teaching and Learning. This fall he begins work as chair of the editorial board of the SAT German Subject Test, as well as German section head of the American Association of University Section Coordinators and Directors (AAUSC). At UCI he continues serving as the School of Humanities coordinator for “less commonly taught languages,” which currently includes Persian, Arabic and Hebrew. In addition, this summer he was appointed to the position of Faculty Director of the Center for International Education, which oversees UCI’s study abroad programs. In the department, Glenn continues to integrate—through the hard work and dedication of the graduate student instructors—a sociocultural and cultural studies approach into the first- and second-year curriculum. Jens Rieckmann edited the Companion to the Works of Stefan George, published in 2005 by Camden House. He is working on a series of biographical essays on the young Hofmannsthal, wrote several book reviews

and continues to serve on the advisory board of Austrian Studies. Tom Saine, who retired in June 2005, was back last year to teach German 97 for the department. We are grateful to him for agreeing to do so again this academic year. John H. Smith continues to chair the department and serve as German's graduate advisor. He also directs the UCI Critical Theory Institute and its ongoing research project which offers theoretical analyses of our present state of (in)security. He was in Berlin this past summer doing the final research on his most recent book project, tentatively titled “Dialogues Between Faith and Reason: The Death of God and the Return of Religion.” The book explores (mostly) German thought on God and religion from Erasmus and Luther to the present. This year he is team teaching a course, "Persuasion and Social Change," with another humanist and a sociologist for UCI's new Freshman Integrated Program. He is pleased that the department has been able to hire three stellar younger colleagues in three years. GRADUATE STUDENT NEWS: The German Department has admitted two new graduate students to our Ph.D. program who have M.A.s in Comparative Literature: Friederike Kaufel, the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana, and Helen Kilgallen, California State University, Long Beach, and welcomes back David Halgren, UCI M.A. in German, 1990. Jennifer Bierich-Shahbazi was awarded a one-quarter Regent’s Dissertation Fellow-ship for spring quarter 2006.

UCI Department of German News Fall 2006

http://www.humanities.uci.edu/german/ Natalie Eppelsheimer was awarded a grant from the UCI International Center for Writing and Translation and one from the School of Humanities for her dissertation research on German exiles in colonial Kenya and images of Africa in contemporary German literature. She also received a Humanities Summer Dissertation Fellow-ship. Natalie is serving as a '06/07 Pedagogical Fellow and one of her responsibilities is to facilitate numerous workshops for the department TAs. The Pedagogical Fellows Program, the purpose of which is to give fellows advanced pedagogical training and academic job preparation, was developed and is sponsored by the UCI Instructional Resource Center. Natalie also demonstrated her interest in language pedagogy by attending several workshops organized by the Goethe Institute and co-taught this year's teacher training seminar ("Lehrer-fortbildungsseminar") at the Deutsche Sommerschule am Pazifik in Portland, Oregon.

Pedagogical Fellow Natalie Eppelsheimer facilitates a workshop during fall quarter

Orientation Week. Pictured (left to right) are Natalie and graduate students Erin Hourigan,

Rebecca Schuman and Helen Kilgallen. Charles Hammond, Jr. received his Ph.D. spring quarter ’06. His dissertation is entitled “Blind Alleys: Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Oscar Wilde and the Problem of Aestheticism.” Chuck currently holds a tenure-track position at the University of Tennessee, Martin. Erin Hourigan and Simona Moti were named the 2005-06 recipients of the Elvira Schumacher Memorial Fellowship. Erin used her award to support her attendance at the Middlebury College Language School summer immersion program in Russian. Simona used hers for travel to Munich this summer to do dissertation research at the Ludwig-Maximilians University. Franz Kuzay was the second graduate student in the department to receive a 2006 School of Humanities Summer Dissertation Fellowship. Rebecca Schuman received a School of Humanities Summer Language Stipend to travel to Prague to study Czech. Proficiency in this language is vital to Rebecca’s research, which focuses on the language politics of the Jewish areas of Prague in the early 20th century. UNDERGRADUATE STUDENT NEWS:

UCI Department of German News Fall 2006

http://www.humanities.uci.edu/german/

Faculty member Anke Biendarra visits with student Philip Menges at a fall department luncheon for new and continuing majors.

Four undergraduate students on our campus are the recipients of the generosity of Kendra Leindecker Mirasol (B.A. in German from UCI, 1988 and MBA from The University of Chicago, 1993). This is the sixth year that Kendra has funded the Leindecker Travel Award to Germany for undergraduate students through a charitable donation and matching gift from her spouse’s employer. The 2006-07 recipients were selected from a highly competitive applicant pool. Glenn Ellington, a sophomore studying vocal performance who has been enrolled in UCI German language classes, received help with expenses to attend the Miami School of Music summer program at Salzburg College. Anne Nakamura, an International Studies and Political Science major, and Tiffany Wu, who is majoring in Political Science and History, are using their awards to help defray expenses to attend the first semester of the Free University’s European Studies Program. Ornanong (Dow) Maneerattana, a Criminology, Law and Society major and Humanities minor, used her award to help with the cost of studying the German language and immersing herself in the

culture at the summer Goethe Institute in Hamburg. At the conclusion of the course, Dow volunteered for three months as an unpaid intern at a small NGO (part of Amnesty for Women), working in the Southeast Asia section. The department is extremely grateful to Kendra for her continued support of these educational trips. Anyone interested in helping as well or making any charitable gift to German at UCI should contact us at [email protected] or by telephone at (949) 824-4942. You can keep up to date with our activities

by visiting our website at http:www.humanities.uci.edu/german/