Graduate Program

completed undergraduate work at Drake University, Humboldt Universität zu Berlin and received his BA in German Literature from the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities in 2004. In 2006 he earned his MA from Washington University in St. Louis. His principal research interests include representations of the Shoah in film, photography and literature, Jewish Studies, visual theory and contemporary German-language literature.

entered the Washington University German department in 2005. As an undergraduate at Kansas State University
he majored in philosophy, history and German. He studied abroad at the Universität Giessen in 2002-03 and at the Universität Leipzig in summer 2004. His research interests include intellectual history, the interrelationship between philosophy and literature, Schiller, Nietzsche, Freud, and Kant.

earned a double B.A. in German and International Economics and Cultural Affairs (IECA) from Valparaiso University in 2001 and entered the German Department in the fall of 2001. He has studied in Germany and Austria at universities in Reutlingen, Tübingen, Munich, and Salzburg. In 2005, Bartell received a Fulbright Fellowship for research in Austria on environment and nature in Austrian literature of the nineteenth century. His main research interests include post-Romanticism nineteenth century literature and twentieth century literature as well as eco-criticism and second language acquisition. Bartell's dissertation will examine the relationship between nineteenth century Austrian literature and nature.

is in her third year of study at Washington University. She earned a B.A. in German and English from the University of Missouri-Columbia in 2007. She studied abroad at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität-München in 2005-2006. Brandi received her M.A. at Washington University in 2009. Her research interests include German Utopian literature, particularly Michael Ende.

earned a BA in English and German Literature from the University of Pennsylvania in 2005 and took a Fulbright teaching assistantship in Bamberg, Germany during the 05/06 academic year. He began graduate work at Washington University in 2006. Patrick's research interests include gender studies, aesthetic theory, early modern literature, literature of war from all time periods, and any sort of social upheaval or conflict whether outright or subtle.

earned her B.A. in urban studies and geography at Macalester College (St. Paul, MN). After subsequently learning German at the University of Minnesota, she pursued research on fellowship at the Freie-Universität-Berlin as well as obtaining CELTA certifications in teaching English as a second language. She joined the graduate program at Washington University in 2002. Leah’s research interests include 19th - 21st literature, film studies, aesthetics and phenomenology. Her dissertation focuses on the aesthetics and rhetoric of verticality in postwar literature, film and urban design. Currently, she is also an instructor in business German, having taught modern German literature for the past few semesters.

is in her fourth year of graduate studies at Washington University. She received her B.A. at the University of Oklahoma in 2003 and spent the 2003-2004 academic year on a research fellowship at the Humboldt University in Berlin studying post-reunification women writers. Her areas of interest include twentieth century literature, film, feminist theory, and literature written by women. She is also pursuing a graduate certificate in Women and Gender Studies.

earned his BA (2007) and MA (2009) degrees from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, before becoming a PhD student at Washington University in 2009. He wrote his MA thesis on Female Bodies and Politics in Lohenstein’s Drama, and as such is primarily interested in the intersections of early modern literary/cultural studies and gender studies. Other interests include representations of Jewishness and Gender throughout the history of German literature.

received her B.A. from Wesleyan University's College of Letters. She spent a year in Lübeck as a teaching assistant, studied photography and taught music classes before beginning her graduate work at Washington University in St. Louis, where she is in her fifth year in German and Comparative Literature. She earned her M.A. in 2005 and is currently on a research fellowship in Cologne, looking at cartographic elements in contemporary photography. She is interested in the ways that we use images, movement and sound in the process of locating ourselves.

completed her MA at the University of Alabama in 2003. In addition to having studied at DePaul University, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz and Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität Munich, she has also taught English at the Universität-Regensburg. Her principal research interests include representations of science and technology in film, art and literature, intersections of aesthetics and politics, ekphrasis and intermediality.

earned her B.A. in English and German at Hope College, her M.A. in German at Washington University in St. Louis. She received a Fulbright fellowship in 2004-05 to study at the Freie Universität Berlin. Her research interests include 19th -21st century literature and visual culture, with an emphasis on post-Wall literature and photography; archives, libraries, and museums; cultural memory; questions of national identity; new media; globalization; critical theory; travel narratives, and gender studies.

received her BA in French and German literature in 2004 and her MA in German literature in 2006 at the University of Pittsburgh. She studied at the Universität Augsburg in the summer of 2005. Her research interests include 20th and 21st century film and literature, aesthetic theory, trauma studies, and subculture. She is currently pursuing a dual degree in Comparative Literature.

received her BA in English and German (2005) and her MA in German (2008) from the University of Nevada, Reno. She spent 2005-2006 as a Fulbright teaching assistant in Saarbrücken, Germany. Her MA thesis examined the "Stück-im-Stück" in 18th- and 19th-century German comedies. Sarah's academic interests include translation studies, folk and fairy tales, storytelling, and literary representations of animals and anthropomorphism.

received her B.A. in German Studies from the College of William and Mary in 2008. She has spent two summers in Münster, Germany, and spent a year as an English language assistant in Linz, Austria. Her current research interests include the relationship between Germans and Turkish-Germans during the 2006 World Cup, Stunde Null literature, and representations of history in German literature.

is in his third year of graduate work and his eleventh year of learning German. He earned his BA from Wittenberg University in 2003 and his MA from Washington University in 2005. His academic interests include, but are not limited to, literature of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, gender and queer theory, intellectual history, and second language acquisition. Ted is writing his dissertation on the reception of Hermann Hesse by German youth groups throughout the twentieth century.

completed her undergraduate work in Germanic Studies and Anthropology at Indiana University in 2002. She has studied at Albert-Ludwigs Universitaet in Freiburg and taught English at the university and technical school in Erfurt under the auspices of the Bosch Foundation. She earned her M.A. in 2005 from Washington University. Her interests include the biotechnical body in art and literature of the WWI era, prosthetic theory, theories of the avant-garde, and gender studies. She is currently writing her dissertation.

came to Washington University in 2009 after earning her BA in German from Stockholm University. She has also studied one year at Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg (2008-2009). Her literary interests include late nineteenth and twentieth century German literature, specifically inner conflicts of the individual and Fin de siècle. Besides this, she is also interested in linguistics, first and second language acquisition and pedagogy.

graduated with a BA in English and German from the University of Memphis and took a Bosch Fellowship in Magdeburg, Germany during the 2004/2005 academic year. Her research interests include translation theory, book and manuscript production, early modern literature, and representations of mythology and the occult in literature.

earned her BA and MA at the University of Pennsylvania and is in her third year of graduate work at Washington University. Her academic interests include Freemasonry in the German-speaking world of the eighteenth century, the education of women in the early modern period, book production and the impact of technological advances on theology between 1600 and 1800, as well as the development of German-American clubs and organizations in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

received her M.A. in German Studies at Bowling Green State University, and spent two years in Salzburg studying at the Paris Lodron Universität (2002-2004) and teaching English at the Fachhochschule Salzburg. She studied French at the Institut de Touraine, Tours in the summer of 2005. She is working on a joint Ph.D. in German and Comparative Literature, with French as her secondary field of study. Her interests include gender studies, aesthetic theory, the nineteenth century and fin-de-siecle, and children’s literature.

is in his first year in the PhD program at Washington University. He earned his B.A. and M.A. in Germanic Studies at the University of Illinois, Chicago and has previously studied at the Humboldt Universität zu Berlin. His primary research interest lies in 18th- and 19th –century German literature and culture. He is especially interested in the representation of sexuality, politics and pedagogy in texts of those periods. More generally, he is also interested in film history, feminist theory, and minority literature.

earned her B.A. in German and Anthropology from the University of California at Berkeley (2002) and her M.Phil. in European Literature from Oxford University, England (2006).  Her M.Phil. thesis focused on issues of citation of literary predecessors and German national identity in the works of W.G. Sebald.  Her research interests include contemporary literature, theories of postmemory, and children's media.

earned a B.A. in German and French from the University of Pittsburgh (1998) and an M.A. in German from Washington University (2005).  She is currently working on a joint PhD in German and Comparative Literature.  Her interests include 20th century literature, theories of time and memory, and narrative theory.

received his BA from Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen in German and political science in 2009. He has studied in Florence for one semester. His research interests center around early 20th century literature and culture theory, especially the interrelation of space and subjectivity. Furthermore, he is interested in medieval German literature and second language acquisition.

studied Japanese at Antioch College. She received her BA in German and English Literature (1997) and her MA in German (2001) from The University of Georgia. She studied abroad at the Otto-Friedrich Universitat Bamberg before joining the graduate program at Washington University. In 2004-2005 she was at the Christian Albrechts Universitat zu Kiel on a Fulbright Research Fellowship. Suzuko's research interests focus on contemporary German-language literature, trans-national literatures, narrative theory, and media studies. She is currently completing her dissertation titled “Text, Medium, Afterlife: Intertextuality and Intermediality in the Works of Yoko Tawada.”

received her B.A. from Creighton University where she studied German and English. She has studied at Philips-Universität Marburg and Dortmund Universität where she spent one year as a Fulbright fellow researching Walt Whitman’s influence on German Expressionist painters. Melissa is an Olin Fellow working toward a joint M.A./Ph.D. in German and Comparative Literature at Washington University Fall ’08. Her research interests include early twentieth-century German and American literature and visual art, inter-cultural transfer and visual culture studies.

earned his B.A. in German and economics from the University of Virginia in 2006. His academic interests center around nineteenth-century German literature, predominantly that of Imperial Germany. In his spare time Faruk enjoys computer design, playing volleyball, listening to Die Ärzte, and watching the Deutsche Fußball-Bundesliga.

came to Washington University in 2009 after receiving her B.A., M.A. and I. Staatsexamen at Bielefeld University in Germany, where she graduated in Germanic Languages and Literature, Pedagogics and Philosophy. She now serves as Research Assistant of Prof. Lützeler for the current academic year. Her major fields of study especially focus on the connections and interactions between literature and philosophy. In particular she is interested in nineteenth and twentieth century literature and philosophy (Heinrich von Kleist, Franz Kafka; Hannah Arendt, Friedrich Nietzsche and Michel Foucault) and literary theory.

came to Washington University in 2006 after receiving BA and MA degrees in German Literature from Brigham Young University. He resided in Rheinland-Pfalz for two years and studied in Vienna for one semester. His MA thesis explored visual and rhetorical constructs of postwar Austria in Heimatfilme and a variety of other popular texts. Besides an affinity for 1950s film, his interests include 19th century, postwar and contemporary German and Austrian literature.

received her BA from Kenyon College in Modern Languages and Literatures (German and Russian). She studied in Berlin and Florence and taught English in Italy and Poland, as well as two years in Austria as a Fulbright TA. She received her MA from Washington University in St. Louis in 2007 and is interested in connecting art, philosophy, science and geometry in maps, diagrams and blueprints. She is also pursuing a graduate certificate in translation studies.

is in the final stages of completing her MA and the initial state examinations at WWU Münster in the fields of Philosophy, Germanic Languages and Literatures and Pedagogy. She joined Washington University in 2009 and is currently working as a research assistant for Prof. Lützeler. Her academic interests center around the relationship between philosophy and literature. Accordingly, her MA thesis focuses on the epistemological qualities of rhetorical procedures as relates to conceptual forms of the constitution of knowledge in Kant. In addition, she is interested in questions of literary theory, twentieth century philsophy (especially Critical Theory, Foucault, Lyotard) and eighteenth century philosophy, literature and aesthetics.

has been a student of theater-, film- and television-studies, German languages and literatures and sociology at the university of Cologne (Germany) since 2004. The primary centers of his work are: genre theories, popular culture, body politics and death in the media, cultural exchange and national formations, shifting concepts of realism and “Medialität” after the digital turn, post-structuralism. For further information, please, visit his personal homepage: http://www.peterscheinpflug.de (German language only).

received her bachelors degree in German and English from Western Kentucky University in May 2008. During the 2008-2009 school year, she was a Fulbright English teaching assistant in Mainz, Germany. Her interests include late 19th and 20th century literature and cinema studies.

received a B.A. in German and a B.M. in music from Southern Methodist University in 2005 and began graduate studies at Washington University the following year. As a high school student, she received a Congress-Bundestag Exchange scholarship and spent a year in Munich. Jocelyn is currently taking a Turkish language course in Istanbul and will begin her second year of graduate studies in Fall 2007. Turkish-German literature is one of her primary academic interests, but other interests include Early Romanticism, particularly the interplay between politics and poetry in the works of Novalis.

completed undergraduate work at the Universities of Sofia and Hamburg. I received my BA in German from the University of Sofia and my MA`s from the Universities of Sofia and Delaware. My MA thesis explored Melancholy and W. G. Sebald`s “The Rings of Saturn”. A principal research area I am interested in is ethics and literature, both its theoretical and practical aspects.

earned a BA in German and English Literature from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. In 2004-2005 she served as a Fulbright Teaching Assistant working with adult students at the Ilmenau-Kolleg in Thuringia, Germany. She received her MA from Washington University in St Louis in 2007. Her current work investigates concepts of race in German literature and popular culture of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Other interests include the changing role of foreign language instruction and the structure and accessibility of the American university system. For the current academic year Magdalen is studying in Berlin at the Freie Universität.

Norma Suvak holds a B.A. in German and English (2004) and an M.A. in Germanic Languages and Literatures (2006). Her master’s thesis focused on intermedial adaptations of Strauss and Wilde’s Salomé. She has also studied at the Universität Mannheim and the Katholische Universität Eichstätt-Ingolstadt. She has taught courses in German, Film, and Women’s Studies and currently is teaching in the Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies department. Her research interests include gender and queer theory, masculinities, film, the fin-de-siècle, the politics of space, theories of the body, and Walter Benjamin.

received her B.A. from Vanderbilt University in 2004, and her M.A. from Washington University in 2006. She has also studied at the Universität Regensburg. She is currently working on her comprehensive exams, and will soon begin work on her dissertation. Nancy enjoys teaching for both the German department and the Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies department, and is in the WGSS certificate program. Her interests include transgender studies, gay and lesbian studies, queer theory, and late 18th and 19th century literature--especially literature by women writers of the fin-de-siècle.

is in his third year of graduate work at Washington University. After completing a BA in Classics at Grinnell College in 1999, he changed directions and decided to pursue German. He received his MA in German in 2004 from the University of Oklahoma, where he wrote a master’s thesis on the short stories of Wolfgang Hildesheimer and their relationship to discourses of art in the cultural landscape of 1950s Germany. He spent 2004-2005 as a Fulbright Teaching Assistant in Bremen at the aptly named Hermann-Böse-Gymnasium. His academic interests include narrative theory, postwar German literature, art, and film, as well as German Jewish literature and Yiddish.

earned BA degrees in German and Spanish from the University of Toledo in 2004 and received his MA in German Literature from Washington University in 2007. He has spent time studying abroad in Tübingen, Darmstadt, Madrid and Toledo, Spain. His academic interests include Romanticism, the uncanny, supernatural and occult in literature, translation studies and horror in art.

received her MA in German from Washington University in 2007 and is currently finishing her PhD coursework for the Joint Degree in German and Comparative Literature. During her undergraduate study at Southeast Missouri State University (majoring in German and International Business), Rust studied in Hogeschool van Amsterdam in the Netherlands and Universität Dortmund in Germany. Her research interests include the social history of fashion, literature for girls in nineteenth century Germany, and issues of literary translation from Russian and German into English. Rust is a native of Minsk, Belarus.

earned his BA and MA in German Literature from the University of Alabama. He has spent time studying abroad in Weingarten, Mannheim, Klagenfurt and Berlin. His current concentration is on the interrelation of women, spiritualism and travel in the prose work of Gerhart Hauptmann, though recent projects have included an examination of power structures in Heinrich Mann’s Der Untertan and a study of scatology as a means of expression in Ein kurtzweilig Lesen von Dyl Ulenspiegel.

Petra Watzke earned the equivalent of a B.A. (Zwischenprüfung) in German and English from the Universität Regensburg in her native Germany. She spent the academic year 2005/06 as a foreign language assistant for German at two comprehensive schools in Stevenage, England. Interested in expanding her teaching experience and further refining her English language skills, she then studied German at the University of Colorado, where she served as a graduate teaching assistant. In May 2009 she graduated with an M.A. in German Studies, as well as a Women and Gender Studies Certificate. Watzke wrote her thesis on representations of Native Americans in German literature, which is among her research interests in the broader field of minority studies, colonialism and questions of authenticity in German literature and film.