Faculty Staff and Students
The faculty listing for the Department of German Studies below includes the areas of Asian Studies and European Studies, interdisciplinary study areas under the Department.
For more detailed information, please click their name to be taken to a detailed description of the nature of their work, research areas, and more.
Current employees:
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Tenure-Track Faculty
Todd Herzog
Professor and Head of German Studies and Director of the Niehoff Center for Film and Media Studies and the Digital Media Collaborative., German Studies
732 Old Chemistry Building
Mikiko Hirayama
Associate Professor of Japanese Art History, German Studies
728F Old Chemistry Building
Her research focuses on Japanese art criticism of the early twentieth century. Her recent publications include “Inner Beauty: Kishida Ryūsei (1891-1929)’s Theory of Realism.” Edited by Minh Nguyen. New Essays in Japanese Aesthetics: Philosophy, Politics, Culture, Literature, and the Arts. Lanham, MD: Lexington Press, 2017, “Ishii Hakutei and the Journal Hōsun.” Edited by Chris Uhlenbeck, Amy Riegle Newland, and Maureen de Vries. Waves of Renewal: Modern Japanese Prints, 1900-1960. Leiden: Hotei Publishing, 2015, “‘Fictionalized Truth’: Realism as the Vehicle for War Painting” in Art and War in Japan and Its Empire, 1931-1960 (2012), “From Art without Borders to Art for the Nation: Japanist (Nihonshugi) Painting by Dokuritsu Bijutsu Kyōkai during the 1930s” in Monumenta Nipponica (2010), and Reflecting Truth: Japanese Photography in the Nineteenth Century (co-editor, 2005).
She has delivered papers at venues such as the College Art Association conference, Association for Asian Studies conference, and Asian Studies Conference Japan. Hirayama's service to the field included serving as an anonymous reviewer for Art Bulletin and Ars Orientalis.
Gergana Ivanova
Director of Asian Studies, Associate Professor of Japanese Literature and Culture, German Studies
728E Old Chemistry Building
Ivanova's recent publications explore the role of Japanese "classics" in manga (https://jll.pitt.edu/ojs/JLL). She is also completing a co-translation of One Hundred Exemplary Women, One Poem Each (Retsujo hyakunin isshu, 1847 https://open.library.ubc.ca/collections/hundred/items/1.0055346). Her current book project centers on the eroticization of tenth- and eleventh-century women writers in early modern Japan.
Ivanova teaches courses in Japanese literary and visual culture.
Dinshaw J. Mistry
Professor, German Studies
728B Old Chemistry Building
He specializes in international relations, security studies, Asian security, and technology and politics. Within these fields, his research covers two main areas: nuclear and missile proliferation, and South Asian security and US foreign policy in the region.
Dr. Mistry is author of two major books and co-author and editor of a third. The first, Containing Missile Proliferation, is a comprehensive study of the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR) and its impact on 14 missile programs; it also analyzes the supply-side approach to nonproliferation. The second, The US-India Nuclear Agreement, offers the most detailed analysis of nuclear negotiations with India; it highlights the impact of domestic politics on nuclear diplomacy. The third is an edited volume, Enduring and Emerging Issues in South Asian Security, where he authored the leading chapters on US foreign policy interests in South Asia, ranging from strategic issues to democracy and development, and regional challenges in these areas.
His additional writings appear in journals such as International Security, Security Studies, Asian Survey, Political Science Quarterly, Asian Security, and Arms Control Today, and in the International Herald Tribune, New York Times, and Washington Post.
His current research projects examine regional nuclear issues and the global arms control regime; the new dimensions of missile proliferation and missile defense; and US foreign policy in South Asia and its implications for Asian security.
At the University of Cincinnati, Dr. Mistry directed the program in Asian Studies and developed the curriculum in security studies.
Tanja U Nusser
Associate Professor, German Studies & Film / Media Studies. Director of Graduate Studies, German Studies, German Studies
742 Old Chemistry Building
She is author of a book on the German filmmaker Ulrike Ottinger (2001) and one on artificial reproductions in literature and film (2011). She is co-editor of the book series Szenen / Schnittstellen (Fink Verlag, Germany) and co-edited volumes on the Berlin Republic. Reflections on / of German Unification (1990-2015) (2019), Kathrin Röggla (2017), Catastrophe and Catharsis: Perspective on Disaster and Redemption in German Culture and Beyond (2015), Engineering Life. Narrationen vom Menschen in Biomedizin, Kultur und Literatur (2008), Askese. Geschlecht und Geschichte der Selbstdisziplinierung (2005), Rasterfahndungen. Darstellungstechniken – Normierungsverfahren – Wahrnehmungskonstitution (2003), Techniken der Reproduktion. Medien – Leben – Diskurse (2002) and Krankheit und Geschlecht: Diskursive Affären zwischen Literatur und Medizin (2002).
Sunnie Rucker-Chang
Slavic and East European Studies Program Director, UC STARTALK Workforce Media Development and Year-Long Russian Immersion Programs, German Studies
731 Old Chemistry Building
PhD, Ohio State University, 2010 (Slavic Languages and Literatures)
Dr. Sunnie Rucker-Chang's primary interests lie in contemporary cultural movements and identity formation in Central and Southeast Europe. She writes primarily on racial and cultural formations, minority-majority and minority-minority relations in Southeast Europe. She is co-editor and contributor to Cultures of Mobility and Alterity: Crossing the Balkans and Beyond (with Yana Hashamova and Oana Popescu-Sandu) (forthcoming, University of Liverpool Pres, 2022), co-author of Roma Rights and Civil Rights: A Transatlantic Comparison (Cambridge, 2020), and co-editor of and contributor to Chinese Migrants in Russia, Central Asia and Eastern Europe (Routledge, 2011). Her work has appeared in Critical Romani Studies, EuropeNow! - A Journal of Research and Art, Interventions: Journal of Post-Colonial Studies, Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs, Journal of Transatlantic Studies, Slavic and East European Journal, and Slavic Review. She is currently finishing a monograph focusing on the politics of Blackness in former Yugoslav states that challenges conventional ideas of race and racialization in the Balkans and connects the region to broad trends in European Studies.
Evan Torner
Associate Professor of German Studies and Film / Media Studies; Undergraduate Director of German Studies; Director, UC Game Lab, German Studies
730 Old Chemistry Building
Educator Faculty
Noriko Fujioka-Ito
Professor-Educator and Director of Japanese Language and Culture Program , German Studies
737 Old Chemistry Building
Lindsay D Preseau
Assistant Professor - Educator and Director of Basic Languages, German Studies, German Studies
741 Old Chemistry Building
Lindsay is coordinator of the basic languages program in German at UC and trains the graduate assistants in theory and methods of language acquisition and pedagogy. In her own undergraduate teaching, she enjoys teaching courses which interdigitate the cultural, linguistic, and cognitive dimensions of language, bringing together the study of language as an art and as a science.
Adjunct Faculty
Ritwik Banerji
Adjunct Instructor of Musicology, German Studies
Old Chemistry Building
Emiko Kuisel
German Studies
Jade Yuh-Hwan Lin
Adjunct Instructor, German Studies
726A Old Chemistry Building
Junko Markovic
Adjunct Instructor, German Studies
726C Old Chemistry Building
Petersen Williams Niehoff
Adjunct Assistant Professor, German Studies
Old Chemistry Building
Katherine Hope Paul
Instructor - Adj, German Studies
Old Chemistry Building
During her tenure at UC, she has served as President (2016-2018), Secretary (2015-2016), and Vice President (2013-2014) of the German Graduate Student Association (GGSA). She coordinated in 2014 as well co-coordinated the annual German Day event in 2013, 2017, and 2018. She co-coordinated the 20th (2015) and coordinated the 21st (2016) Focus on German Studies Conference, and served as Co-Editor of the Focus on German Studies graduate student journal for its 23rd volume (Fall 2018) and as Editor-in-Chief of the 24th volume (Fall 2018).
Her academic interests include German literature and drama since the 16th century, Theatre Studies, German-American Studies, Spanish Language and Cultural Studies, Music History and Theory, and Film and Media Studies.
Tomoko Tsuzuki-Deboer
Instructor - Adjunct, German Studies
740 Old Chemistry Building
Affiliate Faculty
Valerie A. Weinstein
Professor of Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and Niehoff Professor of Film and Media Studies, A&S Women's Studies
3314 French Hall
Visiting Faculty
Svea Suzanne Braeunert
DAAD Visiting Associate Professor, A&S German Studies
728D Old Chemistry Building
Svea Braeunert's current book project addresses "Media Cultures of Drone Warfare." Parts of the project were presented as "Cultures of Drone Warfare: Thinking About the (Un)Seen" at the Night of Philosophy and Ideas at Brooklyn Public Library, and as the keynote "Nebenschauplätze: Looking Askew in Contemporary Art" at the Cornell Graduate Student Conference Flanking Maneuvers: Das Laterale Denken.
Her CV provides more information on her academic life, and her conversation with the DAAD gives some personal insights into her experience of living and working in the US.
Emeriti Faculty
Stanley J. Corkin
Professor, German Studies
Books:
The Wire: Space, Race and the Wonders of Post-Industrial Baltimore (forthcoming: University of Texas Press, 2014).
Starring New York: Filiming the Grime and Glamour of the Long 1970s (Oxford, 2011).
Cowboys as Cold Warriors: The Western and U.S. History in the Culture and the Moving Image Series (Temple, 2004).
Realism and the Birth of the Modern United States: Cinema, Literature, and Culture (Georgia, 1996).
Books Co-Edited:
The New Riverside Edition of Stephen Crane: The Red Badge of Courage, Maggie, A Girl of the Streets, and other Selected Writings , co-edited with Phyllis Frus, (Houghton Mifflin, 2000).
Alan B Galt
Emeritus Faculty, German Studies
Jerry H Glenn
Emeritus Faculty, German Studies
Jennifer Jo Kelley
Emeritus Faculty, German Studies
Helga Slessarev
Emeritus Faculty, German Studies
Staff
Elaine M Dunker
Financial Administrator 1, German Studies
360D McMicken Hall
Steve R Hofferber
Program Manager, German Studies
723 Old Chemistry Building
Jennifer M Lange
Business Administrator, German Studies
McMicken Hall
Hannah Frances Young
Program Coordinator, German Studies
Old Chemistry Building
Graduate Students
Barbara Antonie Besendorfer
Graduate Assistant, German Studies
Ellen C. (Chew) Kirkendall
Graduate Assistant, German Studies
Ellen C. Kirkendall, formerly Chew, is currently a PhD candidate (ABD) in German Studies at the University of Cincinnati. She successfully defended her dissertation, "Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill’s Die Sieben Todsünden: Exile and Exilic Legacy in Performance, 1933-2020" in February 2022. She has presented papers and co-coordinated panels at the German Studies Association, and has published in Focus on German Studies, where she also served as the journal's book review editor and co-editor-in-chief, from 2016-2019. She holds a Master of Arts degree in German Studies from the University of Cincinnati and a Bachelor of Music in Voice from the University of Cincinnati, College-Conservatory of Music. She pioneered the "German for Musicians" class, a unique pedagogical approach focused on teaching German through Lieder and opera to music students. Her research interests include opera, theater and performance studies, language pedagogy, and translation studies.
Mareike Lange
Graduate Assistant, German Studies
Anna Maria Senuysal
Graduate Assistant, German Studies
Kayla Andrea Weiglein
Graduate Assistant, German Studies