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
Todd Herzog is Professor and Head of German Studies at the University of Cincinnati, where he also directs the Digital Media Collaborative and the Niehoff Center for Film & Media Studies. He is author or editor of six books, most recently25Years Berlin Republic(Wilhelm Fink, 2019). He co-edited the Journal of Austrian Studies 2011-2021 and has published over three dozen articles on topics rangingfrom the modernist crime story to the representation of history in the films ofQuentin Tarantino. He is currently working on a book project onVienna’s Prater and the History of Amusement.
Mikiko Hirayama
Associate Professor of Japanese Art History, German Studies
728F Old Chemistry Building
Professor Hirayama teaches courses on Japanese and Chinese art history.
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.
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
Gergana Ivanova's scholarly interests include the reception of Heian period (794-1185) literature from the seventeenth century to the present, early modern (1603-1867) erotic and didactic literature, and present-day manga representations of the past. Her first book Unbinding The Pillow Book: The Many Lives of a Japanese Classic (https://cup.columbia.edu/book/unbinding-the-pillow-book/9780231187985) examines the transformations of The Pillow Book of Sei Shōnagon (Makura no sōshi, 11th c.) from the seventeenth through twentieth centuries in Japan as documented in a variety of sources, including scholarly commentaries, erotic parodies, instruction manuals for women, high-school textbooks, and comic books. Unbinding The Pillow Book was selected as an Outstanding Academic Title for 2019 by Choice and as one of the Seminary Co-op Notable books for 2021.
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.
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
Dinshaw Mistry is a Professor of International Relations and Asian Studies at the University of Cincinnati. He has also been a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center; the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University; and the Center for International Security and Cooperation, Stanford University.
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.
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
Tanja Nusser is interested in animals, artificial reproductions and artificial humans, science (and maybe mad scientist too), in terror and catastrophes, and questions of the real. Her main research interests are literature since the 19th century, film studies, and history of science, disability studies, and gender studies, postcolonial and transnational theory.
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).
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
Sunnie Rucker-Chang
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.
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
Evan Torner defended his dissertation on race representation in East German genre cinema at the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 2013, and spent 2013-2014 at Grinnell College as an Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow. He has published several articles pertaining to East Germany, critical race theory, DEFA Indianerfilme, science-fiction, transnational genre cinema, and game studies, as well as co-edited several books. His volume Immersive Gameplay: Essays on Role-Playing and Participatory Media co-edited with William J. White was published with McFarland Publishing in 2012, and he is one of the founding editors of the Analog Game Studies journal (http://analoggamestudies.org). His major projects underway include the Handbook of East German Cinema: The DEFA Legacy, co-edited with Henning Wrage and under contract with Walter De Gruyter, and a monograph entitled A Century and Beyond: Critical Readings of German Science-Fiction Cinema.
Educator Faculty
Noriko Fujioka-Ito
Professor-Educator and Director of Japanese Language and Culture Program , German Studies
737 Old Chemistry Building
Noriko Fujioka-Ito earned Ph. D. and MA degrees majoring in Foreign and Second Language Education with Japanese Linguistics and Educational Research minors from the Ohio State University. She has been teaching and coordinating Japanese language courses at the University of Cincinnati.
Lindsay D Preseau
Assistant Professor - Educator and Director of Basic Languages, German Studies, German Studies
741 Old Chemistry Building
Lindsay Preseau's research and teaching specializations lie at the intersection of sociolinguistics, second language acquisition, and language pedagogy. Her 2020 monograph, Kiezenglish: Multiethnic German and the Global English Debate, employs corpus linguistic and ethnographic fieldwork in demonstrating how the use of English by speakers of minoritized languages and language varities in Germany has been systematically erased and devalued. With a particular focus on ideologies surrounding English proficiency in language teaching, she shows how promoting global English in Germany represents an important act of empowerment and social justice for these communities.
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.
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
Jade Yuhhwan Lin is an adjunct faculty teaching modern Chinese language and culture at the University of Cincinnati. She is also a member and regional coordinator of Ohio Association of Teachers of Chinese where she participates and organizes annual workshops with fellow Chinese teachers for professional developments. She teaches different levels of the target language including AP courses. She started the Chinese program at St. Xavier High School and taught there for many years. She also volunteered being a guide and chaperone to groups of students visiting China, working on the sister cities high school students exchange programs to Taiwan, served as a medical interpreter at Children's Hospital and others. Her teaching pedagogy is using interactive instructional models to engage student learning, and using the tools. A of technology to help them become a lifelong learner and to reach their highest potential.
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
Katherine earned her Bachelor of Arts in Spanish and German from Northern Kentucky University in December 2011. After completing her Master's at UC in Spring 2014, she accepted a scholarship from the Verband der Deutsch-Amerikanischen Clubs, e.V. (VDAC) and studied at the Universität Bielefeld under Prof. Dr. Walter Erhart. She returned to UC in Fall 2015 as a Ph.D. student, achieving candidacy in April 2016. She received a Charles Phelps Taft Research Center Dissertation Fellowship for the year of 2017-18 and was awarded a Fulbright Graduate Research Fellowship for 2018-2019, where she researched in Berlin at the Bertolt-Brecht-Archiv. Her dissertation project examines Robert Wilson's Faust I+II and the Faust legend.
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.
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
Valerie Weinstein earned her PhD in German Studies with a concentration in Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies from Cornell University in 2000. She came to UC in 2012 after having served on the faculty at Williams College, University of Nevada, Reno, and Tulane University. She teaches a variety of undergraduate and graduate courses, from Feminist Theory to Nazi Cinema. Prof. Weinstein is the author of Antisemitism in Film Comedy in Nazi Germany (Indiana University Press, 2019) and co-editor, with Barbara Hales and Mihaela Petrescu, of Continuity and Crisis in German Cinema 1928-1936 (Camden House, 2016) and, with Barbara Hales, of Rethinking Jewishness in Weimar Cinema (Berghahn Books, 2021). Weinstein has authored refereed articles and book chapters on gender, sexuality, and Jewishness in German film between the two world wars, and on other topics ranging from early twentieth-century anthropological film footage to Turkish-German literature, to music videos by the heavy metal band Rammstein.
Visiting Faculty
Svea Suzanne Braeunert
DAAD Visiting Associate Professor, A&S German Studies
728D Old Chemistry Building
Svea Braeunert is DAAD Visiting Associate Professor in German Studies and Film and Media Studies. Her research interests include visual and digital culture, photography, time-based media, and memory studies. She is the author of Gespenstergeschichten: Der linke Terrorismus der RAF und die Künste (Kadmos 2015) and co-author and co-curator of Method: Sasha Kurmaz (Kehrer 2016) and To See Without Being Seen: Contemporary Art and Drone Warfare (University of Chicago Press 2016) . Her reflection on the exhibition was published as To See Without Being Seen: Critical Concepts and Curatorial Approaches Informing the Exhibition on Contemporary Art, Drones, and Surveillance. In: Media-N: The Journal of the New Media Caucus. Volume 13, Issue 1 (2019): 39-56. (co-authored with Meredith Malone).
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.
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
Stanley Corkin is the author of 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), and Realism and the Birth of the Modern United States: Cinema, Literature, and Culture (Georgia, 1996). Professor Corkin's book on the HBO series The Wire, tentatively titled The Wire: Space, Race and the Wonders of Post-Industrial Baltimore is forthcoming from the University of Texas Press in 2014. Dr. Corkin also co-edited, with Phyllis Frus, The New Riverside Edition of Stephen Crane: The Red Badge of Courage, Maggie, A Girl of the Streets, and other Selected Writings (Houghton Mifflin, 2000). Professor Corkin's peer-reviewed articles, essays, and reviews have appeared in a number of journals, including Jump Cut, the Journal of Urban History, MFS: Modern Fiction Studies, Prospects: An American Studies Annual, Journal of American History, Cinema Journal, College English, College Literature, and Cineaste.
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).
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
After career beginnings in literature of the 19th century (Theodor Storm), Galt's professional focus has shifted to Landeskunde and German for Business. A founder and continuing leader of the Business German movement in American German Studies, his main interests in recent years have been the computer as a tool for literary and linguistic research, and the art and science of technical translating. Research and teaching interests span the same wide range.
Jerry H Glenn
Emeritus Faculty, German Studies
Glenn has authored Paul Celan (1973), Paul Celan: Eine Bibliographie (1989), Paul Celan: Die Zweite
Bibliographie (with Jeffrey D. Todd, a recent Cincinnati Ph.D.), and co-edited, along with two University of
Cincinnati graduate students, Alfred Gong, Early Poems: A Selection from the years 1941-45 (1987). He has written about German literature of the 19th and 20th centuries, including authors such as Hebbel, Hofmannsthal, Ausländer, Bobrowski, Fried, and Hochuth. His primary interests are the modern lyric, exile and holocaust literature, and literary translation. He has translated, among other works, On the Wrong Track and International Zone by Milo Dor, and Too-Late, Too-Early: Selected Poems, by Alfred Gong (all in collaboration with Jennifer Kelley-Thierman). He is on the executive committee of the Society for German-American Studies.
Jennifer Jo Kelley
Emeritus Faculty, German Studies
Jennifer Kelley-Thierman was the Director of Undergraduate Studies in German. In addition to coordinating and supervising the German language courses, she provided training in methods of second-language acquisition to the Graduate Teaching Assistants in the Department of German Studies and taught advanced courses in the undergraduate program as well as the Graduate Readings course.
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
Barbara Besendorfer is currently pursuing her Ph.D. in German Studies at the University of Cincinnati and is working as a Teaching Assistant in the department. She earned a Master of Arts degree in History from the University of Regensburg in Germany. Her research focuses on the representation of women in Weimar Republic mass media with an emphasis on childless women. Broader research interests include food and nutrition in 19th-century literature and philosophy and performances of Milo Rau. Currently, she is the book review editor of the focus on German Studies Journal.
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
Mareike Lange, is currently a Ph.D. candidate and teaching assistant in German Studies at the University of Cincinnati. She finished her Master's thesis entitled: "Die männliche Herrschaft und die weibliche Lebensführung: Der vergeschlechtlichte Habitus in Arthur Schnitzlers Frau Berta Garlan“ in 2019. During her time as an undergraduate student in Education and Sociology at the University of Potsdam in Germany, she worked in an institution for children who need regulatory action from social services. She wrote assessments for the youth welfare office and was part of care planning discussions. Her research interests are in intellectual history, social history and theory, gender studies, and sociolinguistics, focusing on the writings of the Frankfurt School, Michel Foucault, Karl Marx, and Pierre Bourdieu.
Anna Maria Senuysal
Graduate Assistant, German Studies
Anna-Maria Senuysal is a fourth-year candidate in the dual PhD program at the Universities of Cincinnati and Duisburg Essen. Her dissertation project engages with the negotiation of aesthetics, aisthesis and language through dislocation as a textmovement in German drama between 1790 and 1970, whereas broader research interests include 18th and early 19th century literature as well as questions of contemporary movement and migration in various media formats. Her publications include “ ‘This is Africa – Agency, Representation and the Employment of Master Narratives in Edward Zwick's Blood Diamond” (Andererseits. Yearbook of Transatlantic German Studies, VOL. 7/8), as well as 25 Years Berlin Republic. Reflections on/of German Unification (1990-2015), co-edited with Tanja Nusser and Todd Herzog. Currently, she is working on a multi-venue project on Milo Rau - Political Theatre of the Future? together with Tanja Nusser and Teresa Kovacs.
Kayla Andrea Weiglein
Graduate Assistant, German Studies
Kayla Weiglein is currently pursuing a PhD in Germanic Languages and Literature at the University of Cincinnati and is a Graduate Teaching Assistant in the German Studies Department. Kayla received her MA in German Studies from the University of Kentucky where she also worked as a Teaching Assistant and taught in Munich as part of a Education Abroad program. Kayla has taught beginner and intermediate level courses at the University of Kentucky, Georgetown College, and the Montessori High School Inc. She has also tutored college level and high school students at Kentucky Educational Television and Listen and Learn.
Undergraduate Student Workers