University of Connecticut |
German Faculty
Anke Finger
Anke Finger's teaching and research interests include everyday culture and communication, literature and other arts, aesthetics, new media, and modernism. She is co-founder (with Rainer Guldin, Università della Svizzera Italiana, Lugano) and co-editor of _Flusser Studies_ (www.flusserstudies.net), an online journal focusing on media philosophy and cultural studies. She has authored a book on the total artwork and modernism, _Das Gesamtkunstwerk der Moderne_(2006), which is to be followed by a co-edited (with Danielle Follett) collection of critical essays entitled _The Aesthetics of the Total Artwork: On Borders and Fragments_, (The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010). Current research projects include a book with Ralf B. Korte on a new theory of the avant-gardes; a monograph on memory, life writing, and the arts in the former GDR; and the English edition of an introduction to Vilém Flusser (University of Minnesota Press), already available in Portuguese and German. 
Joshua Gold (In Memoriam) Visiting Assistant Professor of German and Comparative Literature & Cultural StudiesJoshua Robert Gold, Assistant Professor of German and Comparative Literary and Cultural Studies at the University of Connecticut, died on June 3, 2009, at the age of 38. He was guest editor of Telos 140, "Peter Szondi and Critical Hermeneutics," to which he contributed an article on Peter Szondi's "Hölderlin-Studien." Gold's research touches on literature, philosophy, film, and political theory. His article entitled "Apocalypse From Below," published in Telos 134, offers an account of the work of German-Jewish philosopher Jacob Taubes that explores the theological underpinnings of modern political thought. This concern with political theology runs through his study on Hölderlin, which examines the complex and often fraught relationship between revolutionary political thought and its mediation through poetic language. Gold's work attends closely to the act of writing, particularly to the tensions and affinities between literary and philosophical language. His essays on poems by Rainer Maria Rilke and his publications on Walter Benjamin's writings, "The Dwarf in the Machine: A Theological Figure and Its Sources" and "'Another Nature Which Speaks to the Camera': Film and Translation in the Writings of Walter Benjamin," attest to this particular concern. Born in Worcester, Massachusetts, Gold was educated in the public school system and held a B.A. in Comparative Literature from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. He earned his M.A. and Ph.D. in German Literature from Princeton University in 2004. As a graduate student, he also studied in Germany at the Free University of Berlin and the University of Tübingen. Before joining the faculty of Modern and Classical Languages at the University of Connecticut, he taught at Washington College and Johns Hopkins University. His engaging passion for literature and thought, his sense of intellectual urgency, critical precision, and his bright sense of humor will be sorely missed. 
Katharina von Hammerstein Katharina von Hammerstein received her Ph.D. in German at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and holds a degree in Math, German, and Education from Goettingen University, Germany. Her scholarly area of expertise is German literature and culture of the late eighteenth, nineteenth, and early twentieth centuries. Her publications focus on German Romanticism (including extensive work on Sophie Mereau-Brentano); autobiographical writings / self-(re)presentations as political practice in nineteenth-century public discourses; the ways women have inscribed themselves into literary, social and political discourses in the nineteenth century; and colonial constructions of Self and Other as represented in the ways Black men and women have been represented in German and Austrian literature, ethnology, and visual arts around 1900. She has also published in the area of teaching German and interdisciplinary curriculum development, i.e., on approaches to linking language learning to the learning in other disciplines, such as history, art history, political science, geography, film, etc. Her scholarly background comes to bear in her graduate courses on German Romanticism, Self-Writings and Writing Yourself, Gender and Literature, Love in Literature, the 1848 Revolution, Colonial Literature and Postcolonial Approaches, and various other topics of nineteenth-century literature and culture. Since von Hammerstein is also very interested in film, she includes film and other artistic representations (e.g., UConn's extensive and precious Kaethe Kollwitz collection) whenever possible. Her research projects regularly take her back to Germany and Austria and she has presented papers at national and international conferences ranging from all over the U.S., Canada and Germany to Russia, England, Spain, Italy, France, South Africa, and Namibia. For fun, she loves movies, inspiring discussions, roller-blading, skiing, and travel! 
Manuela Maria Wagner Manuela Wagner holds an M.A in English studies and Marketing and a Ph.D. in English studies with a specialization in linguistics from Graz University, Austria. During her graduate studies she spent 2 years in the baby lab of Psychophysics in the department of Neurophysiology at the Max-Planck-Institute for Brain Research in Frankfurt/Main, Germany, and 3 years in the Department of Human Development and Psychology at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Her research interests include pragmatic development in first and second language acquisition, world language teaching methodology, intercultural communication, communicative development in special circumstances, and humor in the world language classroom. As director of the Critical Languages Program Manuela also engages in research in less commonly taught languages. She teaches courses in world language teaching theory and pedagogy, pragmatics, introduction to linguistics, as well as German language and culture. 
Friedemann Weidauer Friedemann Weidauer was born in Stuttgart, Germany. He received his BA in Classics from Reed College, Zwischenprüfung in German, American Studies and Education from the FU Berlin, and MA and PhD in German from the University of Wisconsin—Madison. His research and teaching focus on post-1945 East and West German culture, among his recent publications are articles on Jurek Becker, Wolfgang Borchert and minority literatures. Current research projects include the debate about the Moscow Trials among German authors in exile (1933- 1945) and a series of studies of East German Kulturpolitik as reflected in DEFA films. 
Sebastian Wogenstein Sebastian Wogenstein holds a doctoral degree from the University of Tübingen and joined the UConn faculty in 2005. While completing his doctoral studies, he had been teaching Comparative and German Literature at the University of Tübingen. He also studied at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and received an M.A. from Washington University in St. Louis. Sebastian Wogenstein’s research focuses on the reception of Greek tragedy in modern German literature and cultural theories, on theater, and on German-Jewish literature. He is also interested in the intersection of literature, human rights, and politics. Faculty Affiliates
William Berentsen Bill Berentsen has a bachelor’s degree from Dartmouth College (study abroad in Freiburg, Germany), and M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from the Ohio State University (dissertation work based at the Ökonomische Universität Wien). He has taught at the University of Georgia (1976-1986) and UConn (since 1986), and has been a visiting professor at several European universities, including Humboldt Uni. (Berlin, 1978 and 1995), Uni. Vechta (1985), and the Ökonomische Uni. (1982). His research and writing focuses on regional socioeconomic and land use change in the USA and Europe–Germany in particular. Bill’s current and recent writing has included journal articles on migration and regional socioeconomic inequalities in Germany, work on World Book encyclopedia articles on Germany and Europe, and articles in preparation on issues related to regional development in the USA and Connecticut. He teaches courses in Geography on issues related to U.S. regional development, as well as an occasional offering of an introduction to Europe. His personal ties to things German include enjoying travel in Germany, related both to learning and to visiting many colleagues, friends and relatives–two grandparents came to the USA from Germany in the early 20th century. 
Charles Lansing
Specializations in 19th and 20th Century German History.
Glenn Stanley Glenn Stanley is a music historian specializing in the music of the classic and romantic periods in Germany-speaking Europe. He has published extensively in American, British, and German journals and books with special emphasis on Beethoven, and nineteenth-century choral music. He also writes on questions of aesthetics, methodology, and music criticism, and contributed three articles to the revised New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians in these areas. He edited volumes 3 and 7 of Beethoven Forum, a scholarly yearbook, and also edited the Cambridge Companion to Beethoven. He is the book-review editor for 19 th-century Music, and a member of the editorial boards of Beethoven Forum and the Journal of the American Musicological Society. He writes program notes for Carnegie Hall on a regular basis. Current projects include the chapter on Parsifal for the Cambridge Companion to Wagner, and essays on Beethoven’s orchestration techniques and the reception of Fidelio for the Beethoven-Handbuch, which will be published by the Laaber-Verlag in Germany . |
