University of Connecticut |
German Graduate Faculty
Anke Finger Anke Finger received her undergraduate degree from the University of Konstanz; her M.A. in Literary Studies and in Women's Studies and her Ph.D. in Comparative Literature are from Brandeis University. Her research and teaching interests include modernism, aesthetics, media theory, and cultural studies and language acquisition. She is co-founder (with Rainer Guldin, Università della Svizzera Italiana, Lugano) and co-editor of _Flusser Studies_, an online journal focusing on media theory and cultural studies. Current research projects include a collection on the aesthetics of the total artwork for the Johns Hopkins University Press and a monograph on memory, life writing, and the former GDR. 
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. 
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 . |
