Eric J. Klaus
EDUCATION
• Brown University, Ph.D. in German Studies, 2001 • University of Maryland, College Park, M.A. in Germanic Studies, 1997 • Dickinson College, B.A. in German, 1993 • Universität Bremen, 1991-1992; 1993-1994
ADMINISTRATION
• Associate Dean of First-Year Seminars (2013 - )
• oversee and recruit faculty for First-Year Seminar program • prepare workshops to train faculty in advising and instruction of critical thinking • assist in new student orientation • organize end-of-semester FSEM Symposium to showcase work completed by first-year students in their seminars • initiated FSEM Critical Thinking Study Group - recruited 7 colleagues to developing and employing activities to foster critical thinking in FSEMs. The group met regularly to talk about critical thinking in different disciplines, as well as successes and struggles. The work resulted in a collection of critical thinking exercises available to colleagues interested in teaching for critical thinking.
TEACHING
• Hobart and William Smith Colleges, Fall 2001 to present • University of Rhode Island, Deutsche Sommerschule am Atlantik, 2001, 2004
• Courses in language acquisition • 100-level German: introductory instruction in German focusing on intercultural competence using the innovative curriculum Auf geht’s! • 200-level German: intermediate level instruction in German language and culture using Weiter geht’s! • 301 – Introduction to German Area Studies I: The class introduces students to important movements and works of German literary and cultural history, to central concerns of the field and intercultural learning.
• Courses in the culture and literature of German-speaking Europe • GERE 205: Identity as Image: the German Bildugnsroman: The focus of this class is understanding the attempts by thinkers, artists, and aestheticians in German-speaking Europe to secure a path to self-formation via literature. • GERE 206: Madness and Mayhem in Modernity: Investigates
1 the ways in which the modern condition articulates itself in the art of German-speaking Europe in the first decades of the 20th century. • GERE 208: Guilt and Punishment in German Culture: Focuses on the novella and the depiction of transgression and its repercussions in the German-language novella
• Bi-disciplinary courses • EUST 102 taught with colleagues from the History and English Departments, lectured on topics such as the image of death in European culture, Faust, utopian and dystopian literature among others.
• First-year seminar • Mapping Culture (in development for 2014) This seminar examines intercultural encounters by mapping and then traversing fictional space. We will read seminal texts and create digital maps of these fictional worlds in order to examine the relationships between cultural manifestations and ideals and their representations in fiction. Finally, we will assume a fictional persona and “travel” to one of these worlds to document our impressions, experiences, and confusions in travelogues that trace the process of cross-cultural encounters and identity formation.
SCHOLARSHIP
Current projects
• Constructing Identity: The Walhalla Temple and National Identity This project investigates the role of the Walhalla Temple in Regensburg, Germany, in the creation of German national identity as well as the shifts in conceptualizing that identity over time. Accompanying these specific questions will be a broader exploration of the process and mechanisms of cultural meaning making.
• Strange Encounters: The Grotesque in Lafcadio Hearn and Gustav Meyrink This project is a cross-cultural study of the grotesque during the fin de siècle in texts by Lafcadio Hearn and Gustav Meyrink. . Hearn and Meyrink produced a rich array of texts, some of which are grotesque in that they present the Western reader with tropes that undermine dominate paradigms of Western culture.
Articles published and forthcoming
• “Teaching Culture in the German Classroom: A Framework for Intercultural
2 Learning.” Intercultural Learning: Goals, Approaches, and Teaching Materials. Ed. Rachel Halverson, Pennylyn Dykstra-Pruim. American Association of Teachers of German, 2011. 1 – 19. ISBN: 9781932737257
• Allegorical Slumber: Somnambulism and Salvation in Gustav Meyrink’s Der Golem ” Seminar 46 (2) 2010 131-145.
• “A Modern Gnostic: Gustav Meyrink’s Der Engel vom westlichen Fenster. “ Modern Austrian Literature 40 (2) 2007 1-20.
• “The Formula of Self-formation: Bildung and vospitanie in Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship and Gorky’s Mother.” Germano-Slavica XIV (2003) p. 75 – 86.
Book reviews
• Rev of Christoph Deupmann und Kai Luers-Kaiser, eds., “Die Wut des Zeitalters ist tief”: Die Merowinger und die Kunst des Grotesken bei Meimito von Doderer. Schriften der Meimito von Doderer-Gesellschaft 4. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2010. 608 pp. Modern Austrian Literature 44 (3) 2011 94-95.
• Rev of Gunter Kleefeld. Mysterien der Verwandlung: Das okkulte Erbe in Georg Trakls Dichtung. Satzburg-Vienna: Otto Müller Verlag, 2009. Modern Austrian Literature 44 (1-2) 2011 86.
• Rev of Hartmut Binder. Gustav Meyrink: Ein Leben im Bann der Magie. Prague: Vitalis, 2009. Modern Austrian Literature 44 (1-2) 87.
• Rev of Mike Mitchell. Vivo: The Life of Gustav Meyrink. Sawtry, Cambs: Deadalus Limited, 2008. Modern Austrian Literature 42 (3) 2009 96
• Rev of A. Dirk Moses. German Intellectuals and the Nazi Past. Cambridge, New York, et al.: Cambridge University Press, 2007. Forthcoming in German Studies Review
• Rev. of Veza Canetti, Viennese Short Stories. Trans. Julian Preece. Riverside, CA: Ariadne Press, 2006. and Ludwig Laher, Heart Flesh Degeneration. Trans. Susan Tebbutt. Riverside, CA: Ariadne Press, 2006.
• Rev of Raumphantasien, narrative Ganzheit und Identit‰t: Eine Rekonstruktion des ästhetischen aus dem Werk und Wirken der Freiherren von Dalberg by Martin A. Völker. German Studies Review October 2007, p. 692.
• Rev of The Emergence of the Modern German Novel. by Claire Baldwin 77 (1), 2004. The German Quarterly
Invited talks
• “Unmasking the Doppelganger: Gustav Meyrink as a Gnostic” Literary afternoon at
3 Westerkerk in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, hosted by the Bibliotheca Philosophica Hermetica, November, 21 2008.
• Gustav Meyrink and the Uncanny at Lycoming College, 2006
Conference papers and panels
• Europäische Totentanz-Vereinigung, May 2010 “Noch eine Partie? – Stefan Zweigs Schachnovelle”
• Northeast Conference for Teachers of Foreign Languages, March 2010 “Culture through Technology” – Google Earth and interpretive learning in the Beginning German classroom – Deutschlandtour
• Northeastern American Society for 18th-century Studies, November 2009 “Bildung and Warfare”
• Northeastern American Society for 18th-century Studies, October 2008 Charied panel on “The Uncanny 18th Century”
• Northeastern Modern Language Association, April 2008 Chaired panel on “The Image of America in German Culture”
• Northeastern Modern Language Association, March 2007 “Ein unheimliches Heim” – The Uncanny in Jeremias Gotthelf’s Die schwarze Spinne”
• American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages, November 17 – 20, 2005. “Wissen und Erinnern sind dasselble: Memory, Alchemy, and Mysticism in Gustav Meyrink’s Der Engel vom westlichen Fenster.”
• Northeastern Modern Language Association, March 31 – April 2, 2005. “Allegorical Slumber: Gustav Meyrink and die Moderne
• 57th Anjual Kentucky Foreign Language Conference. April 16 – 18, 2004 “Törless’s ‘modern’ crisis: Elusive Experience in Robert Musil’s Die Verwirrungen des Zöglings Törless”
SERVICE
Department • Administered Blocker Fellowship Program 2011 to present • Oversee the selection of Blocker Fellows • Developed and maintain relationships with programs in Germany • Administer Blocker Fellowship website • Conduct preparatory Readers College with Blocker Fellows • Organize publication of Blocker cultural projects
• Coordinator of German Area Studies Program from 2004 to present
4 • Developed Minor in German Area Studies • Initiated and introduced minor in German Studies. Coordinated efforts among faculty from several departments to produce a viable program in German Studies. Program integrates courses in German with existing classes in other disciplines to construct a truly interdisciplinary program. • Structured program to ensure that students complete course work in three areas focusing on: intellectual traditions, historical heritages, and cultural legacies of German-speaking Europe. • Initiating overhaul of program and instituting common and regular assessment tools to ensure students and the program is meeting its goals
• Organized and oversaw the search for and mentoring of new Visiting Assistant Professor of German program 2007 - present
• Organized for procurement of Fulbright Foreign Language Teaching Assistant for academic year 2010
• Wrote the SAC documents for the German Area Studies program 2007
• Traveled to Germany in fall of 2008 to investigate potential exchange partners
• Oversee all individual majors and minors in German Area Studies.
• Train TA’s each year for language program
Colleges • Assessment Committee (2013 - )
• Served as outside member on Jim Capreedy’s Review I Committee (2012)
• Member of FACIT (2012 – 2013)
• Presented teaching tips on teaching with technology at Fall Tech-pedagogy & Languages Lunch Series, 2010
• Served on Caroline Travalia’s Review I committee, Spring 2010
• Advised students from First-year seminar
• Presented teaching tips for first-year and 100-level courses, Faculty Institute May, 19, 2009
• Gave presentation at HWS colloquium on First-year seminars, May 5, 2009
• Participated in open houses in spring of 2009
• Taught sample FSEM course at open house in April of 2009
• Co-organized Sweet Poetry, fall of 2008
5 • Participated in First-year seminar working group through the summer of 2008
• Taught courses in the European Studies Program in the spring of 2006 and 2009
• Speaker at international student orientation in fall of 2008
Beyond the campus • member of executive committee of NEASECS (2013)
• member of AATG Culture Task Force charged with developing new teaching materials that integrate culture in the foreign-language classroom
• assisted in organization of 2008 NeASECS conference at HWS
• AATG Culture Task Force, September 2009 Task force will discuss concrete ways to bring the goals of intercultural competence to the German language classroom.
GRANTS AND AWARDS
• Recipient of CTL Teaching Grant to develop new teaching approaches 2012
• Selected to participate summer professional development seminar in Leipzig, Germany, July 2009.
• Topic is the development of intercultural competence in the context of German language instruction: goals of learning, didactic approaches, and evaluation.
• Faculty research award in 2009 to conduct research in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
PROFESSIONAL MEMBERSHIP
• American Association of Teachers of German; • Modern Language Association; • German Studies Association; • Europäische Totentanz-Vereinigung
March 2014
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