Newsletterd Letter from the Chair
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gDepartment of Germanic Languages & Literatures Newsletterd Letter from the Chair ............2 s Campus Connection .............3 Honors & Awards .............4-5 Student Focus . 6 Undergraduate Focus ............7 Dutch Studies ..................8 Scandinavian Studies ............9 In Print ...................10-11 and Litera ges ture ua s r ng ec a e L iv ic e n d a t h m e r e 2 2011 0 G 1 f 1 o t D n Departmental e e p m a t Award of r r t a m p e e Excellence n t D a e l h E T x c e l l e n c . e d r A a w 3 Time Award Winner 2002, 2004 & 2011 www.lsa.umich.edu/german WINTER 2012/2013 g Department of Germanic Languages & Literatures dLetters from the Chair Dear Friends, Our first term has been going swimmingly, with also teaching Dutch language and is setting up a weather so lovely that I almost forgot that we are relationship with a Dutch high school outside of well into fall. Time for another newsletter. the city of Groningen, which I will be able to tell you more about in the future. She organized the recent There is much to report: a key book prize in our DeVries-Vander Kooy Memorial Lecture by Jane field, the German Academic Exchange Service Wolff, detailed on page 8. (DAAD) book prize of the German Studies Association, was just awarded to Kader Konuk’s Our graduate students just completed a brilliant magisterial East-West Mimesis, and new books have conference covering several centuries, schools of come out authored by our faculty thought, creative production, and cultural history members Andy Markovits, Johannes under the general title of “Hauntings.” We will von Moltke, Helmut Puff, and myself highlight the conference in our next newsletter. Our (p. 10 & 11). Kalli Federhofer is in the Werner Grilk annual lecture was held November very first cohort of recipients of the 15th, featuring the marvelous Joseph Vogl of Berlin’s new Collegiate Lectureships, a really Humboldt University and Princeton University, amazing honor (p. 4). Annemarie speaking on “The Sovereignty Effect.” Three Signe Toebosch has taken the reins of Karlström events were held on November 13, 19 the Dutch program as it marches and 20 (p. 9). Earlier this month, Armen Avanessian forward. The College approved of Berlin’s Free University gave a sparklingly original our request to search for another lecture on the history of the novel written in full-time professor, a position for present tense. This is just a sampling of the array of which we have received almost 200 stimulating lectures, screenings, and performances applications. Our focus is a genuinely enjoyed by our departmental community and interdisciplinary scholar of German others across the campus. That’s not to mention Studies, and so we are searching the activities mounted by the German Club and broadly. Our new graduate student Max Kade House, our German living-and-learning class—four of the most promising applicants to community in North Quad. The Kade House our program—has joined the others in seminars, recently mounted the most interesting outreach meetings about teaching, and on bicycle rides. event we’ve ever seen there, including explorations And we’re off! of German music, language, food, and other aspects of German culture (p. 6). I promised I would tell you about our new addition to the faculty, Annemarie Toebosch. Annemarie There is much more to look forward to in the began with us last year as a Dutch instructor coming year, and we do hope as always to see our and has now taken over as Director of the Dutch old friends and alumni here from time to time to talk Program. A native of the Netherlands, she is about times past, present, and future in German, highly qualified, with a PhD in linguistics from Dutch and Scandinavian Studies. When you do U-M , and eight years of teaching experience at come, please stop in to the Chair’s office for a visit. the University of Michigan’s Flint campus. She has developed a new course on the city of Amsterdam, which focuses on the city’s diversity, its history and its landscape, which is very popular with the Scott Spector [[email protected]] students enrolled in this pilot semester. She is 2 www.lsa.umich.edu/german Department of Germanic Languages & Literatures Campus Connectiond 13th German Film Institute - Cinema of Crisis By Johannes von Moltke The thirteenth German Film Institute (GFI), held at as the two GFI directors, shared the sense that the the University of Michigan May 20-26, 2012 under topic lent itself to especially fruitful and focused the title “Cinema of Crisis: German Film, 1929-36” investigations – in large part due to the careful was a resounding success. Some 30 participants curatorial attention to the film series, including from 26 different institutions in the US and abroad programming (which was the responsibility (Canada and the Netherlands) attended the of the two directors) and securing rare prints, week-long event, which combined daily morning which was the organizers’ purview. Participants seminars with afternoon and evening screenings. and directors were uniformly full of praise for Although the organizers had been uncertain of all other aspects of the Institute as well; they the effects of moving the GFI up to May from were particularly impressed by the show run by its habitual August time slot, any worries in this Instructional Support Services, who were in charge regard turned out to be unfounded: we had more of checking in and screening the 35mm prints in applications than we could accept, even as we Angell Hall. There were discussions regarding attempted to accommodate as many qualified possible publications to come participants as possible by expanding the group to out of the Institute even before a slightly larger size than in recent years. it convened in Ann Arbor; these will certainly resume Given the participants’ broad and interdisciplinary now, given the high caliber of expertise, the seminars invariably generated the group and the discussions intense discussions at a high intellectual level. that took place in the seminar They were devoted both to advancing the research context. Meanwhile, selected participants will be agendas in the field (which they did successfully, pursuing some of these discussions further at the thanks to the impulses provided by the organizers next meeting of the German Studies Association and by the films themselves – about which more in Milwaukee, which will feature a panel devoted below) and to airing pedagogical concerns to the same topic as the Institute. Other initiatives regarding the teaching of German film. Featuring deriving directly or indirectly from the GFI are close to 30 films that were screened at Michigan’s bound to follow: the Institute clearly functioned state-of-the-art facilities, the Institute presented a again as an incubator for teaching and research. unique opportunity to view a wide variety of films Plans are underway for an 14th installment of the from the late Weimar Republic and the early years German Film Institute, to be held at the University of the Nazi regime. While the GFI participants made of Michigan in 2014. There could be no better up the core audience for these films, the screenings proof of the enormous success of this event. For were open to the public and regularly drew in this, we are grateful to all units and sponsors additional spectators from town and campus; involved in making this event possible, including: audience size was around 40 on average. the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), the Department of Germanic Languages and The German Film Institute has had a field-defining Literatures and its superb staff, the Department function over the years; it has launched research of Screen Arts & Cultures, the Office of the Vice and publication projects, generated networks and President for Research, the College of Literature, boosted careers, and served as a forum for the Science, and the Arts (LS&A), the Institute for exchange of new scholarly and pedagogical ideas. the Humanities, the Rackham Graduate School, This year was no exception, and participants, as well the International Institute, Instructional Support Services (ISS) and Beta-Film. www.lsa.umich.edu/german 3 g Department of Germanic Languages & Literatures Honors & Awards Collegiate Lectureship - Kali Federhofer By Scott Spector We are exceptionally proud of Kalli Federhofer for College, and has contributed to other units and having been selected as one of the first lecturers at to undergraduate life outside the department in the College to be awarded a Collegiate Lectureship, many ways, including high-impact participation a new and very high honor. That Kalli was selected on advisory groups for Academic Advising, as should not come as a surprise. If he is already well as Mental Health Work. He has shared his extraordinarily well known by administration and strategies for recruitment and advising of German academic units across this campus and indeed in the concentrators with other national departments national field, among our students he is legendary. and through presentations at the American He has taught, trained and guided literally Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages and thousands of University of Michigan graduates, the American Association of Teachers of German. attracting many to our field who would never have Indeed, colleagues at other Midwestern institutions decided to pursue German without him. As we have told me that they have taken up his model collected student and faculty with marked success. He has collaborated on the testimonies and reviewed his composition of the Advanced Placement German record in preparation for our exam, and grades the exam as well.