German Studies
Current Graduate Students
Sven-Ole Andersen
Sven-Ole Andersen (M.A. Univ. of Connecticut); is a Ph.D. candidate working on his dissertation, which explores Faust themes in contemporary Hollywood film.
His research interests include 19th-century and modern literature, the history of subjectivity, cinema, as well as language pedagogy. He has presented papers on these topics at several conferences, including the MLA and SAMLA. Apart from his publications on Second Language Acquisition and Contemporary Culture, Sven is using new media to impart his passion for literature and academics to a broader public. His real life experience as a radio and TV news journalist has been a tremendous help to make teaching his classes more interesting and to prepare his students for their own professional future. He teaches all levels of Beginning German, including the online course Discover German, as well as Communication for Engineers in UF's Writing Program. In the summer of 2009 he received the McLaughlin Dissertation Fellowship.
Presentations
- "The Thin Red Line: Students? Behavior and Teachers? possibilities? Workshop on teaching methodologies. Dept. of Romance Languages, UF October 2005.
- "Poems, Permanency, and Peril: Homage to Peter Huchel" SAMLA Atlanta, GA November 4-6, 2005.
- "From Goethe To Google: Subjectivity & Addiction 1800/2000" Southeast Conference on Foreign Languages and Literatures (Stetson University) March 2-4, 2006.
- "Everything Is Possible: Arousing Students. Interest in Second Language Acquisition" Conference at Georgia Southern Univ./ Southeast Conference on Literature & Languages
Jonathan Barnes
Jonathan Barnes is a native Floridian from Orlando. His interest for the German language and culture began in high school. He received his BA in German from the University of South Florida. In 2005, in addition to completing his MA, he also received a Graduate Student Teaching Award. Jonathan spent 2005-2006 at the Johannes Gutenberg Universität in Mainz with a stipend from the VDAC. He is currently working on his dissertation, which analyses the representation of American military in post-war German film. In his free time he enjoys politics, travel, cooking, working out, and fishing.
Jennifer Coenen
Presentations
"Representations of Rape in Postwar German Cinema" FSU Annual Film and Literature Conference, Tallahassee, FL February 2006.
Tim Fangmeyer
After studying German Literature, Political Science and English at the University of Kassel, he received a scholarship in 2008 through the VDAC (Federation of German American Clubs), enabling him to study German at the University of Florida. Currently, he is a graduate student and Teaching Assistant and seeking his Master’s degree. His academic interests include literature of the fin the siècle period, cultural theory and German film. His masters’ thesis will focus on the spatial representations of the GDR in recent German film.
Britta Herdegen
Britta Herdegen is working on her dissertation that deals with the treatment of the body and the intersection of genres in German non-fiction and fiction film. Britta has presented at numerous conferences including the Southeast Conference of Foreign Language and Literature, Southwest/Texas Popular Culture Conference and the Florida State University Annual Film and Literature Conference. She has a BS in Public Relations from the University of Florida College Journalism and Communications and a MA in German Language and Literature. She has taught beginning German, courses in UF’s Writing Program and Center for Written and Oral Communication, and online advanced business courses through the University of South Florida as an adjunct instructor. Britta Herdegen won the teaching award for 2008-2009.
Presentations
"The Duality of the Image in Leni Riefenstahl's Triumph of the
Will" The 17th Annual Conference on Foreign Language and Literature. Stetson University, March 4, 2006.
Craig Herr
Joe Rockelmann
Matthias Ross
Claudia Schwabe
Claudia Schwabe is a native German and received a BA in International Business Administration from the University of Northumbria in Newcastle, England and a BA in International Administrative Management from the Business School Accadis in Bad Homburg, Germany. After she decided to focus on a teaching career, she obtained her MA in Teaching Business Education from Georgia College and State University in 2006. Concurrently she received the Outstanding Student Award that year. Claudia taught German, French and Business at high school level for two years and is now pursuing a Ph.D. in German Studies. Her principal research interests are in the area of 18th and 19th century romantic literature, German folklore, as well as literary and folk fairy tales. Apart from her studies, Claudia presently teaches the course “German in Business” at UF.
Presentations
- “Positive Discipline and Rewards as Teaching Tools to Benefit Students in Their Learning Process.” Georgia College & State University Student Research Conference, Milledgeville, GA, March 2006.
- “Techniques that Motivate Students to Learn Vocabulary Words.” Foreign Language Association of Georgia Annual Conference, Jekyll Island, GA, March 2006.
- “Between Socialism and Snow-White: GDR fairy tales.” University of Florida Symposium “Goodbye DDR: Memory and Material Culture”, Gainesville, FL, October 2009.
Publications
- “Writing the New Berlin: The German Capital in Post-Wall Literature”, Book Review, The Germanic Review v. 84, no 3 (Summer 2009) p. 268-9
Cindy Walter
Cindy
Walter is a first year MA student. She received a degree in Business
Administration at the FH Kempten and then worked as a Marketing
Assistant before she went back to school and studied Economics,
English and German at the Pädagogische Hochschule
Karlsruhe, where she completed her Erstes Staatsexamen.
Cindy has a strong interest in second language acquisition, teaching German as a second language and German short stories.
Former Students
Ana Maria Andrei
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Ana Maria AndreiAna-Maria Andrei is an M.A. student concurrently pursuing a Ph.D. in philosophy at UF. She expects to defend her philosophy dissertation titled “The Nature and Metaphysical Significance of the Explanatory Gap” in the spring of 2009.
Her interests in the field of German Studies include German philosophy, the German novel (especially in relationship to Poetic Realism and Modernism) and literary theory. Anna Maria Andrei completed her MA in the spring of 2009 and is continuing in the PhD program in German Studies ay Cornell University.
Olga Birioukova, MA Student
Olga
Birioukova was born and raised in Russia, where she studied philology
and linguistics and received her BA at Leo Tolstoy Tula State
University in 2000. She is presently working towards the MA in
German integrating it with Modern European Studies. Her research
interests include modern German and Russian literature, translations
and literary interpretations. Olga Biroukova completed her MA
in Germanic Studies at the University of Florida in Spring 2009
and continuing in the PhD program in Linguistics at UF.
Will Lehman
Will Lehman received his PhD in German in May, 2008. His dissertation, entitled "Germanness, the Nation, and its Other," explores the ways in which post-war German nationality is staged--in both film and literature--in the exotic space of Latin America. He has accepted a position as assistant professor of German in the Modern Languages Department at Western Carolina University. His research interests include German-Jewish intersections, Intercultural and Transnational Studies, Postcolonialism, New German Cinema, and Language pedagogy, where his focus is on the effective integration of technology in the classroom.
Presentations
- "Deutsche Gauchos and Schlemiels Argentinos: Cultural Hybridity in A. Schenker and R. Schopflocher" Southeast Conference on Foreign Languages and Literatures (Stetson University) March 2-4, 2006
- " 'Defragging' Modernity in Richard Linklater's Waking Life(2001)" American Comparative Literature Association Conference (Princeton University) March 24-26, 2006
Aneka Meier
Aneka Meier has successfully defended her dissertation, entitled “Working Girls: Fictional Representation of Female Office Workers in Weimar Germany,” received her Ph.D. in German Studies in Summer 2008. Besides Weimar Germany and women’s/gender studies, her principal research interests are in the area of 20th century literature and culture, as well as instructional technology. She has accepted a position as Assistant Professor of German in the Foreign Language Department at East Stroudsburg University.
Presentations
- "Destinies behind: Type-Writers: Gender and Technology in Novels of Weimar Berlin." Southeast Conference on Foreign Languages and Literatures, Stetson University, March 2-4, 2006
- "A Time Before Ally, Bridget, Carrie & Co.: The Single Working Girl in Weimar Berlin as an Icon of Modernity, Urbanity, and Mass Culture." SAMLA Annual Convention, Atlanta, GA, November 2005.
Peter Mersch
Peter Mersch received his MA in German Studies at UF in 2008. His primary interests lie in the nineteenth and early twentieth century, from the French Revolution to the end of the Weimar Republic. He is particularly interested in the crisis of identity, subjectivity, and the changes brought about by the event of 1789-1815 and how they are played out in German society as portrayed through literature. In his research, Peter Mersch has addressed the works of Gottfried Keller, Ludwig Tieck, and Joseph Eichendorff as pertaining to the concept of /Excentrizität /as well as Goethe in his regard to ancient Greece and questions of /Humanität/. Peter Mersch is continuing his PhD in Germany at the University of Minnesota.
Fayola Neely
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Fayola NeelyFayola Neely is a native of South Carolina, where she received her Bachelors in German and Psychology at Furman University. Her interests include the literary voices of diverse groups in German culture and society and minority cultural production, as well as second language acquisition and foreign language pedagogy. During the academic year 2007-08 Fayola Neely was studying at the Universität Mannheim in Germany. Fayola Neely completed her MA at UF in Spring 2009 and is continuing in a PhD program at Stanford University.
Anna Rutz
Anna Rutz completed her MA in German Studies at UF in Spring 2009 and his continuing in a PhD at the University of Pittsburgh.
