German Department Graduate Students

Bozena Badura (bab3cf@virginia.edu)

 No description available at this time.

Kevin Boyd (kjb4f@virginia.edu)

Boyd

 Kevin Boyd is a PhD candidate in the German Dept., where he completed the Qualifying Examination in Summer 2007.  A native of Georgia, he earned an M.A. in German Studies from the University of Georgia in 2001 with a thesis on the philosophy and poetics of Hermann Broch.  He received a B.A. from the College of Charleston in 1996 with a double major in European History and German.  Before coming to Virginia, he lived in Munich, Germany, where he worked at the HypoVereinsbank corporate headquarters as an English instructor and communications assistant in the department of internal communications.  Prior to his stay in Munich, Kevin studied literature and philosophy at the Otto-Friedrich-Universität Bamberg, Germany, where he also taught Business English for the Institute of Economics and Finance.  His interests primarily focus on the discourse of the European novel with a special emphasis on Goethe and the concept of irony in the eighteenth century. At the moment, Kevin is spending the 2007-2008 academic year in Mannheim, Germany, which is being funded by the scholarship program of the Landesstiftung Baden-Württemberg.  At the Universität Mannheim, Kevin is working on his dissertation project and is teaching a seminar on Franz Kafka for the German Studies department and two English writing seminars for the department of American Studies.  When Kevin is not working on his dissertation, he gives his free time to his family and helps coach the YMCA swim team in Charlottesville, VA. Kevin is certified as Level 2 coach by ASCA (American Swim Coaches Association).

Gabriel Cooper (gsc8r@virginia.edu)

gabe

 Gabriel Cooper graduated from Oberlin College in 2004 with highest honors in German. He accepted a Fulbright Teaching Assistantship in 2004-2005 and worked with English classes at a Gesamtschule in Berlin.  In the fall of 2006, he passed his M.A. exams at the University of Virginia. His interests include late 19th and early 20th century literature, German-Jewish literature, Yiddish literature, and Romanticism. When he is not reading fiction or thinking German, he enjoys playing the violin and listening to music. He has been performing as a member of the UVA Klezmer Ensemble for the past two years.


Selma Erdogdu (se5z@virginia.edu)

Selma Selma studied American Studies, comparative literature, and English at Bochum University, Germany.  After graduating with an MA majoring in American Studies in 2001, Selma joined the Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures at the University of South Carolina, from which she received her MA in German Studies in 2005.  Selma has been a graduate student at the UVa German Department since the fall of 2005.  In May 2007, she passed her PhD qualifying exams.  Currently, she is participating in an exchange with the American Studies Department of Dortmund University, Germany, where she works on her dissertation, and teaches an undergraduate class on cross-cultural literature.  In her dissertation, Selma explores the role of travel as a metaphor in cross-cultural contemporary German and US-American literture.  Selma's research interests include:  18th Century German literature, Lessing, Fin de Siècle, America in the German imagination, WWII in German film, German Orientalism, postcolonial theory, German identity formation, and contemporary cross-cultural literature.  

Dylan Goldblatt (ndg4f@virginia.edu)

goldblatt

 Dylan Goldblatt graduated from the College of William and Mary in 2007 with  concentrations in German Studies and Linguistics.  In 2002-2003 Dylan studied abroad in Hilden on a Congress-Bundestag Exchange.  In summer 2005 Dylan worked as a residential instructor and activity leader at the VCU Governor's Academy for German.  In 2005-2006 he resided in Berlin and studied at the Freie Universität.  Some of his research interests include metaphor theory, urbanity, minority literature, home and homelessness, lyric poetry and film.  Also, Dylan is a huge fan of rap music and Apple.  During the breaks, he likes to go on road trips, backpack, and ski.

Robert Grossman (rmg7p@virginia.edu)

Grossman No description available.


Jennifer Hansen (jlh7cg@virginia.edu)

Jennifer Jennifer joined the German Department at UVa in 2005. She received her BA at Georgetown University in English and MAs in Comparative Literature and German from the University of Maryland, College Park. Her main interests are Holocaust literature and film, German-Jewish literature and culture, and film studies. She passed her PhD qualifying exams in April 2007, and spent the following academic year in Berlin on a DAAD research grant. During the 2008-2009 academic year she will be a fellow at the Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies in Washington, DC.

Astrid Kaemmerling (ack2ac@virginia.edu)

No Photo No description available at this time.

Verena Kollig (dk3q@virginia.edu)

 Verena received her magister artium from the University of Mannheim, Germany, in 2006, in Germanic Languages and Literatures, philosophy, and sociology. For the academic year 2006/2007, she joined the German Department at the University of Virginia as a visiting exchange student. Finally, she joined the PhD program at the German Department, UVa, and is now in her first year, working towards his comprehensive exams and then finally towards her dissertation placed within modern German literature and society.   Verena has written an article about Ernst Bloch and Robert Musil for the Bloch-Almanach in 2006, and she has participated at graduate students’ conferences, i. e. at Cornell, Ithaca, and at the University of Miami. She is very interested in the connection between literary criticism and social sciences, which she is trying to realize in her research interests, which range from pedagogy in the romantic areas via the Red Army Fraction discourses until modern psychoses and neuroses in literatures and Western societies.  

Irina Kuznetsova (ik4m@virginia.edu)

Irina Irina grew up in Moscow, Russia and first studied English and Linguistics at Moscow State Pedagogical University, from which she attained an MA degree with Distinction in Linguistics and Intercultural Communication in 2000. She came to the US in 2001 to continue her studies, and in 2003 she received her MA in German from California State University, Long Beach. In 2005, after two years of teaching German, English and Russian first at different institutions in London, UK, and then in Charleston South Carolina at Robert Bosch Corp., Irina joined the German Department at UVA. Her primary research interests include German literature and culture of fin-de-siecle, comparative German-Russian aspects of literature, Theatre and Drama. During her graduate studies Irina spent two years in Germany as an exchange student: first at the University of Oldenburg in 2002-2003, and then at the University of Mannheim in 2006-2007, where she developed and taught a literature seminar on Ingeborg Bachmann and a  discussion session on the introduction to literary studies.  At the moment Irina is getting prepared for her comprehensive exams which she is taking in April.

Matthew Lockaby (mrl2m@virginia.edu)

Lockaby

 Matt graduated with a bachelors in German from Vanderbilt University.
Brett Martz (bcm3z@virginia.edu)

Brett Brett graduated summa cum laude from the University of Pennsylvania in 2001, having double majored in German and Communications. His senior thesis explored the connection between the vision motif and coming of age in E.T.A. Hoffmann. In addition to having studied a year abroad in Berlin, Brett also worked briefly for the online branch of the German based software company, Kelly Media AG. In the Fall of 2004 he passed his MA examinations with distinction. After having completed his qualifying exams in Spring 2006, Brett spent the following year in Dortmund where he taught a comparative literature class on Informatics and a class on reality construction.  He is currently writing his dissertation on the relationship between corporeality and poiesis in the works of Robert Musil.  His other interests include Romanticism, gender theory, the unconscious, neuroscience, and informatics. In his spare time Brett tutors, serves on the Graduate Student Council, cooks, plays rollerhockey, and sings karaoke. 



Stefanie Parker (snp2j@virginia.edu)

Parker

 Stefanie Parker is a native of Germany and moved to the United States in 2003 after receiving her 'Magister' in German as a foreign language (DaF) and American studies from the University of Leipzig in Saxony. She moved to Charlottesville and began graduate studies in August of 2006. From 2003 to 2006 she taught German language courses at Roanoke College, Sweet Briar College and Hampden Sydney College. During the summer she has enjoyed being a part of the Summer Language Institute at UVa and Virginia Governor's School at VCU. While her academic interests are broad, she would like to focus on post-war literature, in particular on female authors like Christa Wolf and Elfriede Jelinek. She enjoys reading, watching movies, traveling and spending time with her husband Tommy.
William Plail (plailw@longwood.edu)
No Photo William is currently working on his dissertation as well as perfecting his skills on the bagpipe.


Gerrit Roessler (gkr5f@virginia.edu)

gerritt

 Gerrit first came to UVa as a Graduate Exchange from the University of Dortmund, Germany in 2005/06. He was Max Kade German House Director and taught several courses as TA. In 2007 he came back as a full time student to the German Department and expects to complete his Master in the fall of 2008. Gerrit received an "Erstes Staatsexamen for Upper and Lower Secondary Education" from the University of Dortmund in Music and English in 2007. He undertook studies in Music and Philosophy for several semesters at the University of Kassel, Germany and at the University of Wisconsin, Green Bay. Currently he is in the process of publishing a book on "Religious Fundamentalism in American Popular Music after 9/11." His research interests are transatlantic dynamics, music and literature, music as cultural text, cultural and textual semiotics and turn of the century colonialism. In his free time he is also an active member of the Charlottesville music scene.
Barbara Rieger (br7e@virginia.edu)

Rieger

 Barbara completed her comprehensive examinations in May and will begin work on her dissertation.
Martin Sheehan (ms8jx@virginia.edu)

Martin

 Martin Sheehan is an M.A. recipient, PhD candidate and graduate instructor at the University of Virginia after having received his B.A. in German in 2001 from the University of South Carolina. After apprenticing for a local photographer for a year, Martin realized his interests focused more in literature than in art, but he is pleased when the two intersect. Since his arrival, he has twice served as Model Teacher for his colleagues instructing the 101 and 102 levels. In 2005, Martin was chosen to teach two comparative literature courses of his own design at the University of Dortmund: “Comedy on the German and American Stage” and “Madness in German and American Literature”, the latter of which was so popular, it had to be split into two seminars, each with over 50 participants. It is on these two areas – comedic drama and literary portrayals of illness – that his research concentrates. Martin hopes to finish his dissertation on German comedy by 2008. For the past 5 years, Martin has been a member of the Whethermen, an improvisational theater group here at UVA, with whom he continues to perform. Improvisation, he feels, has become a vital part of his teaching philosophy.

Steven Sidore (sws7d@virginia.edu)


Sidore Steve joined the graduate ranks in 1998, taking his M.A. in German Literature at UVa in 1999. He completed his undergraduate studies at Middlebury College in Vermont in 1995, where he wrote his thesis on the principle of emancipation in the works of Irmtraud Morgner. Although his coursework has spanned the spectrum, his current focuses include Walter Benjamin, film theory, and literature of the DDR. He has studied at the Universities of Mainz, Bonn, and Potsdam, as well as the Konrad Wolf Film Academy in Potsdam. He is currently conducting research at the DEFA archives in Berlin, where he lives with his wife and family.

Rebekah Slodounik (ras9rb@virginia.edu)

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 No description available at this time.

Kerstin Steitz (ks8fa@virginia.edu) 

Steitz Originally from Berlin where she studied Comparative Literature, Northamerican Studies and Journalism at the Freie Universtität, Kerstin joined the UVa German Department in the Fall of  2006. She passed the M.A. exam in the fall of 2007. Currently she is completing coursework for the Ph.D. and is teaching Elementary German for the second year at UVa. Before moving to Charlottesville, she studied as an Erasmus exchange student at the University of Bath in 2003/04 and taught German as a Fulbright Teaching Assistant at Idaho State University in 2005/06.

Charles Taggart (cwt5z@virginia.edu)

Charles entered the German Department at UVA in the fall of 2008. He graduated with first-class standing from McGill University in Montréal, where he studied German Literature along with European History and received the German Department's graduation prize. During the 2005-2006 school year, he was an exchange student at the University of Tübingen.

Ulrike Wilson (ukw9f@virginia.edu)

Ulrike

 Ulrike is a native German from Koblenz am Rhein, but has lived in this country for 25 years.  She has graduate degrees from Germany, Canada as well as the United States. She received a Masters Degree in English and Canadian literature from York University, Toronto; completed the Erste and Zweite Staatsexamen in English and Physical Education at the Johannes Gutenberg Universität in Mainz and at the Mainzer Studienseminar; and she is ABD in American Literature and Rhetoric from Ohio State University. Ulrike taught for nine years at Odessa College, Texas. There, she was a tenured Associate Professor and taught courses, such as American and World literature, composition, introduction to literature, and remedial writing.
Ulrike joined the German department at UVA in the fall of 2000 and received her Masters Degree in the summer of 2002. Her fields of interest are narrative literature, Expressionism, drama and post-WWII German literature (both East and West German). She passed her dissertation comps in September 2004 and since then has been working on her dissertation, which she hopes to complete within a year. In her research, she is focusing on writers from the former East Germany, such as Reinhard Jirgl, Kerstin Hensel, Angela Krauss, and Ingo Schulze. The topic of her dissertation is: “New Stories and New Storytelling from the neue Bundesländer: Diversity and Experimentation in the Works of Angela Krauss and Kerstin Hensel.” To acquire more teaching experience and to pursue her passion for teaching, Ulrike has been teaching at various institutions near her hometown Hampden-Sydney—Longwood College, Hampden-Sydney College and also at UVA.
 When she needs a break from teaching and dissertating, Ulrike spends time with her family. She is a regular at the gym, loves her garden, and occasionally escapes to the mountains to hike and to do volunteer trail work.

Adam Winck (amw9t@virginia.edu)

Adam Adam Winck graduated from Wake Forest University in 2004 with a degree in German and philosophy, having completed a senior thesis on the notion of truth at work in Nietzsche's philosophy. As an undergraduate, he studied for a year at the Freie Universität in Berlin. In 2006, he completed a Master of Arts and Religion degree from Yale University, spending the second of this two-year program at Albert-Ludwigs Universität in Freiburg. In the fall of 2007, he completed his M.A. in German literature at UVA and is continuing on to the Ph.D. program. His interests are broad enough to include literature, philosophy, and theology, and it's possible he will focus on the 18th and 19th centuries. In his time away from studies, Adam can be found racing a bicycle at the collegiate and elite amateur levels.

Jujuan Xiong (jx9b@virginia.edu)

Xiong Jujuan joins us all the way from China. She completed her master's in the Fall of 2004. In 2005-2006 she participated in a teaching exchange to the University of Mannheim.