Overview
I teach and supervise the teaching of two kinds of classes: First-Year Writing Seminars in English and second and third-year bridge courses in German (the kind of classes that introduce students to literary studies while continuing to practice language skills). I especially enjoy teaching a third-year course in German that examines how difficult literary language plays with the conventions of everyday speech. It is titled "The Challenge of German Literary Language". In Fall 2021 I'll be piloting a new First-Year Writing Seminar titled "Love and Death in Vienna".
Everything I teach requires students to do a lot of writing as well as reading. The essays I write myself are drawn from a comparative reading of modernist periodicals, the eye-catching magazines and newspapers that published manifestos before, during, and after the First World War. I’m currently working on a book on modernist periodicals titled “From Counterculture to Canonization: The Expressionist Revolution in Berlin, 1910-1919”.
Office Hours
W 11:10 - 12:00 & by appointment
Publications
“Resituating Lu Märten’s Manifesto of Matriarchal Socialism within Expressionist Debates”, in Anke Finger and Julie Shoults, eds., Women in German Expressionism: Gender, Sexuality, Activism, forthcoming with the University of Michigan Press (7500 words).
“The Provocation of Art that is Seen and Not Read: Herwarth Walden’s Appropriation of the Tauentzien-Girls” in German Studies Review 44.2 (2021) 275-292.
“A Critical Mass for Modernism in Berlin: Der Sturm (1910-1932), Die Aktion (1911-1932), Sturm-Bühne (1918-1919)” in Peter Brooker, Sascha Bru, Andrew Thacker, and Christian Weikop eds., The Oxford Critical and Cultural History of Modernist Magazines. Vol. III: Europe 1880-1940 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013) 773-797.
“Performing the Body Politic: Sorelian Discourse in Periodicals of Futurism and Expressionism” in Hélène Aji, Céline Mansanti, and Benoit Tadié, Revues modernists, revues engagées (1900-1939) (Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2011) 303-317.
“Modernism and the Museum Revisited” in New German Critique 33.3 (Fall 2006): 559-583.
“Expressionism, Futurism, and the Dream of Mass Democracy” in Studies in 20th- and 21st Century Literature 30.2 (Summer 2006): 333-353.
“Romantic Phantasms: Benjamin and Adorno on the Subject of Critique” in Monatshefte 90.4 (Winter 1998): 465-487.
GERST Courses - Fall 2024
- GERST 1122 : FWS: Love and Death in Vienna
- GERST 3070 : Challenge of Literary Language
- GERST 4530 : Honors Research