Category Archives: Research

“The Night the Berlin Wall Fell and Germany rocked! A 25th Anniversary Commemoration of the Fall of Berlin Wall”

IMG_1059

The Department of German and Slavic Studies, the Global Business Resource Center, the Global Awareness Forum  and the Initiative Public Choice and Market Process sponsored a roundtable discussion entitled”The Night the Berlin Wall Fell and Germany rocked!  A 25th Anniversary Commemoration of the Fall of Berlin Wall” on Thursday, November 13, 2014 at 7 pm in the Mathematics and Science Building, Room 129.

Moderator, Dr. Peter Calcagno, Professor of Economics, College of Charleston
Dr. Wolfgang Elfe, Distinguished Professor Emeritus of German, University of South Carolina
Dr. Richard Bodek, Professor of History and Coordinator of the Faculty Liberal Arts & Sciences    Colloquium
Dr. Rene Dentiste Mueller, Professor, Director of the International Business Program
Dr. Malte Pehl, Assistant Professor, International Studies Dept.
Dr. Max Kovalov, Initiative for Public Choice and Market Process and Adjunct Instructor, Political         Science Dept.

The panel discussed this monumental event in terms of its place in history and offered first -hand accounts of how Germany’s division has impacted the panel members’ lives. The presenters also highlighted historical memory from post-Soviet economic and political perspectives.

Professors Nenno and Twitchell Present Research at German Studies Association Annual Conference

At the German Studies Association Annual Conference on September 18-21 in Kansas City Missouri, Dr. Nancy Nenno participated in a three-day seminar entitled “Black German Studies” and presented her study titled “Thinking in Multiples: Generating Black Diaporas in Austria.”

At the same conference, Professor Corey Twitchell collaborated in the seminar “German-Jewish Literature after 1945: Working Through and Beyond the Holocaust” where he presented research on the deployment of Yiddish language and literature in post-Holocaust novels written by German Jews.

Professor Johannes Wich-Schwarz of Maryville University to Guest Lecture

On March 12, 6pm in Addlestone 227, the Department of German & Slavic Studies will host Maryville University’s Dr. Johannes Wich-Schwarz who will present “The Not-Word: German-Jewish Poetry after the Holocaust.”

What does it mean to write in German as a Jewish author after the Holocaust? Can poetry recover, reclaim, and renew language after unspeakable trauma? How do we translate poetry written on the edge of silence? Johannes Wich-Schwarz (Maryville University) considers questions and others in a presentation on German-Jewish poetry written after 1945. The presentation offers an introduction to poets who reconfigured the aesthetic landscape of post-war Germany and demonstrated the importance of poetry after Auschwitz, including the internationally renowned Paul Celan and Nelly Sachs as well as the influential German language poets Rose Ausländer, Hilde Domin, and Erich Fried. Professor Wich-Schwarz is the author ofTransformation of Language and Religion in Rainer Maria Rilke and is currently completing a volume of English translations of German-Jewish poetry. 

2013 German Graduate Publishes in _Chrestomathy_

2013 German graduate Stephanie Rhodes has published in Chrestomathy, the CofC journal for outstanding undergraduate research. Entitled “Polarized Politics: Fassbinder’s Use of ‘Spiele(n)’ in Die dritte Generation (1979) as an Explanation of Left-wing Terrorism in West Germany,” the article is drawn from Stephanie’s Bachelor’s Essay, written under the supervision of Dr. Nancy Nenno. Stephanie double majored in German and International Business and immediately got a job with a German company upon graduation. Congratulations, Stephanie, on all of your many accomplishments!
http://chrestomathy.cofc.edu/documents/vol12/rhodes.pdf
http://chrestomathy.cofc.edu/current/index.php

“The Not-Word: German-Jewish Poetry after the Holocaust” March 12th, 6pm, Addlestone 227

“The Not-Word: German-Jewish Poetry after the Holocaust”

March 12th, 6pm, Addlestone 227

What does it mean to write in German as a Jewish author after the Holocaust? Can poetry recover, reclaim, and renew language after unspeakable trauma? How do we translate poetry written on the edge of silence? Johannes Wich-Schwarz (Maryville University) will explore these questions in a presentation on German-Jewish poetry written after 1945. The presentation offers an introduction to poets who reconfigured the aesthetic landscape of post-war Germany and demonstrated the importance of poetry after Auschwitz, including internationally renowned authors Paul Celan and Nelly Sachs as well as the influential German language poets Rose Ausländer, Hilde Domin, and Erich Fried. Professor Wich-Schwarz is the author of Transformation of Language and Religion in Rainer Maria Rilke and is currently completing a volume of English translations of German-Jewish poetry.

Book Chapter from Dr. Morgan Koerner on Creative Writing in the German Curriculum

TraditionsAndTransitions

A new article from Dr. Morgan Marcell Koerner has just appeared in Traditions and Transitions: Curricula for German Studies, an essay collection with works by 20 international scholars in the field of German as a Second or Foreign Language, published by Wilfrid Laurier Press and edited by John Plews and Barbara Schmenk. Entitled “Literatur liberated from Wissenschaft: Writerly Approaches to Literature Across the German Curriculum,” the book chapter  “proposes using Roland Barthes’s theory of the ‘writerly’ text as a basis for curriculum design and implementation for German language and literature. He takes issue with formal approaches to literary study and illustrates how to enact a curriculum for reading and writing German through parody that is more participatory, more open-ended, and more creative” (Plews/Schmenk, “Traditions and Transitions” 15-16).

 

The chapter is part of a larger project on creative writing and theater as approaches to foreign language literature and culture. Over the past 6 years at the College of Charleston, Dr. Koerner has investigated the effectiveness of these methods as a gateway into foreign language literature for millennial students who have less experience with reading literature than previous generations.  “I’m particularly grateful for my students’ role in this research,” Koerner notes. “I’ve had a fabulous group of students at all levels since I came to the College in 2007. Whether they are staging a rap battle in German 101 or rewriting literary works and performing them in front of a live audience in my senior level theater seminars, my students have been more than willing to engage in more playful and theatrical approaches to German language, literature, and culture. This willingness to ‘ham it up’ is not only crucial for speaking a foreign language, it is also extremely useful as an approach to difficult literary texts.” Dr. Koerner, who became an Associate Professor of German this Fall, counts himself lucky not only because of his students, but also because his supportive colleagues and administration: “Not every institution would reward tenure to an Assistant Professor of German who publishes at the intersection of performance studies and language pedagogy, but The College of Charleston and the School of Languages Cultures and World Affairs clearly care about scholarship on innovative teaching and learning. My former chair Dr. Nancy Nenno was always very encouraging of this line of research, and the School of LCWA and the College administration has been a champion of expanding traditional models of scholarship to include the scholarship of teaching.”

 

At present, Dr. Koerner is currently working on two articles based on action research from his most recent adventure with theater, his performance oriented course “Beyond Drama: German Theater into the 20th Century” from the Spring of 2013” in which he and his students explored experimental theater traditions from throughout the 20th century. The course culminated in a spectacular live performance in German entitled  “Beyond Drama:  13 Performers Try to Transform the Audience” (pictures of this performance from April 23rd, 2013 are available on the German and Slavic Studies Department’s facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/CofCGermanSlavic).

 

Koerner, Morgan. “Literatur liberated from Wissenschaft: Writerly Approaches to Literature Across the German Undergraduate German Curriculum.” Traditions and Transitions. Curricula for German Studies. Eds. John L. Plews and Barbara Schmenk. Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2013. 175-190.