People

People

  • Werner Abraham

    Werner Abraham

    Professor

    (Vienna), Visiting Professor, 2000/2001: Germanic Linguistics

  • Ambika Athreya

    Ambika Athreya

    Biography

    Ambika is a first-year PhD student in the German Department. Her central interests are related to multilingualism and translation. A secondary line of inquiry concerns literary reflections, particularly in the 19th century, of emerging ideas in scientific, mathematical and economic thought. She is also particularly eager to explore areas of overlap with Latin American Studies and South Asian Studies. Prior to joining Berkeley, she completed a Masters in Economics at the University of Arizona, and a Masters in German Studies at Vanderbilt University.

  • Baer Faculty Page

    Nicholas Baer

    Assistant Professor of German

  • Bajohr pic

    Hannes Bajohr

    German - Assistant Professor

  • Lila Balint

    Lilla Balint

    Assistant Professor of German

  • Person female

    Claudia Benthien

    Professor

    (Hamburg), Max Kade Distinguished Visiting Professor, Fall 2008: “The Body in Literature”

  • AndrewHeadshot1

    Andrew Blough

    Biography

    Andrew Blough is a graduate student in the German Literature and Culture program.  He joined the department in 2019 after receiving an M.A. in Philosophy from Duquesne University that same year.  He is interested in the interrelation of mediality and knowledge construction, particularly as they pertain to historical interpretation and the construction of political spaces and temporalities.  This includes the relation of science, technology, and political thought; legal dramas; and translation theory.  He plans on pursuing the critical theory Designated Emphasis.  He has also worked as a writing tutor.

     
  • Dewulf

    Jeroen Dewulf

    Queen Beatrix Professor in Dutch Studies; Professor in German Studies; Faculty Academic Director of Study Abroad; Director of the Institute of European Studies; Director of the Center for Portuguese Studies

    From New Amsterdam to New York: Race, Culture, and Identity in New Netherland; Anne Frank and After: World War II and the Holocaust in the Netherlands; The Indonesian Connection: Dutch Dutch (Post)colonial History and Culture in Southeast Asia; The Dutch-Speaking Caribbean: Dutch (Post) colonial History and Culture in the Caribbean; Introduction to German Reading Culture; The Multicultural Netherlands; Cultural History of the Low Countries (Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg); “Minor Literatures” – Austrian and Swiss Literature and Identity

  • Headshot_Dolman

    Anna Lynn Dolman

    Biography

    Anna Lynn Dolman is a second-year Ph.D. candidate in the Department of German who plans to pursue Designated Emphases in Dutch Studies and Gender & Women’s Studies. Before coming to Berkeley she received her B.A. in Deutsche Sprache und Literatur and English Studies from the University of Cologne, and her M.A. in Germanic Languages and Literatures from Washington University at St. Louis. Her major research interests include late 18th- to 20th-century German literature, psychoanalysis, exile literature, women’s and gender studies, translation theory and practice, poetry and poetics, ecocriticism, creativity studies, and film. At Berkeley, she particularly likes to work on marginalized female writers such as Irmgard Keun and Annette von Droste-Hülshoff in order to explore the subversiveness of their feminist poetics through the lenses of psychoanalytic and feminist theory while examining processes of canonization and exclusion. Lynn is currently working on a project that seeks to reframe Irmgard Keun as an exile writer, honing in on her time in Dutch-speaking exile and the fashioning of a decidedly antifascist poetics. Outside of her academic work, Lynn enjoys writing poetry and the occasional piece of prose.

  • Person male

    Thomas Elsaesser

    Professor

    (Amsterdam), Max Kade Distinguished Visting Professor, Spring 2000: “Weimar Cinema”

  • L1040075 2

    Nikolaus Euba

    Director of German Language Program

  • Feldman

    Karen Feldman

    Professor of German, Department Chair

  • IMG 4186 (1)

    Fay Fuselier Yurwit

    Biography

    Fay Fuselier Yurwit grew up in the borderlands of southern New Mexico and received Bachelors degrees in political science and foreign languages at New Mexico State University. She studied abroad at the Philipps-Universität Marburg. She earned a Master of Arts in German Studies from the University of Arizona in Tucson. Her current interests as a first-year PhD student in German at the University of California, Berkeley center around translation, environmental humanities and film studies. She has a particular interest in horror and the grotesque in literature and cinema. Fay is also studying Russian and Yiddish.

  • Person female

    Eva Geulen

    Max Kade Distinguished Visiting Professor, Fall 2013

  • Jeffrey Grossman

    Jeffrey Grossman

    Professor

    (University of Virginia) Visiting Professor (Spring 2004): Yiddish Literature”

  • Person male

    Jan Hon

    Department of German - Visiting Scholar

  • Person female

    Gertrud Koch

    Professor

    (FU Berlin), Max Kade Distinguished Visiting Professor, Fall 2011: “Space and Time in Cinema”

  • Person male

    Albrecht Koschorke

    Professor

    Max Kade Distinguished Visiting Professor, Fall 2014

  • 280C8305 B17B 413D 8389 147B210D05FD

    Molly Krueger

    Biography

    Molly Krueger is a PhD candidate in the Department of German with a Designated Emphasis in Jewish Studies. She received her MA from UC Berkeley in 2019 and her BA in German from Bowdoin College in 2013. She is currently at work on a dissertation that focuses on questions of history, memory, temporality, and literary form in contemporary German-Jewish writing.

  • Cal ID Photo

    Sean Lambert

    Biography

    Sean Lambert is a PhD candidate in the German department, with a Designated Emphasis in Film and Media Studies. His research focuses on modernity, technology and everyday experience. He is co-managing editor of TRANSIT, UC Berkeley’s graduate student journal of migration studies in the German-speaking world. He is also the co-organizer of the interdisciplinary Townsend Center working groups on the Emergence of German Modernity (which collaborates with members from Tübingen, Harvard and Vienna), and (formerly) the working group on Fear, Horror and Anxiety. His academic writing has been published in the German Studies Review, Post45 Contemporaries and Docalogue. In addition to his academic work, Sean is also a creative writer whose fiction and criticism have appeared in the Chicago Review, Reading in Translation and the Cleveland Review of Books.

  • Niklaus Largier

    Niklaus Largier

    Professor of German and Comparative Literature

  • Jamila Leaks

    Jamila Leaks

    Academic Personnel Coordinator

  • Person male

    Hans-Thies Lehmann

    Professor

    (FU Berlin), Max Kade Distinguished Visiting Professor, Spring 2011: “German Theatre since 1968”

  • Screen Shot 2022 10 25 at 10.00.27 AM

    Philipp Lenhard

    German and History - DAAD VIsiting Professor

  • Linus – head shot

    Linus Mao

    Biography

    Linus Mao joined the Department of German in 2023 after receiving their B.A. in College of Letters (Comparative Literature) and German Studies from Wesleyan University. Their research interests center around twentieth century and contemporary German literature and film, with a theoretical focus on Marxist aesthetic theory, the Frankfurt School critical theory, psychoanalysis, and narrative theory. Particularly, they are interested in the works of director Rainer Werner Fassbinder and writer W.G. Sebald. They plan on pursuing Designated Emphases in Critical Theory and Film and Media Studies.

  • Person female

    Ethel Matala de Mazza

    Professor

    (HU Berlin), Max Kade Distinguished Visiting Professor, Fall 2012: “Political Philosophy”

  • Kurt Mueller-Vollmer

    Kurt Mueller-Vollmer

    Professor

    (Stanford University), Visiting Professor (Fall 2005): “German Idealism”

  • Person male

    Jan-Dirk Müller

    Professor

    (Munich), Max Kade Distinguished Visiting Professor, Fall 2009: “Nibelungenlied”

  • Greg (1)

    Gregory Pollet-Young

    - Department Manager

    5313 Dwinelle Hall

  • Quene_Berkeley 2022

    Saskia Quene

  • Screen Shot 2021 12 13 at 4.07.19 PM 1.png

    Laura Sacia Bonicatto

    German - Continuing Lecturer

  • IMG_3487

    Nadia Samadi

    Undergraduate Adviser

  • IMG_0026

    Em Sandberg

    Biography

    Em (B.A., Vassar College; M.A., UC Berkeley) is a Ph.D. candidate in UC Berkeley’s Department of German with a Designated Emphasis in Film and Media Studies. Their dissertation, “Breakdowns and Short Circuits: Media and Modernity, 1895-1920,” argues that the concept of “breakdown” in turn-of-the-century German and Swedish literature and film was no longer exclusively a narrative terminus; instead, it became the very condition for expression. By drawing on the overlapping electrical and psychophysiological discourses of the time, Em argues for a reevaluation of August Strindberg, Georg Kaiser, and Robert Reinert as critical theorists of affect in the age of electric media. Additional interests include the imagination and contemplative practices, the Frankfurt School, and contemporary German/Scandinavian literature and film. They have also worked as a freelance translator and as managing editor of TRANSIT: A Journal of Travel, Migration, and Multiculturalism in the German-speaking World.

  • Unnamed

    Be Schierenberg

    Biography

    Be is a PhD candidate in the Department of German with a Designated Emphasis in Gender, Women’s & Sexuality Studies. Before coming to Berkeley, they studied in Berlin, where they received their B.A. (2016) and M.A. (2019) in Art History and Comparative Literature. They work as a translator and editor, and often collaborate with artists. At Berkeley, they serve on the editorial boards of TRANSIT, Qui Parle and Ki. They teach German as well as composition classes, on topics such as “Women and Labor in 20th century German Culture” or “Trans Reading and Writing Practices”. Be studies modern and contemporary aesthetics and minoritarian styles. Their dissertation project re-considers avant-gardism since the 1970’s.

  • Person male

    Michael Schuering

    Professor

    DAAD Guest Professor, 2007-2011, History of Science and Culture

  • Zafer Senocak

    Zafer Senocak

    Professor

    (Berlin), Max Kade Visiting Professor, Spring 2003: “Rethinking Diversity”

  • Silhol, Lou

    Lou Silhol-Macher

    Biography

    Lou Silhol-Macher is a seventh-year PhD candidate in the German Department at UC Berkeley with a Designated Emphasis in Film & Media. Her research engages with new media, installation art, film and video, queer theory, philosophy of media, critical race studies, and science and technology studies. Lou’s dissertation “Of Goo and Dust: Aesthetic Theories of Formlessness” investigates the role of form/lessness in film, video, and new media art, bringing into focus what emerges from the encounter between states of matter, minoritarian aesthetic practices, and racialized histories of technology.

    Lou holds an MA in German Literature & Philosophy from Ecole Normale Supérieure and an MA in Film Studies from Université Paris VIII, France. In Spring and Summer 2022, she was a DAAD Visiting Researcher at the Cluster of Excellence “Matters of Activity” at the Humboldt-University in Berlin. 

  • IMG_3612

    Elizabeth Sun

    Biography

    Elizabeth Sun is a Ph.D. Student in the Department of German and is pursuing Designated Emphases in New Media Studies and Dutch Studies. She holds a B.A. in Comparative Literature from Columbia University and an M.A. in Transcultural Studies from Ruprecht-Karls Universität Heidelberg. Her work engages with the remediation and mediatization of the migrant and refugee figure in literary, filmic, and digital texts. Since 2021, she has been Managing Editor of TRANSIT, a multidisciplinary online journal dedicated to the critical inquiry of migration and multiculturalism in the German-speaking world. Recent issues include Vol 14.1 on Borderlands, Vol 13.2 on Archival Engagement, and TRANSIT’s Special Issue on Homeland. Elizabeth’s translations have appeared in earlier issues of TRANSIT and the essay collection, Your Homeland is our Nightmare (Literarische Diverse Verlag). Elizabeth co-organizes UC Berkeley’s groups on Environmental Humanities and Queer European Studies.

  • Tang

    Chenxi Tang

    Professor of German

  • Screen Shot 2022 08 22 at 12.14.35 AM (4)

    Kayla van Kooten

    Biography

    Kayla van Kooten is a PhD student in the Department of German, with Designated Emphases in New Media and Dutch Studies. Her current research revolves around questions of multilingualism, translation, migration, digital culture and media. Currently, she is the Creative & Web Designer of TRANSIT and the Social Media Manager of the Townsend Center. She holds a BA from the University of Washington in Middle Eastern Languages and Civilizations.

  • Person male

    Joseph Vogl

    Professor

    (HU Berlin), Max Kade Distinguished Visiting Professor, Fall 2007: “Kafka”

  • Unnamed

    Elise Volkmann

    Biography

    Elise Thora Volkmann is a first year graduate student in the Department of German. She received her B.A in German Studies and her B.M. in Voice Performance from the Oberlin College and Conservatory in 2018. After graduating from Oberlin, she attended the Peabody Conservatory at John’s Hopkins University where she received an M.M. in Musicology and Voice Performance. Her research interests include women and gender studies in Weimar Cinema, 19th and 20th century music, and German-Jewish culture at the turn of the century. She plans to pursue a Designated Emphasis in Film & Media and continue her research on Weimar film, focusing specifically on the reconstruction of silent film scores.

  • Wilhelm Vosskamp

    Wilhelm Vosskamp

    Professor

    (Cologne), Max Kade Distinguished Visiting Professor, Fall 2006: “Faust”

  • Person male

    Moritz Wedell

    Scholar

    Visiting Scholar, 2012-2014

  • Person male

    Thomas Weitin

    Scholar

    Visiting Scholar, Spring 2014

  • Person male

    Uwe Wirth

    Professor

    Max Kade Distinguished Visiting Professor, Fall 2016

  • Wolf_Verena

    Verena Wolf

    Biography

    Verena Wolf is a Ph.D. candidate of German Studies at the University of California at Berkeley.  She received her Magistra Artium and Erstes Staatsexamen (Master’s of Education) in History, English, and Education from the Goethe University Frankfurt (2016), and her Master of Arts in German Studies from the University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa (2013).  Her Magister thesis Koloniale Völkerschauen in Frankfurt. Die Wahrnehmung des Fremden zwischen Konsum, Politik und Wissenschaft (Colonial ethnological exhibitions in Frankfurt.  Perceptions of the Other in commerce, politics and science) was honored with the Stiftungsfonds Kopper Award.  Before coming to Berkeley, she taught English, German, and History at the Colegio Alemán in Guatemala City and completed her teacher training in Freiburg.  Her general research interests include late 19th – to 21st – century literary cultures, women and gender studies, postcolonial and critical theory, and ecocriticism.

  • Departmental Profile Photo (修图)

    Qingyang Freya Zhou

    Biography

    Qingyang Freya Zhou is a PhD student in German with a Designated Emphasis in Film Studies. She joined the program in 2020 after receiving a BA in German Studies, Film and Media Studies, and Comparative Literature from the University of Pennsylvania. Originally from Shenzhen, China, Freya is interested in the literary and cinematic interactions between Germany and East Asia, particularly as they pertain to socialist internationalism and migration studies.
    Freya is currently the book review editorial assistant of the German Studies Review and the
    managing editor of the website Multicultural Germany Project, Berkeley’s online forum that
    fosters cross-disciplinary research on Germany’s changing cultural identity in the era of
    globalization.