The Graduate Group in German
Languages and Literatures

Core and affiliate members of the graduate group direct dissertation committees, and participate in the faculty-graduate student colloquium.

Core Faculty     

Francis B. Brévart, Ph.D., McGill University 
Medieval studies, manuscripts, Middle High German, Business German

Christina Frei, Ph.D., University of California at Davis
Director of German Language Instruction
Second language acquisition, discourse analysis, and computer mediated communication (CMC)

Kathryn Hellerstein, Ph.D., Stanford University
Ruth Meltzer Senior Lecturer in Yiddish and Jewish Studies, and Undergraduate Director, Jewish Studies Program
Yiddish language, Yiddish literature in translation, gender and Jewish literature, Jewish American literature, Jewish film, literary translation

Eric Jarosinski, Ph.D., University of Wisconsin-Madison
20th-century literature, literary theory, cultural studies

Catriona MacLeod, Ph.D., Harvard University 
Undergraduate Chair
Goethe, 19th-century literature, inter-arts, gender studies 

Simon Richter, Ph.D., Johns Hopkins University
18th-century literature, gender studies, literary theory, cultural studies, 
history of the body, Dutch 

Liliane Weissberg, Ph.D., Harvard University
Graduate Chair  
18th-century literature, comparative literature, aesthetic theory, German-Jewish writing

Bethany Wiggin, Ph.D. University of Minnesota
Intersections between the early modern period and contemporary theoretical concerns including gender and postcolonial studies

Affiliate Faculty

Dan Ben-Amos, Ph.D., Indiana University
Professor of Near Eastern Languages & Civilizations and Folklore
Fairy tale, Grimm brothers, Yiddish folk tales, Nazi-era Volkskunde

Karen Beckman, Ph.D., Princeton University
Jaffe Associate Professor, Department of History of Art
Cinema and modern Media

Warren Breckman, Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley
Associate Professor of History
Hegel, Marx, 19th and 20th century German and European intellectual and cultural history, and contemporary theory

Timothy Corrigan, Ph.D.
Professor of English and Director of Cinema Studies
Film studies, modern American and German cinema, and pedagogy

Thomas Childers, Ph.D., Harvard University
Sheldon and Lucy Hackney Professor of History
Modern German history (Weimar, Nazi period) 

Steven Feierman, Ph.D., Northwestern University, D. of Phil., Oxford
Professor of History and History and Sociology of Science
Africa, history of medicine in East Africa formerly colonized by Germany

Ronald Granieri, Ph.D., University of Chicago
Assistant Professor of History
Modern European History, European international relations

Paul Guyer, Ph.D., Harvard University 
F. R. C. Murray Professor in the Humanities, Department of Philosophy, and
Interim Chair, Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures
Kant, modern philosophy, aesthetics

Jeffrey Kallberg, Ph.D., University of Chicago 
Professor and Chair of the Department of Music
19th & 20th century music, Scandinavian studies 

Ellen Kennedy, Ph.D., London School of Economics
Professor of Political Science
Political theory, jurisprudence and legal theory, comparative government,
Western Europe, Carl Schmitt, Hugo Ball, Frankfurt School, political philosophy, Bundesbank

Klaus Krippendorff, Ph.D., University of Illinois at Urbana
Gregory Bateson Professor of Communication, Annenberg School of Communication
The role of language and dialogue in the social construction of reality: identities, institutions, cultural artifacts, power, Otherness, and meanings. Emancipatory epistemology (hermeneutics) of human communication and the design of technology. Content analysis, semantics, pragmatics of social interaction, and related research methods. Conversation theory, information theory, and cyberspace. Second-order cybernetics of complex communication systems, their reflexive, self-organizing, and autopoietic properties.

Detlef Mertins, Ph.D., Princeton University
Professor of Architecture and Chair, Department of Architecture
Architectural history and theory

Benjamin Nathans, Ph.D.
Ronald S. Lauder Endowed Term Associate Professor of History
Habermas, the public sphere in eighteenth-century France, Russian-Jewish historiography, the state of the field of Russian and East European studies in Germany and the United States, modern Jewish history

Jean-Michel Rabaté, Ph.D.
Professor of English and Comparative Literature
Thomas Bernhard, Broch, Hegel, psychoanalysis, Vienna, and literary theory

Donald Ringe, Ph.D., Yale University
Kahn Term Professor in Linguistics and Department Chair
Historical linguistics, Indo-European linguistics (Greek, Tocharian, Germanic), morphology

Larry Silver, Ph.D., Harvard University 
Farquhar Professor of Art History
Painting and graphics of Northern Europe, particularly Germany and the Netherlands during the era of Renaissance and Reformation, film 

Jonathan Steinberg, Ph.D.
Walter H. Annenberg Professor of Modern European History
Modern Europe since 1789 with specialization in the German and Austrian Empires, Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, modern Jewish history, Switzerland, Deutsche Bank

Thomas Max Safley, Ph.D., University of Wisconsin
Professor of European History
Renaissance and Reformation, early modern Europe

Faculty Emeriti

Horst S. Daemmrich, Ph.D., University of Chicago
Professor Emeritus of German and Comparative Literature

Albert L. Lloyd, Ph.D., George Washington University
Distinguished Professor Emeritus of German Philology

Karl F. Otto, Jr., Ph.D., Northwestern University
Professor Emeritus of German
Baroque literature, Sprachgesellschaften, language pedagogy 

Frank Trommler, Dr. Phil., University of Munich 
Professor Emeritus of German
19th and 20th-century literature, modernism, cultural studies 

Visiting Faculty

Gunnar Hindrichs, PhD.
DAAD Visiting Professor from the University of Heidelberg, Germany. For further information see http://www.philosophie.uni-hd.de/personal/hindrichs.html.

Lecturers

Alexander Botwinik
Lecturer in Yiddish

Edward Dixon, Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania
Lecturer and Coordinator for Technology in Foreign Languages

Peter Hoberg, M.A.,
Lecturer

David James, Ph.D., University of Texas at Austin
Lecturer and Coordinator of Business German

Claudia Lynn, M.A., University of Pennsylvania
Lecturer

Robert Naborn, M.A., Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam and University of Kansas  
Dutch Studies Program Director & Lecturer in Dutch

Simone Schlichting-Artur, Ed.D., University of Pennsylvania
Lecturer

Susanne Shields, Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania
Lecturer in Foreign Language

Anneliese Taylor, M.A., University of Pennsylvania
Lecturer

Kim-Eric Williams, D.Min., Graduate Theological Foundation
Lecturer in Swedish & Director of Swedish Language Program