Speaker Series: German Scholars in the DC Area Featuring Dr. Julie Koser

The German Department welcomed Dr. Julie Koser on October 20, 2016, as the guest speaker in the German Department’s inaugural Speaker Series: Scholars in the DC Area. Dr. Koser presented on “Destabilizing Dominant Narratives: Benedikte Naubert and ‘Enlightenment Orientalism.’” 

Julie Koser is Associate Professor of Germanic Studies in the School of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures at the University of Maryland. She received her PhD in German with a Designated Emphasis in Women, Gender, and Sexuality from the University of California, Berkeley. Her research focuses on the literature and history of the Goethezeit and is informed by gender and feminist studies, cultural studies, and postcolonial studies. She has published articles and book chapters on French female revolutionaries in the German press, the dramatist Heinrich von Kleist, the self-proclaimed Swiss Amazon Regula Engel-Egli, and the prolific author Benedikte Naubert. Her monograph Armed Ambiguity: Women Warriors in German Literature and Culture in the Age of Goethe appeared in 2016 with Northwestern University Press. Her current book project, Renegotiating the German Orient around 1800, juxtaposes fictional and non-fictional constructions of the Orient in works by German-speaking women writers.