Spring 2024 Graduate Student News

In February 2024, two German Department graduate students, Kristina Schauhoff and Katie Lightfoot, presented papers at the Southeast German Studies Workshop hosted by the University of Alabama. Katie Lightfoot’s paper was entitled “Reading Alternative Spaces and Border Crossings in Wenders’ Film Himmel über Berlin (Wings of Desire),” and Kristina Schauhoff presented a paper entitled “‘Du hättest eigentlich ein Junge werden müssen’: Challenging Gendered Spaces in Özdamar’s Der Hof im Spiegel.”

On March 9, Stephanie Strevey presented a paper on “Literature as the Tool of Retraumatization and Remedy: Der sensitive Beziehungswahn, Karl Philipp Moritz’s Anton Reiser, and the Genre of the Case Study,” in a panel entitled “Where is the Cognitive Turn today?” at the NeMLA annual convention in Boston, Massachusetts.

The Georgetown German Department was well represented at the Austrian Studies Association annual convention in West Chester, Pennsylvania in April! Graduate student Sally Simpson gave a paper on “Nostalgia for Empire? The Construction and Deconstruction of the Ungargasse as Idyll in Ingeborg Bachmann’s Malina.” Sally will also spend the summer in Dresden, Germany, as an exchange student at the Technische Universität Dresden.

Somewhat closer to home, the German department was well represented at the at the CIBER Conference in Washington, DC, hosted by George Washington University in May 2024. Together with Prof. Joe Cunningham, PhD candidate Maria Speggiorin gave a presentation on “Conceptualizing One’s Own Self and Cultural Identity in Virtual Exchange.” Maria will also present on her dissertation research findings later this spring at the CALICO conference in Pittsburgh, hosted by Carnegie Mellon University.