Graduate Student News

This March, three of our PhD candidates successfully defended their dissertations.

On March 25, 2026, J.B. Potter defended his dissertation H(a)unting Ghosts of the Yugoslav Wars: Images of the Enemy in the Works of Peter Handke. His dissertation mentor was Dr. Peter C. Pfeiffer.

Maria Speggiorin defended her dissertation Transnational Awareness and Virtual Exchange (VE): Analyzing U.S.-based German Learners’ Discourse while Engaged in Zoom Videoconferencing Sessions on March 26, 2026. Her dissertation mentor was Dr. Joe Cunningham.

Lorna McCarron defended her dissertation Embodying the Margins: Corporeality in Contemporary German-Language Literature with distinction on March 31, 2026. Her dissertation mentor was Dr. Friederike Eigler.

Congratulations to J.B., Maria, and Lorna!

Also in March, PhD student Lincoln Snyder presented at the CNY Humanities Corridor’s “Innovative Approaches to Language Education” conference at Colgate University in Hamilton, New York, offering a session titled “Plain Spoken: Innovation in the Revitalization of Pennsylvania Dutch.” He also appeared on the “Speaking of Language” podcast at Cornell University’s Language Resource Center, where he talked about his research into Pennsylvania German.

Sally Simpson has received a grant from the American Friends of Marbach to conduct research this summer at the Deutsches Literaturarchiv Marbach (DLA). This research will relate to her dissertation project titled Re/Sounding Modernity: Alternative Soundscapes in German and Austrian Literature of the Early 20th Century. Sally will also be presenting a paper titled “Hearing the Past: Listening to the Nation through Music in Joseph Roth’s Radetzkymarsch (1932)” as part of the panel “Writing about Music: Prescription, Description, and Transformation” at the GSA’s 50th Annual Conference this fall in Phoenix, Arizona.

PhD candidate Katie Miller-Purrenhage received three awards this semester: a DAAD Research Grant, the Zantop Travel Award sponsored by Feminists in German Studies, and a Dissertation Research Travel Grant sponsored by Georgetown’s Graduate School. These awards will fund her time in Berlin this summer to conduct research for her dissertation Self-Love and Community Building in Contemporary Black German Literature and Culture. She will visit archives at the Freie Universität Berlin that hold works by Audre Lorde and May Ayim, analyze museum exhibitions at the Ethnologisches Museum, and participate in a colloquium held by her academic supervisor. Her time in Berlin will support the third chapter of her dissertation titled “From Empire to Dialogue: Collaborative Decolonization at the Berlin Ethnological Museum.” This chapter explores how decolonial curatorial methods foster a sense of belonging for Black people in a historically racist institution, build community at the museum and in the city of Berlin, and resist stereotypical portrayals of Black people traditionally on display in museums. She is honored to have won all three awards and is excited to live in Berlin!

Katie will also be co-organizing three panels and participating in one seminar at the GSA this upcoming fall. “Celebrating 40 Years of Black German Studies” aims to explore the significance of the Afro-German movement as it exists today and look back at how it has developed since Farbe bekennen was published 40 years ago. The papers presented engage with Black German cultural institutions (and their collaborators), literature, and the institutionalization of Black German Studies. The two-part panel series “Borderless and Brazen: Celebrating May Ayim’s Poetry, Prose, and Political Activism” honors Ayim and her rich intellectual, artistic, and activist legacy. The presentations included celebrate Ayim’s creative and theoretical work as well as her praxis, and that reflect on her influence in shaping Black German and diasporic feminist thought. The seminar “Teaching Palestine in the German Studies Classroom” explores strategies for teaching the entanglements of German and Palestinian histories, politics, literatures, and cultures. In this seminar, Katie and other participants will relate Palestine to German history, language, and culture, learning how to navigate teaching this in the current environment.

Additionally, Katie was nominated for the Graduate Student Teaching Award by her former students. Congratulations, Katie!