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You're warmly invited to The Rutgers GREELL Department's Platonow auf Deutsch (An Interdisciplinary Workshop): Proletarian Culture, Critical Theory, Praxis. In addition to distinguished panelists from other universities, you'll get to hear from Rutgers German faculty (Dominik Zechner, Nicholas Rennie, Nicola Behrmann) and Rutgers REELL faculty (Emily Van Buskirk, Pavel Khazanov, and Semyon Leonenko). Full details: Platonow auf Deutsch (An Interdisciplinary Workshop): Proletarian Culture,...

Two of the department's German majors have earned special graduation and post-graduation honors! After receiving the Outstanding Service Award and the Henry Rutgers Award for his honors thesis, "The Image Project," Charlie Scott ('25) will travel to the University of Vienna next year on a Fulbright combined award, where he'll be examining the rhetoric of photography in Freud and Wittgenstein.    Emily Trujillo ('25) received the Chancellor’s Leadership Award, the Outstanding Service Award, and the...

Charlotte Triggs’ 20-year career with the publication started with an internship in college. Rutgers alumna Charlotte Triggs has rubbed elbows with A-list celebrities and supermodels, covered plastic surgery from every angle, and once interviewed designer Karl Lagerfeld in German. After more than a 20-year career with PEOPLE, the 2005 Rutgers College graduate continues to put her dual undergraduate degrees in English and German and minors in Spanish and political science to good use for the...

On March 29, 2025, undergraduate students from Columbia, Pittsburgh, Princeton, and Rutgers Universities gathered to present compelling and timely papers on "dis/appearance" at the conference organized by Rutgers German majors Charlie Scott and Emily Trujillo. The keynote "How to Disappear Completely" by Rutgers German Prof. Dominik Zechner was one highlight of an event abundant with quality scholarship. We thank everyone who attended! More information about the conference is available on the...

We are proud of our graduating German majors Charlie Scott and Emily Trujillo, who both presented research projects at the 56th Annual Convention of the Northeast Modern Language Association (NeMLA) in Philadelphia in March! Charlie presented on "Alien Love: The Erotics of Art in Science Fiction's Other." Emily's project, called "Irony as Pharmakon," traces irony in theories of late capitalism (Jameson, Nagle, Kornbluh) and as a trope (de Man), arguing that irony, which pertains primordially...

Click here to view our Fall 2025 undergraduate courses. To view our graduate course offerings for Fall 2025, please click here.

We welcome you to attend the undergraduate conference on dis/appearance on Saturday, March 29, 2025 in Seminar Room 4052 on the fourth floor of Rutgers Academic Building West. This in-person event is organized by Rutgers German majors Charlie Scott and Emily Trujillo, advised by Prof. Nicholas Rennie, with a keynote address by Prof. Dominik Zechner. Click here for more information!

Eva Erber has successfully defended her dissertation, "This Woman’s Work: Arbeitswelten in der ‘Frauenliteratur’ der Zwischenzeit von 1930 bis 1940" under the guidance of Prof. Nicola Behrmann. The dissertation committee was composed of Professors Michael Levine, Martha Helfer, and Heide Volkening (Universität Greifswald). Congratulations, Dr. Erber!

Thomas Wallerberger has successfully defended his dissertation, "Auf der Suche nach dem Wunder: Die österreichische Literatur der ‚Zwischenzeit‘ von 1930 bis 1940" under the co-advisorship of Professors Nicola Behrmann and Nicholas Rennie. The dissertation committee consisted of Professors Martha Helfer, Regina Karl, and Fatima Naqvi (Yale University). Congratulations, Dr. Wallerberger!

Congratulations to German major Nathaniel Eck, who has won an award from Fulbright Austria’s US Teaching-Assistant Program to go to Vienna for the 2024-2025 school year.

Congratulations to Prof. Galasso on the publication of Genre, Race, and the Production of Subjectivity in German Romanticism! Prof. Stephanie Galasso’s monograph is out now with Northwestern University Press. In it, she argues that modern genre theory takes for granted a racially coded universality dating back to late Enlightenment and Romantic aesthetics. Copies of Prof. Galasso's book can be ordered through the link here.

The Rutgers German Department's Bob and Charlotte Craig Visiting Professor for Fall 2024 will be Dr. Philipp Felsch. Philipp Felsch is Professor for Cultural History at the Humboldt University Berlin. As an intellectual historian he is interested in the social life of the ideas that have shaped the postwar period up to our present age. His latest books in English are The Summer of Theory: History of a Rebellion, 1960-1990 (2021 – for a current review see...

Dr. Stefanie Populorum has successfully defended her dissertation, "Ökonomien des Untergangs. Krisennarrative bei Franz Kafka, Fritz Lang und Joseph Roth" under the guidance of Prof. Nicola Behrmann. The dissertation committee consisted of Professors Nicola Behrmann, Michael Levine, Fatima Naqvi, and Henry Sussman. Congratulations, Stefanie!

Dr. Christiane Fischer has successfully defended her dissertation, "Seeing Nothing: Violence and Representation in Harun Farocki, Yoko Tawada, Hito Steyerl, and Christian Petzold" under the guidance of Prof. Michael Levine. The dissertation committee was comprised of Professor Michael Levine, Nicola Behrmann, Regina Karl, and Randall Halle. Congratulations, Dr. Fischer!

The Red 1 Mark NovelsJanuary 24th, 2024 - April 24th, 2024Finissage: April 24th, 2024 at 12pmOpen hours: Monday- Friday, 9am - 4:30pm Location: open area in the German Department, Academic Building West Wing, 4th floor

Congratulations to German Minor Will Hoover, who has been awarded an English Teaching Assistantship in the US Teaching Assistantship Program, run by the Austrian Ministry of Education, Science and Research (BMBWF) and administered by Fulbright Austria. He will be serving as an English Teaching Assistant at two secondary schools in Vienna, Austria, for the 2023-2024 school year.

Dr. Steven Weinberg has successfully defended his dissertation, "An Ersatz Kabbalah: The Dialogue between Gershom Scholem and Walter Benjamin on Hope and Failure in Kafka's Literature" under the guidance of Prof. Michael Levine. The dissertation committee with Professors Martha Helfer, Michael Levine, Dominik Zechner and Erica Weitzman was imrpessed by his outstanding research. Congratulations, Steve!

Congratulations to PhD student and Teaching Assistant Alexandra Friedrich, who has been awarded the 2022-2023 Award for Distinguished Contributions to Undergraduate Education at the TA rank! This is an amazing and well-deserved recognition of an excellent instructor.

We congratulate our German Major Emily Trujillo for winning the Max Kade Prize for Best Presentation with her paper "Unchrist: Religion & Inversion in Kafka's Die Verwandlung," presented at the 12th Undergraduate Research Conference in German Studies, organized by Moravian University and Lafayette College. Emily's close reading of Kafka's novella understands Gregor Samsa the Ungeziefer as an inverted Christ figure, suggesting that the flattened, forgotten, trash-like status of his dying is a...

Click here to view our Fall 2023 undergraduate courses. To view our graduate course offerings for Fall 2023, please click here.