College of Humanities University of Arizona
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Three German studies MA students presented their research at the Graduate & Professional Student Council's annual Homecoming Student Showcase in November 2009. UA students from all departments and grade levels participated in the showcase. The German Studies Department congratulates Kyung Lee Gagum for the 2nd place in the Humanities in the Annual Graduate and Professional Student Council Showcase. All posters can be downloaded below.

Patrick Carlson and Kyung Lee Gagum presented "Philipp Segesser: Jesuit Missionaries in 18th Century Sonora", about the personal correspondence of Philipp Segesser, a Swiss-German Jesuit priest who was active as a missionary in Sonora during the early to mid-18th century.

Courtney C. Johnson presented "Nobody Else Was Laughing: Jewish humor in Dani Levy's films", about the Swiss-German director's framing of German history in his films, "Go for Zucker" and "My Fuehrer".

Kyung Lee Gagum presented "Faustine a la Manwha--or once upon a time German Faust literature infiltrated Korean pop-culture", about female representations of Goethe's Faust character in Korean manwha books and won the 2nd place in the humanities category.

Two of our German Studies minors have been honored with the annual Pillars of Excellence for outstanding studient scholars award.

8th International Symposium on Medieval and Early Modern Culture, University of Arizona, Tucson, May 6-9, 2010 - Crime and Punishment in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Time with the Department of German Studies. What constituted crime in the Middle Ages and early modern time (ca. 800 to ca. 1800 C.E.)? How did people regard and treat criminals? What kind of punishments were meted out? How did society survive in a world of criminal activities? Who were the criminals, and who were their victims? This symposium will examine the history of mentality concerning these two aspects and investigate practical and theoretical characteristics. This will be a symposium in the true sense of the word, with no more than ca. 25 papers altogether, participants coming from many different disciplines (history of law, art history, literary history, social history, etc.).

Deadline for submission of abstracts: January 31, 2010, but feel free to send an inquiry even after that date, to aclassen@u.arizona.edu

Location of Symposium: Conference Room of Special Collections, University of Arizona Library

This is a self-sustaining academic symposium. Participants are expected to secure travel funds and other costs (housing, registration) from their home institution.

The registration fee of $80. will include all meals and refreshments, three receptions, and an excursion. Selected papers will be accepted for publication in a planned volume. Each contributor to the volume will receive a free copy.

Anyone interested in joining the symposium as part of the audience, please contact the organizer. Student participation will be most welcome.

Languages accepted at the symposium: English, French, German, and Spanish. Non-English papers must be accompanied by a good English summary available as a hand-out. Abstracts of all papers will be posted well ahead of the symposium.

Hotel Accommodations: I have made a special arrangement with Riverpark Inn (formerly Pueblo Inn),  $69/night (plus tax [12%] plus $1 per night - prices might still change for 2010, but this is a very good deal!). Within the USA, call: 1-800 551-1466, refer to "Dept. of German Studies/Crime and Punishment," or to my name.  Local number: 520 239-2300. Transportation to and from the symposium (at the University of Arizona Library, Special Collections), will be provided.  For international guests, please fax your reservations to: 011- 520-239-2329

2008-09 has been a very active, busy, and productive year for the German Studies Department. In addition to the seven tenured members in the Department, we started the year with two new assistant professors, one adjunct professor, six M.A. students and seven students preparing for the Ph.D. in Transcultural German Studies.

Departmental faculty and teaching assistants – including four SLAT Ph.D. students – have taught 86 courses with 1594 students enrolled. Four of our faculty members are teaching and mentoring students in the Interdisciplinary Ph.D. Program in Second Language Acquisition and Teaching (SLAT) in addition to the departmental doctoral program. Departmental faculty has been actively involved with the Partnership across Languages (PAL), a COH-sponsored advocacy group consisting of language educators from all educational levels. The department hosted a 6th international conference, this time on ―Laughter in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Times" as well as the spring meeting of the Arizona chapter of the AATG. We participated in the College of Humanities Colloquium Series and in the Humanities Week, and faculty and graduate students served as judges in the annual Southern Arizona Language Fair. Our approximately 51 majors and 52 minors, in addition to the many students in our lower division language program enjoyed a number of social activities hosted by the Department during the academic year. The department continues to serve as a testing center for the examinations administered by the Goethe Institute. The departmental film and colloquium series continue to attract students and faculty from across the campus and community. The only sad news to report is the death of Babette Luz (93), former professor in the department, who died on May 24, 2008.

You can read more about the department in the attached Newsletter with over 20 pages of up to date information. Enjoy!

The Southern Arizona Language Fair is a multi-dimensional, challenging, and fun experience for students, teachers and families. Join us this Satuday for a day of fun and excitement! The annual Southern Arizona Language Fair (SALF) will take place on Saturday, April 10, 2010 on the campus of The University of Arizona, from 9:00 am to 3:00 pm. K-16 language students are invited to come enjoy exciting multicultural opportunities and attractions, including the following:

Competitions in poetry/prose, drama and oral proficiency

  • Certificates for all Fair participants and instructors, available online starting on Monday April 12 for teachers to print at schools or at home through their registration log-in page and password
  • Prizes and recognition for top winners in drama, poetry/prose recitation and oral proficiency, announced at the Awards Ceremonies
  • Art competitions, including a Language Fair poster contest, with cash prizes. All art entries should be dropped off in the Pacheco Integrated Learning Center (ILC) (Link to Map here) room 140 between 8:30 and 9:15 a.m. on the morning of the Fair by teachers, students or parents. A representative will be posted outside the door of room 140 to receive and acknowledge the entry. Winners must be willing to fill out a W-9 form to receive their prize. The Gallery will be closed for judging between 9:15 and 10:00 a.m.
  • On-stage performance opportunities for students (“non-competitive entertainment”)
  • Multicultural and multilingual booths and activities provided for all ages
  • Lively world music and dance

 

The authors and translators Hans Magnus Enzensberger and Erich Arendt are considered two key figures in German Literature after 1945, known especially for their appropriation of international literature. This paper explores the asymmetrically intertwined literary conditions of the two author-translator figures. Both contributed to the reception of Latin American and Spanish poetry in West and East Germany by translating Pablo Neruda, Raphael Alberti and many others. In addition to their literary role, Enzensberger and Arendt both assumed the role of the public intellectual, but in a completely different political, social and cultural settings. In this context, the terms intertextuality and transculturality provide a promising methodological and theoretical framework with which to approach their lives and works. On the one hand, intertextuality reveals the dialogic potential of translation, i. e. the ways in which engaging with a foreign text opens up a perspective on the author/translator’s own poetology. For Enzensberger, the poetry translator is a “brotherly egoist” who selects his “victims” according to his own preferences. His translations contain traces of the recontextualising language of a postmodern condition, whereas Arendt’s language evokes the notion of time-transcending totality. On the other hand, translation is looked at as a transcultural act which somehow transcends the transfer of words and text. Arendt’s translations of South American poets transgressed the doctrinaire understanding of literature in East Germany and paved the way for poetic innovation. In 1960, Hans Magnus Enzensberger published The Museum of Modern Poetry, which included German translations of poems drawn from a total of sixteen original languages, as an attempt to contribute to the creation of a new poetry in post-war Germany.

The Deutscher Studenten Club's weekly social event. Feel free to bring your friends, regardless of whether or not they speak German. We'll have the Stammtisch Schild on our table, and will probably be somewhere in the southwest corner of the outdoor seating. We usually have more than one table.

Don't be worried if you can't find anyone right at 6--most people start arriving around 6:15 or later.

There will be Stammtisch this Thursday (April 29) and next Thursday (May 6), as usual starting at 6 p.m. at No Anchovies. There will be no Stammtisch on May 13. We have no formal Stammtisch during the summer, but we can continue to have Stammtisch every Thursday if enough people are willing.

The DSC officer election is this Thursday at Stammtisch, being held via secret ballot at No Anchovies from 6:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. Interested parties may nominate themselves for officer positions by Wednesday afternoon.
So far our candidates are:

President: Kyung Lee Gagum
Vice President: Louis Miller
Treasurer: Katie Adler
Secretary: Anna Dorste
Web master: Alex Carbary-Ganz
Schildtraeger: Mike Bennett
Chair for International Student Relations: Mike Bennett

Our final DSC meeting will also be this week, taking place on Friday (April 30) at 12:30 p.m. in LSB 346. All are welcome to attend. This will be the meeting at which the current DSC officers pass the torch to newly elected officers.

You can find more information here: Deutscher Studenten Club Facebook Group

The first German films about the Third Reich were made in the 1950s, with filmmakers in east and west seeking to explain the rise of the Nazis and the continued attractions of fascism. These differences reflect not only conflicting interpretations of German history on both sides of the Iron Curtain but also competing attempts at utilizing this history in the ideological confrontations of the Cold War. This talk reconstructs the complicated relationship between fascism, antifascism, and totalitarianism through a number of important films from the period, including "The Devil's General" (1956) and the two-part "Ernst Thälmann" (1955-56).

This event is co-sponsored by the Department of History and the School of Media Arts Visiting Artists Program

Delta Phi Alpha is the National German Honor Society at the collegiate level with more than 330 chapters nationwide. The German faculty of the Department nominates students for membership into Delta Phi Alpha. The initiation ritual takes place during the Awards Ceremony at the end of the Spring semester. The following students are nominated for induction this semester:

  • Elizabeth Wilson
  • Nicole Oatman
  • Victoria Frazier
  • Kendra Krietsch
  • Anna Dorste
  • Katherine Weingartner
  • Rebecca London


Delta Phi Alpha mission: "The National German Honor Society, Delta Phi Alpha, seeks to recognize excellence in the study of German and to provide an incentive for higher scholarship. The Society aims to promote the study of the German language, literature and civilization and endeavors to emphasize those aspects of German life and culture which are of universal value and which contribute to man's eternal search for peace and truth."

Since the publication of the MLA Report of Foreign Languages (2007) much has been made of transcultural competence. Less attention has been paid, however, to its partner concept, translingual competence; and, yet, it is exactly this critical awareness of language as culture that students require in order to develop higher levels of competency in a foreign language. This poses the question, what pedagogical concepts and methods are best suited to develop this kind of competence within the traditional curricular framework of literary instruction?


In this paper I will discuss how pragmatic stylistics, an interdisciplinary area of applied linguistic study that approaches texts as social acts of interactive communication, can serve as the methodological basis for a pedagogical strategy of what could be called contact pragmatics. Because of its emphasis on the relations between linguistic form and function, in other words the relation between language and its users, pragmatic stylistics can be used to develop students’ sensitivity to the implications of linguistic choices, enabling them to recognize the restraints on legitimate and authorized language use and interpretation. Contact pragmatics, which can be defined as the text’s relation to intended and non-intended readers and the convergence of these two spheres of expectation, could help learners to channel meta-linguistic awareness into the development of translingual competence. In my talk, I will introduce not only theoretical, but also practical aspects of a pedagogy of translingual competence through pragmatic stylistics, using examples from intermediate and advanced German language classes.