Recent News

Check out the recent article in The Daily on "Spiritual Studies" featuring our very own Professor Annegret Oehme and her course, "Witchcraft: From History to Pop Culture." Prof. Oehme's course will be offered again this summer quarter 2024.
Check out these fun English-language courses in German Studies!  Open to everyone -- no prerequisites!  Vampires, Vamps, and Villains: Introduction to Weimar Film (German 371)  In this course, we will utilize films from pre-WWI to the rise of Hitler as a means to explore urgent topics such as sexuality, the evolution of gender roles, the rise of the metropolis, the… Read more
Greetings! My name is Martin Schwartz, and I’m delighted to return to my academic journey—after a generous break—as a Kade Fellow at the University of Washington Department of German Studies. I completed my MA at University of Chicago in 2006, writing about contemporary German drama, after earning my BA in Literatures of the World (German), at UC San Diego, and an indelible year at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin through the University of California’s honors study program. Since those times… Read more
Greetings everyone. My name is Arpit Samuel. It feels good to be here, especially having this opportunity to be part of University of Washington as a Max Kade Fellow in the Department of German Studies. Coming from India, this has been a huge move for me, but all the more exciting, with the way everything has exploded into life from my humble beginnings. I taught myself German mostly on my own through books in the hopes of expanding my reach in my profession and ended up doing Masters in… Read more
UW German Studies faculty continue to push forward the disciplines of literary and cultural studies. You can follow their exciting research on individual professors’ faculty pages. In 2023, UW faculty were invited to be guest editors by three leading journals in German Studies. The Special Issues they produced show off the breadth and depth of the department’s research. In each case, the Special Issue challenges conventional assumptions about well-trodden fields:  Annegret Oehme asks what… Read more
Jason Groves   I co-edited a special issue of The Germanic Review on the poet Paul Celan. As Natalie Lozinski-Veach and I write in our introduction, Celan’s poems demonstrate a remarkable capacity to touch on others’ histories and experiences and to be touched by them in turn. Drawing on transnational German studies, this introduction sketches out a framework for appreciating the… Read more
  Aaron Carpenter   Submitted "Can Chickens Cry", an article based on the third chapter of my dissertation to Gegenwartsliteratur. It is currently under peer review. The article examines the tension in Marica Bodrožić’s German-language novel Kirschholz und Alte Gefühle, between the character Mateo’s working to rid the Croatian language of… Read more
"Seek mentors and advisors whom you can trust and who also understand your situation. Ask questions if you are unsure about procedures, classes, or course of studies! Use the resources you have available. Don’t ever feel embarrassed for asking for advice or help! UW holds many resources and nobody wants to see you fail!" -- Annegret Oehme, Associate Professor, Department of German Studies. Please read the entire interview… Read more
Early Modern Women on Politics and Ethics, 5.-7.10.2023 at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden Panel: Public and Private Agency – The Ethical and Political Body Paper: Catharina Elisabeth Velten. Defending the Stage and the Acting Profession At this interdisciplinary conference I got to present my research on Catharina Velten’s manifesto, in which she argues vigorously against antitheatrical accusations by Johann Joseph Winckler. It was illuminating to see so many connections between… Read more
Conferences attended:   72nd National Postgraduate Colloquium in German Studies (London, 28–29 April 2023 Panel: Memory and Landscapes Paper Title: “The Ethics of Narrating Catastrophe: Kleist’s Das Erdbeben in Chili” In my paper, I explore the position of narrative texts in relation to broader public discourses on catastrophe, inquiring after the ethical implications of placing disasters within the framework of a story. Using Heinrich von Kleist’s Das… Read more