Fall 2024 UW German Studies Newsletter

LETTER FROM THE CHAIR

Dear Alums and Friends of German Studies:

My last letter to you in the spring included a picture of a blank wall.  Thanks to the generosity of donors, I can now share an image of the new sign welcoming visitors to the Department of German Studies! We are especially grateful to Benjamin Collins-Wood and David Chandler for their generous donations.

The year has been marked by great loss to the German Studies community at UW. Two beloved teachers and respected researchers passed away in 2024. I have lost count of the number of people who have approached me to tell about the huge impact Charles Barrack had on them as students. And it has been truly humbling to learn about the accomplishments of Diana Behler as a scholar, teacher, and long-time chair of the UW Germanics Department. You can read more about their generous and impressive lives in the moving tributes written by students and colleagues.

It is a pleasure to share our latest news in this fall edition of the newsletter. We’ve had another packed autumn, with a spirited department-wide discussion about a new German film (Afire, dir. Christian Petzold, 2023) and an outing to punk rock production of Bertolt Brecht’s Caucasian Chalk Circle. Both of these events brought faculty, staff, graduate students, and undergraduates together in intellectual inquiry and fun bonding. We were also challenged to think in new critical ways during two bracing talks: one on Kafka and Chicken Little (by our own Richard Block) and another on Hannah Arendt’s Rahel Varnhagen (by Noga Rotem from UW Political Science).

We’re incredibly proud of our graduate students’ phenomenal success on the job market this year. All four graduating PhDs landed positions teaching at great colleges and universities. We miss them in the halls of Denny, but wish them success in their new careers. Meanwhile, we’re delighted to welcome a new DAAD exchange student and TA, Melissa Ayar, to our community. We’re also glad to welcome Arpit Samuel back to Seattle after his enriching Summer Academy in Dresden. 

You can follow the latest thrilling Adventures in Research of our faculty and graduate students. Recent publications push forward the boundaries of our knowledge in fields as various as Early Modern Yiddish Studies, Enlightenment Ethics and Aesthetics, Race and German Idealism, Queer Studies in Contemporary Film, and Environmental Humanities.

You will also be hearing from our amazing undergraduates. You can check out our exciting winter course offerings and read student testimonials from our transformative study abroad programs in Vienna and Berlin. And our German Club has kept up its ambitious and popular weekly program of well-attended activities.

During this season, I am inviting you to make a donation to our fund, Friends of German Studies, which supports students and faculty who present papers at conferences, guest speakers in courses, scholarly publications, student awards, and many other activities that are so vital in a small department. We strive to create enriching and memorable experiences for our students, and it’s only your donations that make this possible. In the winter, we are excited that Mozart’s Magic Flute is coming to the Seattle Opera. This is a guest production that premiered at the Komische Oper in Berlin and we hope to coordinate some German Studies events around the opera that will be open to the public. Stay tuned!

Thank you so much for your help and your continued support of the Department and its programs. The faculty joins me in wishing you a cozy holiday season and a good ‘slide’ into the New Year!

Best wishes,

Ellwood