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German Studies News
Meet German Studies during Harpur Week
Tuesday, 11/12, 10–4:30, the Spine
Stop by our table on the Spine, quiz your knowledge of all things German, and learn some of the many unexpected reasons why learning German is more useful than you think!
Rebecca Schäfer at PAMLA
Rebecca Schäfer is currently attending the 121st Annual Conference of the Pacific Ancient and Modern Language Association (PAMLA) in Palm Springs, California, where she gives a talk on the films of queer Austrian filmmaker Patric Chiha. In "'Time No Longer Exists, It's Wonderful:' Queer Temporalities, Spaces, and Affect in the films of Patric Chiha," she examines how the concepts of temporality, space, and affect interrelate in the context of clubbing in Chiha's If It Were Love (2020) and The Beast in the Jungle (2023). Drawing on temporality studies, Foucault's concept of heterotopia, and theories of transnationalism, the paper analyzes how the films, including through filmic staging and performance, invest in unproductive uses of time, resist chrononormativity, and queerly engage with time and space.
"Demystifying pronunciation instruction in second language classrooms" – Andrew Lee (Université Laval, Canada)
November 7, 4:30pm-6:00pm, Alpern Room (LN 2200)
Despite the importance of pronunciation in everyday life, why has the instruction
of pronunciation often been overlooked in second language classrooms? Prof. Lee's
talk addressed this question, including challenges and suggested solutions based on
evidence from research in second language pronunciation instruction. Participants,
including language instructors and students, learend about the significance of second
language pronunciation instruction and a model of researcher-practitioner collaboration
that benefits all stakeholders in second language classrooms.
Book talk: Alexander Sorenson in conversation with Michael Lipkin (9/19)
On Thursday, 9/19, Alexander Sorenson discussed his new book, The Waiting Water: Order, Sacrifice, and Submergence in German Realism with Binghamton alum Michael Lipkin (now faculty at Hamilton College). Thursday, 9/19, 4:30 pm, Alpern Room (LN 2200).
Telecollaboration in the German language classroom
Liese Sippel's article "Is corrective feedback during telecollaboration beneficial? The effects of peer and teacher feedback on L2 writing proficiency" has been published in the Journal of Second Language Writing. The paper examines telecollaboration in the German language classroom, specifically, an email exchange between learners of German at a US university and learners of English at a high school in Germany.
"9 Days in Deutschland: A Documentary Memoir"
Qinza Malik Khan's documentary memoir about traveling in Germany will be on display at the Bundy Museum from 6/7–7/2. Qinza Khan ('24) worked on this project during the Binghamton University Summer Scholars Program 2023, with Prof. Harald Zils providing mentorship and support throughout the process.
Congratulations to Gülden Olgun, Ph.D.!
2024 German Studies graduates
Congratulations to this year's graduating class of German Studies majors and minors, John Bieg, Brendon Jaeger, Daniel Karn, Ren Longo, Arielle Moreau, Malcolm Schultz, Nadine Saur, and Allison Zuckermann! Herzlichen Glückwunsch und Alles Beste für die Zukunft!
2024 German Studies awards
Congratulations to Yuna Ahn and Eliana Hansen for receiving this year's Ursula H. Africa Endowment Awards for German Studies; to Arielle Moreau and Malcolm Schultz for receiving this year's Keith Nintzel Awards for Excellence and Commitment in German Studies; and to Wylie Rauschenbach for receiving this year's Larry Wells Scholarship. Herzlichen Glückwunsch, Yuna, Eliana, Arielle, Malcolm, and Wylie!
Dr. Lieselotte Sippel to join GRS in fall 2024
The Department of German & Russian Studies is very excited to announce that a new colleague will be joining us in the fall. Dr. Lieselotte Sippel, currently a Senior Lector II and Associate Research Scholar in the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures at Yale University, will be joining the faculty at Binghamton as Assistant Professor of German Studies and Head of German Language Instruction. Dr. Sippel’s research in applied linguistics explores second language acquisition in the classroom, and seeks to identify effective pedagogical methods; particular areas of focus include peer interaction, corrective feedback, pronunciation, and telecollaboration. Herzlich Willkommen, Liese—we can’t wait to welcome you to the department in the fall!
Symposium on Max Reinhardt's Reigen promptbook (4/17, 1–5 pm)
On Wednesday, April 17, a symposium on Max Reinhardt's Reigen promptbook was held in the library's Special Collections, with talks and roundtables on Reinhardt, the Reinhardt Archive, Arthur Schnitzler, digital philology, and other topics, to mark a transatlantic collaboration between Binghamton University and the University of Freiburg centering on this important cultural artifact.
Carl Gelderloos gives keynote lecture at Yale grad conference
Carl Gelderloos was in New Haven on 4/12–4/13 to give the keynote lecture for the graduate student conference in Yale's Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures. The conference was "Making Sense of Experience: Analyses of Sensation after Mach," and Gelderloos' talk was about "Sense perception and the sense of a self from Mach to Plessner."
Alum Michael Lipkin ('08) presents translation of bestseller
Michael Lipkin, whose translation of Walter Kempowski's 1971 Tadellöser & Wolff was published in 2023 by New York Review Books as An Ordinary Youth, returned to Binghamton on Wednesday, 3/27 to give a talk about Kempowski's novel and the intricacies of literary translation. Lipkin is currently Visiting Assistant Professor of German Studies at Hamilton College.
Christina Feil presenting new research at NeMLA
In early March, Christina Feil traveled to Boston to present at the 55th annual convention of the Northeast Modern Language Association. Part of a session on "Flight Narratives: Making the Individual Visible," Feil presented a paper titled "Refugee Cinema of the Post-Soviet Peripheries."
Laughing, Crying, and Human "Eccentricity"
Carl Gelderloos' essay, "Humans are Nature's Eccentrics: Laughing and Crying Show Why," has been published with Public Books. This essay introduces the work of the Philosophical Anthropologist Helmuth Plessner by looking at how he thinks about the everyday paradoxes of laughing and crying.
Invited lectures by Alexander Sorenson
On Friday, February 8, Alexander Sorenson presented new research at the colloquium of Cornell's Institute for German Cultural Studies; the topic of the day's discussion was Sorenson's paper, "The Heart Left Behind: On Ecstasy and Present Absence in Rilke’s Middle Period."
And at the end of February, Sorenson presented his paper, "For Love of the World: Rilke's Ecology of Praise and Transience," at Harvard's Mahindra Humanities Center.
Carl Gelderloos joins AFM board
Carl Gelderloos has been elected to a three-year term on the board and to the position of Treasurer of the American Friends of Marbach, an organization that seeks to strengthen ties between scholars and students in the US and the German Literature Archive in Marbach am Neckar, Germany.
Russian Studies News
Book talk: Ukraine Is Not Dead Yet, with Megan Buskey (9/5/24)
Growing up in Cleveland in the final years of the Cold War, writer Megan Buskey understood little about her Ukrainian family’s traumatic history. It was only well into adolescence that she learned that her mother had grown up in a gulag exile settlement in Siberia because her grandparents had been deported there from their Ukrainian village after WWII. As an adult, Megan spent years researching her family’s experience for her award-winning book, Ukraine Is Not Dead Yet: A Family Story of Exile and Return (ibidem, 2023). In this talk, Megan Buskey will discuss the political significance of Ukrainian family histories in light of the restrictions placed on memory during the Soviet period, share what she learned about her family’s experience, and connect their story to current politics, specifically Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Thursday, 5. September @ 7 pm, AM 189
Eunsu Kim wins SEEFA's Best Undergrad Research Paper
Eunsu Kim's paper on Slavic folklore was awarded Best Undergraduate Research Paper for AY 2023-2024 by SEEFA, the Slavic and East European Folklore Association. Congratulations!
Faculty lecture: "Coding National Identity in Ukrainian Ballet Librettos of the 1930s" (Ania Nikulina)
On Thursday, 11/16, Prof. Ania Nikulina gave a lecture about how, in the years following Ukraine’s violent integration into the realm of the Soviet Union, classical ballet emerged as a contested medium between narratives of imperial expansion and national resistance. Early Soviet authorities sought to strike a delicate balance between empowering national identities, while maintaining centralized control over cultural production to prevent re-emergence of Ukrainian nationalism as a political force. However, librettos of nation-themed ballets staged in Soviet Ukraine in the 1930s that were nominally tasked with highlighting only the surface expressions of Ukrainian culture in fact succeeded in extracting a lasting and enduring cultural image of the Ukrainian nation.
Congratulations to the 2023 Russian Studies graduates!
Five Russian Studies majors graduated in spring 2023: Owen Carmody, Lisa Foreman, Lea Frenkel, Gillian Van der Have and Lara Solomon. Two Russian Studies minors graduated: Bryan Bibicheff and Julia Kaplun. Lisa Foreman will attend the London School of Economics this summer and Lea Frenkel is headed to Duke University Law School. Congratulations to all!
Emilio Kershner at the 2023 Olympiada
New research by Prof. Nikulina
Prof. Ania Nikulina’s newest research on ballet in Ukraine and other topics has appeared in multiple venues recently, including an essay in Dance Research Journal, a Cambridge University Press publication. Moreover, her recent research has been supported by awards, including a Mellon Foundation Council on Library and Information Resources Travel Grant and a Council on Library and Information Resources Editor Award.
Prof. Nikulina’s article, “Ballet in Ukraine: from Confusion to Defiance and Independence” appeared in the April 2023 issue of Dance Research Journal. Other peer-reviewed essays, based on her research in Kyiv, Ukraine, explore the multiple cultural dimensions of ballet performances and dance training in state theaters and academies of Ukraine and their multifaceted relationships to political forces of nationalism and imperialism. While the DRJ article draws on Nikulina's ethnographic research and deep interviews with Kyiv-based artists, teachers, and choreographers, essays published by Council on Library and Information Resources reflect on her archival analysis and current dilemmas faced by scholars today.
Alumni News
From a German double major to a DVM
In May, 2024, Ivanka Juran ('20, double major in German Studies and biology) earned a Doctorate in Veterinary Medicine from Cornell University. Herzlichen Glückwunsch, Dr. Juran!
Binghamton German Studies alum publishes first English translation of best-selling German novel
New York Review Books has published Binghamton German Studies alum Michael Lipkin’s translation of Walter Kempowski’s 1971 best-selling novel Tadellöser & Wolff. Lipkin's translation, titled An Ordinary Youth, makes this important work of German literature available to Anglophone readers for the first time. The book follows a Rostock family through the history of the Nazi period and offers an intimate glimpse into everyday life under fascism. Lipkin is currently a visiting assistant professor of German at Hamilton College.
Russian alum participates in Teach for America
Liam Kerrigan ('21) will join Teach for America to teach English Language Arts in grades 7–8 in Philadelphia.
Russian students pursuing graduate studies
- Gillian van der Have will study at the London School of Economics for an MS in International Social and Public Policy.
- Lisa Foreman will attend the London School of Economics in summer, 2023.
- Lea Frenkel is headed to Durham to attend Duke University Law School in fall, 2023.
- Masha Morozov, a 2020 double major in Integrative Neuroscience and Russian Studies, began a Masters in Public Health program with concentrations in Global Health and Epidemiology at the University of Pennsylvania in fall, 2021.
- Jack Strosser (Russian Major, '19) began a two-year MA in International Relations at Central European University in Vienna this coming fall (September 2021).
- Congratulations Gillian, Lisa, Lea, Masha, and Jack! Best of luck in your graduate studies!
German students pursuing graduate studies
Students who have majored or minored in German at Binghamton have gone on to graduate study at universities including Northwestern, UNC, Boston University, Stony Brook, New Paltz, Georgetown, Temple, Cornell, Columbia, and others. To read more about how studying German at Binghamton helped these students pursue their diverse career goals, check out our "Why Study German?" page.
- Brendon Jaeger ('24, Chemistry major, minor in German Studies) is joining the Ph.D. program in material science and engineering (MSE) at Boston University in fall, 2024.
- Bethany Maloney ('20, double major in French language & linguistics and German Studies) headed to the University at Albany to pursue a Masters of Science in Information Science in the department of Information Sciences and Technology.
- Ren Sahlman ('18, double major in English/Creative Writing and German Studies) started work on an MFT in the Couple and Family Therapy program at Thomas Jefferson University in fall, 2023.
- Sean Gordon ('20, double major in German Studies and Linguistics) headed to Evanston in fall, 2023 to pursue a Ph.D. in German at Northwestern University.
- Liam Shanley ('21, double major in Biology and German Studies) joined the graduate program in genetics at Stony Brook University in order to pursue a Ph.D. in genetics.
- Alex Russell ('22, double major in German Studies and Political Science) headed to Chapel Hill in fall, 2022 to join the Transatlantic Masters program at the University of North Carolina.
- Gabriel Steinberg ('21) moved to Karlsruhe in Baden-Württemberg in fall, 2021 to pursue his M.Sc. in Computer Science at Karlsruhe Institut für Technologie (KIT).
- Bradley Cisternino ('21, double major in History and PPL, minor in German Studies) joined the MBA program at Binghamton University in fall, 2021.
- Karaleigh Saar ('21, double major in French and German Studies) headed to Boston University in fall, 2021 to begin a Ph.D. in French Studies.
- Michael Krawec ('21, double major in German Studies and History) joined the School of Education at New Paltz to pursue a Masters of Arts in Teaching (MAT), specializing in Adolescence Education: Social Studies.
- Joe Vitale ('20, double major in History and German Studies) headed to Georgetown University in fall, 2021 to begin a Master's in German and European Studies.
- Zhiqing (Sasha) Chen ('20, double major in Geology and German Studies) pursued a Master's Degree in Journalism at Georgetown University.
- Matthew Dagele ('18, double major in Economics and German Studies) earned a Masters of Communication in Digital Media at the University of Washington.
- Annemarie Maag-Tanchak ('19, Art History major, minor in German Studies) also headed to Temple University in fall, 2020 to begin a Master's program in Art History and Arts Administration.
- Ivanka Juran ('20, double major in German Studies and biology) headed to Cornell University in fall, 2020 to pursue a Doctorate in Veterinary Medicine.
- Hannah Sheridan ('18, double major in German Studies and linguistics) headed to Temple University in fall, 2020 to begin a Master's program in Speech, Language and Hearing Science in the Department of Communication Science and Disorders in the College of Public Health.
- Congratulations Bethany, Ren, Sean, Liam, Alex, Gabriel, Bradley, Karaleigh, Michael, Joe, Sasha, Matt, Annemarie, Ivanka, and Hannah! Best of luck in your graduate studies!
Why study Russian?
John Tilden ('91) recently visited his Alma Mater, and described his experiences studying Russian, and what he was able to do with it, in this way: "I studied Russian as an undergraduate because I wanted to learn a language that I knew would have global impact and serve as a gateway to a culture I knew very little about... As a part of my degree in English/Literature & Rhetoric, I earned a minor in Russian Language and Literature, studying Russian fiction and then-contemporary journalism in both English and Russian. My skill in the spoken language after three years of language study was enough to pass a State Department oral interview and be offered an entry-level contracted job at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow."
