Participants:

Jeffrey Adams, Department of German, Russian, and Japanese Studies

My research interests include the Age of Goethe; lyric poetry; Freud and psychoanalytic approaches to literature and art; Nietzsche; film studies. My course offerings include topics in German literature from 18th century to the present, as well as Freud and Nietzsche. I'm expanding into areas of film, including German Auteur Film of the 70s and 80s, Weimar Cinema, and film noir. Some major publications are Books: "Moerike's Muses: Critical Essays on Eduard Moerike", ed. (1990); "Mimetic Desire: Essays on Narcissism and German Literature from Romanticism to Postmodernism" ed. (1995); Articles: "Narcissism and Object Relations in Goethe's Creative Imagination" (1995);
"Narcissism and Creativity in the Postmodern Era. The Case of Patrick Sueskind's 'Das Parfum'" -- forthcoming in fall issue of The  Germanic  Review.

I am currently preparing a monograph entitled "Mourning and Melancholia in the German Literary Tradition" and an article entitled "Kafka and Film
Noir. Dream-Text and Expressionist Mise-en-Scene in Orson
Welles's "The Trial."
 
 

Porter Aichele, Department of Art

Karin Baumgartner, Department of German, Russian 
and Japanese Studies

Bruce Caldwell, Department of Economics  (on leave, fall 2000)

I am writing a book that will explore the contributions of the Nobel laureate economist F.A. Hayek, with an emphasis on his methodological views. Hayek is a member of the so-called Austrian School of Economics. Members of the school challenge the direction that economics has taken in the 20th century, particularly its association with positivism. In order to understand Hayek's methodological thought, I will provide in the first part of my book a review of certain intellectual and political developments that took place in Austria and Germany before World War I.
Some highlights include the debates between the Austrians and members of the German Historical School on method, the rise of positivist and Austro-Marxist thought in Vienna before the war, and the reaction of the Austrian economists to these developments.

Kenneth Caneva, Department of History

Keith Cushman, Department of English

Maxine Grossman, Department of Religious Studies (on leave,

fall 2000)

Andreas Lixl, Department of German, Russian and Japanese Studies

I am an Austrian-American, born in Salzburg City in 1951. As an undergraduate I moved to the University of Wisconsin (USA) where I received my Baccalaureate degrees, and then a Ph.D. in modern German literature and culture in 1984. My research and teaching career began at Wabash College, Indiana, and continued at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro (UNCG). Here I received tenure, and later a promotion to Full Professor. Since 1999, I have been Head of the Department of German, Russian, and Japanese Studies. My teaching and research agenda at UNCG has focused on German literature and cultural history (Ernst Toller und die Weimarer Republik. Heidelberg, 1986), Jewish autobiographies (Women of Exile. New York, 1988. Erinnerungen deutsch-jüdischer Frauen. Leipzig, 1992), film and mass media, popular culture (Stimmen eines Jahrhunderts. Fort Worth, 1990. Rückblick: Bilder und Texte nach 1945. Boston, 1995) and web-based teaching technologies (German Studies Trails, www.uncg.edu/~lixlpurc/german.html).

My current research endeavor focuses on the ideological linkage between modernism and nationalism in the German speaking countries. In particular, the project, entitled  "German Modernism and the Colonial Ambition," traces the literary, cultural, and historical manifestations of German imperialism, racism, and colonialism from 1880-1920. (Postkoloniale Perspektiven, www.uncg.edu/ ~lixlpurc/PoKoWeb/index.htm). My research centers on archival resources from the Staatsbibliothek in Berlin, the Bundesarchiv in Koblenz, and libraries in Asia (Guam, Tsingtau, and Africa (Cameroon, Namibia, Tanzania, Togo).
 

Cheryl Logan, Departments of Psychology and Biology

I am working at the interface of the life sciences at the turn of the 20th century on the problem of how the breeding of 'standard' test animals for experiments on life influenced scientists' assumptions about the generality of their research findings. At the time, the life sciences were deeply influenced by social movements, and hierarchical views of diversity and sameness permeate both culture and science. Topics such as scientific racism and eugenics, the social uses of post-Darwinian ideas of evolution, the concepts of degeneracy and progress, and the mechanization of life, illustrate the interplay between science and culture. In both biology and psychology, developments in German-speaking life science greatly influenced America between 1880 and 1910, and I am also interested in cultural comparisons in the way science influenced and was influenced by views of sameness and diversity.

William Markham, Department of Sociology

I am interested in the German environmental movement, especially in the postwar period, and how it has been shaped by its cultural, economic and political context. I am especially interested in environmental organizations that are active on the national level and in comparisons between the goals and strategies of these organizations and comparable ones in the U.S.

Christian Moraru, Department of English

I hold a double-Ph.D. degree in English and Comparative Literature from Indiana U (1998). I teach and research modern and postmodern critical theory and American literature with emphasis on narrative and issues in contemporary criticism and theory (postmodernism, globalism, narrative theory, poststructuralism and cultural studies, and intertextuality conceived in both textual and contextual terms).
My 1990 book on mimetic ideologies in contemporary theory, POETICS OF REFLECTION, has been reprinted by SUNY Press in a collective anthology recently. My book titled REWRITING: POSTMODERN NARRATIVE AND CULTURAL CRITIQUE IN THE AGE OF CLONING is forthcoming from SUNY P. As a theorist and comparatist, I am also interested in the German, cultural-philosophical sources and contexts of contemporary issues in theory and criticism. I spent 3 semesters in Heidelberg, Germany, as a Humboltd Fellow, studying Nietzsche and his impact on contemporary theory. I teaches, whenever I can, post-romantic German literature, mainly narrative and expressionist poetry.

Ray Purdom, Teaching and Learning Center

Karl Schleunes, Department of History

Nancy Walker, School of Music