The Faculty A Tilo Alt Helga W Bessent Frank L Borchardt Lynn C Dowell Norman Keul Christa T Johns Peter McIsaac Michael M Morton Thomas Pfau Leland R Phelps Ann Marie Rasmussen James L Rolleston Ingeborg Walther Sheva C Zucker   Frank L Borchardt Professor Department Of Germanic Lang & Lit  116H Old Chemistry Box 90256, Durham, NC 27708  Phone: (919) 660-3161 Fax: (919) 660-3166 Email: frankbo@duke.edu Return to Top Lynn C Dowell Lecturer Department Of Germanic Lang & Lit 111A Old Chemistry Box 90256, Durham, NC 27708 Phone: (919) 660-3171 Fax: (919) 660-3166 Email: cary@acpub.duke.edu   Return to Top Christa T Johns Lecturer Department Of Germanic Lang & Lit 116F Old Chemistry Box 90256, Durham, NC 27708 Phone: (919) 684-2174; ( 919) 660-3172 Fax: (919) 660-3166; (919) 684-3083 Email: fapctj@sysa.adm.duke.edu   Return to Top Norman Keul Adjunct Assistant Professor Department Of Germanic Lang & Lit Director Pre-Major Advising Center Box 90697 Phone: (919) 684-6217; ( 919) 660-3160 Fax: (919) 660-3166; (919) 684-4515 Email: nkeul@pmac.duke.edu   Return to Top Peter M McIsaac Assistant Professor  Department Of Germanic Lang & Lit  116K Old Chemistry Box 90256, Durham, NC 27708 Phone: (919) 660-3170 Fax: (919) 660-3166 Email: mcisaac@duke.edu   Return to Top Michael M Morton Associate Professor Department Of Germanic Lang & Lit  116E Old Chemistry Box 90256, Durham, NC 27708 Phone: (919) 660-3169 Fax: (919) 660-3166 Email: mmorton@acpub.duke.edu   Return to Top Thomas Pfau Associate Professor Department of English Box 90015 Durham, NC 27708-00l5 Phone: (919) 681-3098 Email: tpfau@sprintmail.com   Return to Top Ann Marie Rasmussen Associate Professor Department Of Germanic Lang & Lit  116C Old Chemistry Box 90256, Durham, NC 27708 Phone: (919) 660-3173 Fax: (919) 660-3166 Email: amras@acpub.duke.edu   Return to Top James L Rolleston Professor Department Of Germanic Lang & Lit 116L Old Chemistry Box 90256, Durham, NC 27708 Phone: (919) 660-3162 Fax: (919) 660-3166 Email: jroll@acpub.duke.edu   Return to Top Ingeborg Walther Assistant Professor Director of Undergraduate Studies Director of Language Program Department Of Germanic Languages & Literature 116B Old Chemistry Box 90256 Durham, NC 27708 Phone: (919) 660-3163 Fax: (919) 660-3166 Email: waltheri@acpub.duke.edu Return to Top Sheva Zucker Lecturer Department Of Germanic Lang & Lit 116M Old Chemistry Box 90256, Durham, NC 27708 Phone: (919) 660-3160 Fax: (919) 660-3166 Email: sczucker@aol.com   Return to Top Emeriti   A Tilo Alt Professor Emeritus Department Of Germanic Lang & Lit 116K Old Chemistry Box 90256, Durham, NC 27708 Phone: (919) 660-3170 Fax: (919) 660-3166 Email: ata@acpub.duke.edu   Return to Top Helga W Bessent Assistant Professor Emeritus Department Of Germanic Lang & Lit 116A1 Old Chemistry Box 90256, Durham, NC 27708 Phone: (919) 660-3172 Fax: (919) 660-3166 Email: hwb@acpub.duke.edu   Return to Top Leland R. Phelps Professor Emeritus Department Of Germanic Lang & Lit 2701 Pickett Road Apt. 4036, Durham, NC 27705 Phone: (919) 489-8718 Fax: (919) 660-3166   Return to Top Visitors '99-'00 Werner Jung (Universität Duisburg) Visiting Professor Department Of Germanic Lang & Lit 116D Old Chemistry Box 90256, Durham, NC 27708 Phone: (919) 668-2670 Fax: (919) 660-3166 email: wnjung@acpub.duke.edu   Return to Top Sarah Westphal (McGill University) Visiting Associate Professor Department Of Germanic Lang & Lit 116B Old Chemistry Box 90256, Durham, NC 27708 Phone: (919) 660-3168 Fax: (919) 660-3166 email: swest@acpub.duke.edu   Return to Top Recent Visitors John B Lyon Visiting Assistant Professor Department Of Germanic Lang & Lit 116J Old Chemistry Box 90256, Durham, NC 27708 Phone: (919) 660-3168 Fax: (919) 660-3166   Return to Top Wu Jianguo Visiting Scholar Department Of Germanic Lang & Lit 116H Old Chemistry Box 90256, Durham, NC 27708 Phone: (919) 660-3161 Fax: (919) 660-3166   Return to Top Return to German Homepage

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Christa Johns

holds a Ph.D. from the Free University of Berlin in Early Modern German History. Her dissertation on Luthers Konzilsidee was published in 1965 by Walter de Gruyter Press, Berlin. In 1965 she emigrated to the United States where she taught German language and literature at MIT until 1968. While serving as Research Assistant in the Department of History and as an Extra Mural Tutor in German at the University of Zambia from 1968-1970 and again from 1974-1975, she translated Emil Holub's Travels North of the Zambesi, 1885-1886 into English published by Manchester University Press in 1975. From 1972 to 1974, she was a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of Religion at Duke University and a Research Fellow at the Institute of Late Medieval and Reform ation Studies at the University of Tübingen. From 1976 to 1982, she served as Editorial Secretary for an Encyclopedia of the Middle Ages, Renaissance and Reformation at E. J. Brill publishers in Leiden, Holland. Since 1993 she has been a lecturer in the German Department at Duke University. Courses taught include German language and conversation on various levels and a course on Resistance to Authority from Luther to Hitler. From 1984 to 1992, she simultaneously served as Associate Director of the Duke University Summer Session and since 1994 she holds the position as Director of the Duke Office of Foreign Academic Programs and as Assistant Dean for Study Abroad.

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Thomas Pfau

(Comparative Literature, Ph.D., SUNY Buffalo 1989) is currently Associate Professor of English and German. His princpal areas of expertise are British Romanticism and Nineteenth-Century German Aesthetic Theory and Philosophy. Publi cations include Idealism and the Endgame of Theory: Three Essays by F. W. J. Schelling (1994), Wordsworth's Profession (1997), and Lessons of Romanticism(Durham, 1998) which he co-edited with Robert F. Gleckner. He is curre ntly working on a book that takes up the relation between aesthetic form and interiority in nineteenth-century German and English poetry and theory. He is also serving a three-year term as a member on the advisory board of the North American Society for the Study of Romanticism. In 1994 he co-organized an interdisciplinary conference on "The Political and Aesthetic Education of Romanticism" at Duke University. Beginning in the Spring of 1999, he will serve as Director of Graduate Studies in G erman. Further information.

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Anne-Marie Rasmussen

Associate Professor and Acting Chair of the German Department for 1998-99, is a medievalist. This means that she has a solid background in the history of the German language; reading knowledge of German dialects as they were recorded between ca. 800 and 1 500; a good understanding of the changing economic, political and social structures of the medieval world (and it isn't what Hollywood shows you, for sure!); an often bewildered yet fascinated, slowly evolving understanding of the texts and institutions o f medieval religiosity; great sympathy for historians, folklorists, and anthropologists; and a passion for medieval literature. Oh yes, she also possesses a reading knowledge of Latin (but you knew that already) and is conversant in a number of modern th eoretical registers. Pursuing these anachronistic skills and interests took Prof. Rasmussen from Oregon to Denmark and back, then to Yale University, where she earned her PhD, to the University of Berne in Switzerland, where she worked as an Assistentin, and finally to Duke in 1988, where she found a wonderful community of time- and culture-wanderers in the Medieval and Renaissance Studies Program. That a large percentage of these colleagues are left-handed like herself is a mystery she cannot explain. Pr ofessor Rasmussen actually enjoys research and writing. She has published a book on mothers and daughters in medieval German literature (Syracuse University Press, 1997), lots of articles, and is currently tending projects on medieval women's song, on the evolution of a discourse on women's secrets in the late Middle Ages, and on fifteenth century German literature. All of these interests figure in some way in her teaching, which she also enjoys.

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Ingeborg Walther

Professor Walther received her Ph.D from the University of Michigan in 1987. She holds an A.B. from Stanford University, and has also studied at the Universities of Vienna and Tübingen. After teaching German at the Defense Language Institute, and at the Foreign Language Training Center Europe, where she chaired the German Department, she joined the faculty of Duke University in 1994. As the Language Program Director of the German Department, she coordinates all undergraduate language courses, and pr epares graduate students to teach. She is currently serving as Director of Undergraduate Studies. Her research interests include 20th century German theater, foreign language pedagogy and second language acquisition, languages across the curriculum, and t he teaching of culture. She has given numerous workshops and papers on teaching language and culture, and her book, "The Theater of Franz Xaver Kroetz," was published in 1990. An accomplished pianist, she enjoys playing chamber music and accompa nying "Lieder." For her presentation on "Articulating the German Language Curriculum," click here.

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Frank L. Borchardt

Professor Borchardt received his Ph.D. from the Johns Hopkins University in 1965. He was otherwise educated by the Jesuits (Saint Peter's College, Regis HS), the Dominicans, and the Brothers of the Christian Schools (FSC). His career took him from Hopkins to Northwestern University, Queens College of the City University of New York, and finally to Duke. He has dual interests, (1) Early Modern German Culture and (2) Technology; he has published widely in both areas. Press here to see a comprehensive Curriculum Vitae, and here for a history of the language projects at Duke, and here for a practical application of artificial neural networks to a problem in language analysis. For a glance at an open agenda for computer based instruction and testing, press here. Interest in Professor Borchardt's research around the world has provided him the opportunity for irregular visits to Argentina, Austria, Belgium, China, England, Germany, Hungary, Japan, the Netherlands, and Spain to consult with like-minded visionaries. He often teaches German cultural topics to seniors (in the other sense) at Duke's Institute for Learning in Retirement (DILR) and taught an HTML tutorial there in May 1999. He conducts a FOCUS course on Educational Technologies (Fall 1998) -- (Fall 2000). He has also been a Faculty Associate, most recently for Blackwell. He regularly teaches the undergraduate courses in Rilke - Kafka - Mann and "Märchen", and will be teaching German Drama and Goethe's Faust in Fall 2001. If you have time, check out his personal website, which has links to his on-line writings.

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Sheva C. Zucker

holds an M.A. in Yiddish Language, Literature and Folklore from Columbia University, and a Ph.D in Comparative Literature with a specialty in Yiddish literature from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. She has taught and lectured on Y iddish culture and Jewish literature on four continents, and at major universities including Columbia, Bar-Ilan, and Russian State Humanities University. Courses taught include all levels of Yiddish, Literature of the Holocaust, The Modern Jewish Experi ence in Literature, God and Jewish Literature, and Women in Jewish Literature. Outside the university she teaches Modern and Biblical Hebrew. Since writing her dissertation, "The Rise of the Modern Woman in Yiddish and Western Literature" she has continued to focus on women and has published a number of articles on Yiddish women writers and images of women in Yiddish literature. She is working on an anthology of autobiographical writings of Yiddish women writers. At present, she is very much involved in developing materials for the teaching of Yiddish and has published a textbook, Yiddish: An Introduction to the Language, Literature & Culture, Vol. I accompanied by comprehensive audio-tapes. She is currently preparing a CD-Rom based on Volume I, as well as Volume II of the textbook and tapes, and an audio-recording of Yiddish writers reading from their works.

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James L. Rolleston

received his B.A. from Cambridge, England, his M.A. from the University of Minnesota and his Ph.D. from Yale (1968). At Duke he was the first director of the Literature Program (1983-85) and has been chair of the German Department since 1991. He has written books on Rilke (1970), Kafka (1974, 1976) and Romantic theory in modern German poetry (1987). Most recently he edited a volume surveying contemporary German poetry (1997) and translated an intellectual biography of Walter Benjamin, winning the Li terary Translation Prize from the American Translators Association (1993). He serves on the editorial board of German Quarterly and is 1998 President of the South Atlantic Modern Language Association. Professor Rolleston teaches a wide range of courses in German Studies, particularly Romantic writing in its many forms, fiction, poetry, theories of history and irony and, with colleagues from the German Studies Program working in other departments, a Senior Seminar on the core issues of German Studies (cult ural identity, historical memory, social-political ideologies). He also teaches an interdisciplinary course on Expressionism, focussing on art as well as literature; and a survey of the tradition of "imagining Society" to the present day.

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Peter M. McIsaac

(Germanic Languages and Literatures, Ph.D., Harvard 1996), is Assistant Professor of German. He specializes in 19th and 20th century German literature and cultural studies; the history of the museum; gender theory; and the American reception of Germa n culture. His publications include the Fall 1995 issue of German Politics and Society entitled "Germany in the American Mind: The Postwar Reception of German Culture" and "Exhibiting Ottilie: Collecting as a Disciplinary Regi me in Goethe's Wahlverwandtschaften" (1997). He is completing a book manuscript on the literary and cultural discourses that accompanied the invention of the public art museum in 19th century Germany. Other projects include the impact of Fluxu s' and Joseph Beuys' respective rejections of the high modern museum, and an examination of the use of "scholarly" anthropological collections to legitimize the displays of Native Americans, Africans and Pacific Islanders in "villages" built in German zoos in the late 19th century (Völkerschauen), the latter of which is part of a larger study on the role of museums and exhibitions in forming German national identity after unification in 1871.

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Werner Jung

Ph.D.(Universität Aachen, 1985), Habilitation (Universität Bremen, 1994), Prof. of German Literature in Duisburg (18.-20. century). Special interests: poetics and aesthetics, literary theory and criticism, post-war German literature. Latest books: Schauderhaft Banales. Über Literatur und Alltag (1994); Von der Mimesis zur Simulation. Geschichte der Aesthetik (1995); Kleine Geschichte der Poetik (1997); Im Dunkel des gelebten Augenblicks. Der Erzähler, Medienautor und Essayist Diete r Wellershoff (2000); editor of the Yearbook of the International Georg-Lukacs-Society (Bern, Lang, 1997ff.). 668-2670; wnjung@duke.edu

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Norman Keul

(Germanic Languages and Literatures, Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley), Germanic Philology and Linguistics. History of the German language, ancient Germanic languages and literatures, including especially Old Norse (the language of the Vikin gs), Middle High German, Norse saga literature, and the cultural history of the Vikings.

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Sarah Westphal

(Germanic Languages and Literatures, Ph.D., Yale), Fields include medieval literature, history of the book, law and contemporary literature by women, feminist theory. Author of "Textual Poetics of German Manuscripts 1300-1500" (1993). Most recent articles concern the sorcery of cursing in medieval literature, and women’s stories and legal change. Current research involves reconstructing literary patronage and book collecting by women in the Early Modern period. Working on translation of la te medieval German literary texts (with Prof. Rasmussen) for North American readers.

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