Teaching
I have taught a wide range of German courses, from the first semester to graduate seminars, and I have taught in a wide range of settings, from small liberal arts colleges to large public universities, teaching both on campus in the US and on-site in study abroad programs in Germany. Through this experience, I have seen that the most successful programs are those that teach literature and culture from the beginning and language to the end. The programs that do this best are ones in which faculty teach at all levels of the curriculum, and I am commmitted to making this model possible not only in small colleges and universities, but also in larger universities with graduate programs. As graduate advisor in German studies at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, I am working to reshape the program in this way, both so that faculty are able to teach across the curriculum, and so that gradute students have a wider variety of teaching opportunities.
Courses I have particulary enjoyed teaching include: an upper division course called "Who owns the German language?" on language, community, and identity in German; a graduate seminar on vocal music in German culture; upper division courses on German conceptions of nature from romanticism to the present, which I have taught both in German and in English; and introductory classes (there is nothing comparable to the feeling of student success after the first day of 101!) During my time as doctoral student at Vanderbilt, I team taught a course on post-war short fiction with second-Language literacy expert Per Urlaub, an experience that was formative for my later teaching.
My teaching has been recognized by a number of awards, including a 2016 HASTAC scholarship to lead a working group on ecocritical digital humanities at the Vanderbilt Digital Humanities Center, the 2015 Philip Rhein Award for Graduate Teaching Excellence in the Vanderbilt German Department, and an English Teaching Assistantship through the Austrian Fulbright Commission to spend two years teaching English in Austrian high schools.