Department of Germanic Languages & Literatures University of Toronto
by Walker Horsfall
I began teaching at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in Fall 2022 as a Lecturer, then secured an appointed an Assistant Professor the following year. I am currently working on a monograph that examines the many and creative ways in which science and natural philosophy, especially astronomy, geology, and medicine, informed the form, content, and function of Middle High German religious and narrative poetry. At Illinois, I have had fortunate occasion to offer several courses on medieval topics, including on Norse mythology, the Icelandic saga tradition, and the history of sexuality in premodern literature. But I have also had the lovely opportunity to teach our modern German language courses, for which I am empowered by and grateful to experience gained teaching for the German department at UofT.
In fact, I have found much in common between the German departments at Illinois and Toronto. For example, this past February, our department, together with the Initiative in Holocaust, Genocide, and Memory Studies at the University of Illinois, hosted a book launch and discussion for my colleague Anke Pinkert’s new publication, Remembering 1989: Future Archives of Public Protest. Earlier that particular morning, I happened to have had a meeting that ran late, so late, I arrived about five minutes late. The conference room was packed to the gills, even overflowing, spilling into the office reception area such that another colleague and I had to park our chairs outside the door and cock one ear through the threshold to hear the lively debate on the criteria for who might claim ownership over revolution. In the spirit of Memory Studies, I recalled German department events at U of T, where I would squeeze into the overstuffed Departmental Library for guest lectures on medieval German narratology and meta-textual techniques, begging pardon from people I had never seen before, but would sometimes see again. I thought and still think it a grand reminder to not underestimate the broad and remarkable appeal which German Studies can generate. Whatever number of people we hope will show up, we might get double that figure.
