People

Sessional Lecturer Contact info rachel.seelig@utoronto.ca Office Hours tba Classes 2021-22 GER367HF Topics in Modern Yiddish/German Literature and Culture Background Rachel Seelig’s research focuses on migration, multilingualism, and cross-cultural exchange in German-Jewish, Yiddish and Hebrew literatures. She is the author of  Strangers in Berlin: Modern Jewish Literature between East and West, 1919–1933 (University of Michigan Press, 2016) and the co-editor, with Amir Eshel, of The German-Hebrew Dialogue: Studies of Encounter and Exchange (De Gruyter Press, 2017).  Rachel received her B.A. in Comparative Literature from Stanford University and her M.A. and Ph.D. in Jewish Studies from the University of Chicago. She has held research and teaching appointments at Harvard University, Columbia University, the University of Michigan, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and the University of Toronto. Read More »

Al and Malka Green Professor of Yiddish and Diaspora Studies Contact info anna.shternshis@utoronto.ca Office Anne Tanenbaum CJS Jackman Humanities Building Room 218, 170 St. George Street Toronto, ON, M5R 2M8 Phone (416) 978 8131 Secretary: 416-926-2324 Office Hours On leave fall 2021 Classes 2021-2022 On leave fall 2021 Background Anna Shternshis holds the position of Al and Malka Green Professor of Yiddish studies and the director of the Anne Tanenbaum Centre for Jewish Studies at the University of Toronto. She received her doctoral degree (D.Phil) in Modern Languages and Literatures from Oxford University in 2001. Shternshis is the author of Soviet and Kosher: Jewish Popular Culture in the Soviet Union, 1923 - 1939 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006) and When Sonia Met Boris: An Oral History of Jewish Life under Stalin (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017). She is the co-editor-in-chief of East European Jewish Affairs. Shternshis created and directed the Grammy-nominated Yiddish Glory project, together with an artist Psoy Korolenko, the initiative that brought back to life the forgotten Yiddish music written during the Holocaust in the Soviet Union. She lectures widely around the world and is a frequent guest on radio and TV shows worldwide (CBC, NPR, BBC, ... Read More »

Chair [on leave Fall 2022] & Associate Professor of German Contact info stefan.soldovieri@utoronto.ca St. George Campus Office University of Toronto Odette Hall 320 50 St. Joseph Street Toronto, ON M5S 3L5 Phone: 416-926-2323 Secretary: 416-926-2324 Office Hours tba Classes 2022-2023 On leave Fall 2022 Background Ph.D. University of Wisconsin-Madison BA Duke University Freie Universität Berlin Universität Freiburg Teaching Interests German Cinema and Cinema Studies, 20th-21st Century German Literature and Cultural Studies, Cold War Culture, Popular Culture, The Future, Tactical German Studies Research Interests Remaking the Movies in German Cinemas: Art, Industry, Globalization The project opens up a new perspective on German cinema, examining the largely unappreciated role of the remake in the history of German cinemas from the beginnings of the medium in the mid-1890s to our multi-media and global present. Considering German reprises of domestic and international precursors, foreign reworkings of German classics, and concept films that self-consciously reflect on the idea of remaking itself, I explore the different modes of remaking as historically shifting and multivalent forms of cultural recycling. The remake phenomenon highlights the tensions between art and industry that are frequently ignored in German film studies. The project’s attention to the frequently transnational valence of the ... Read More »

Principal, University College (on leave 2024-25) Professor of German and Medieval Studies 2024-25 Senior Research Fellow, Humboldt Centre, University of Bayreuth Contact info markus.stock@utoronto.ca Office University College 15 King’s College Circle, Room 165 Toronto, ON M5S 3H7 CANADA Tel. 416-978-7516 Office Hours By appointment: Please contact markus.stock@utoronto.ca Classes 2024-25 Professor Stock is on a planned administrative leave to conduct research. Background Dr. phil. University of Göttingen, 2000 Markus Stock teaches German languages, literatures, and cultures of the Middle Ages. He is cross-appointed to the Centre for Medieval Studies, where he teaches courses on medieval German romance and heroic epic, philological methodologies, and Old Saxon. Markus Stock supervises MA and PhD students specializing in medieval and early modern (pre-1600) German literature and culture. He currently accepts supervisions of individuals who wish to specialize in these areas in the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures or the Centre for Medieval Studies. Potential applicants are invited to send informal email inquiries to him. Markus Stock’s research and his teaching are situated in medieval German literatures, manuscript studies, and digital philology. He directs the international research project Medieval Undergrounds: A Cultural History of Extraction, funded by SSHRC. He has authored, edited, or co-edited over ... Read More »

Professor of German and Comparative Literature Contact info john.zilcosky@utoronto.ca Office University of Toronto Odette Hall 303 50 St. Joseph Street Toronto, ON M5S 3L5 Secretary: 416-926-2324 Office Hours Wednesdays, 5-6 pm (Northrop Frye Hall 214) Classes 2024-2025 Fall term: GER210HF Poets and Power: Art, Media and the Nazis COL5154HF Searching for Sebald: Fiction, Exile, and the Natural History of Destruction Spring term: GER1661HS Modernism in Context COL5125HS Literature, Trauma, Modernity   Background John Zilcosky is Professor of German and Comparative Literature at the University of Toronto, where he writes about modern European literature, psychoanalysis, the art of travel, and the history of sports. His books include Kafka’s Travels (MLA Scaglione Prize winner for best book in German Studies), Writing Travel, Uncanny Encounters, The Allure of Sports, The Language of Trauma, and Alternative Temporalities. The Times Literary Supplement and the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung have reviewed his work. The Humboldt Foundation, the US National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council have granted fellowships to him, and he is honorary president of the International Comparative Literature Association’s Research Committee on Literary Theory. The German government awarded him the Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel Prize for outstanding achievements in ... Read More »

Sessional Lecturer Contact alma.botcharova@utoronto.ca Office Hours Mon & Wed 1-2 and by appointment Read More »

Course Instructor Background My name is Lisa Lackner and I am a Ph.D. Candidate in the Languages and Literacies program (LLE) at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE). My research focuses on language policy, second language learning and plurilingualism. In my work, I am also engaging with theoretical perspectives that bring together language and race. I was awarded the Connaught International Scholarship in 2020 and the Mary H. Beatty Fellowship for the academic year of 2022/23. Before my studies at the University of Toronto, I spent many years working as a middle school teacher. To better understand my practice and experience as a teacher at school, I began studying German as a second/foreign language at the University of Vienna. For my MA thesis, I investigated teachers’ perspectives on second language policy, and I received my MA degree from the University of Vienna in 2018. In the classroom, I am striving to provide an engaging and supportive environment for students. Embracing the complex and dynamic characteristics of language not only shapes my own understanding of language teaching but also my lesson planning. When I am not in the classroom teaching or researching, I enjoy reading, yoga and excellent (Viennese!) ... Read More »

Course Instructor Contact anne.popovich@mail.utoronto.ca Office Hours Mon & Wed 5:30-6 and 8 -8:30 p.m. or by appointment Classes 2021-22 GER300Y1 (L5101), Mon & Wed 6-8 Read More »

Course Instructor Faculty of Arts & Science Postdoctoral Fellow in the Centre for Medieval Studies Contact landon.reitz@utoronto.ca Office Hours Tue. and Thurs. 1-2 in Lillian Massey Building, 314A Classes 2024-25 GER 100 Introduction to German GER 300 Intermediate German II Background Ph.D. University of California, Berkeley MA University of California, Berkeley BA University of Pennsylvania Research Interests Looking Up from the Page: Imaginative Medieval Reading Practices This project examines the historical role of the fictional reader in the hermeneutic, media-technological, and aesthetic developments of medieval German literature. I analyze scenes of reading and other representations of reading within medieval texts to examine this evolving cultural practice during the technological, cultural, scientific, and religious transformations of the European Middle Ages. Amid the digitalization of our modern reading practices and reading cultures, my research into the literary representations of reading demonstrates how, historically, reading practices, developments in media and technology, and imaginative literature have shaped the practice of reading as well as its function in society. The Futures of the Medieval World This transdisciplinary project explores the cultural practices of the European Middle Ages that engaged and engendered conceptions of the future. It investigates medieval means for gathering knowledge about the future, ... Read More »

Course Instructor Contact felix.roessler@mail.utoronto.ca Office Hours tba Classes 2021-22 tba Read More »