Participant Bios
Nicola Behrmann, PhD, Assistant Professor in the Department of Germanic, Russian, and East European Languages and Literatures at Rutgers University; co-editor of the award-winning book Emmy Hennings Dada (Zürich: Scheidegger & Spiess, 2015) and of an annotated study edition of Emmy Hennings’s prose work and letters (Göttingen Wallstein, 2016 and 2017); author of numerous articles on 19th and 20th century prose and literary theory, and of the book Geburt der Avantgarde: Emmy Hennings (Göttingen: Wallstein, forthcoming fall 2017).
Daniel Bowles is an assistant professor of German Studies at Boston College, where he researches and teaches twentieth-century and contemporary German literature, culture, and history. His first book, The Ends of Satire: Legacies of Satire in Postwar German Writing, appeared in 2015 with Walter de Gruyter and treats satire as an inherently intertextual mode of writing and reading. His publications also include translations of novels by Thomas Meinecke and Christian Kracht and short texts by Alexander Kluge, Rainald Goetz, and Xaver Bayer. For his translation of Christian Kracht’s Imperium, Bowles received the 2016 Helen and Kurt Wolff Translator’s Prize.
Claudia Breger is currently Professor of Germanic Studies and affiliated with Cinema and Media Studies and Gender Studies at Indiana University, Bloomington; she will join Columbia University in July 2017 as Professor of Germanic Languages. Her research and teaching focus on twentieth- and twenty-first century culture, with emphases on film, performance, literature, and literary and cultural theory, as well as the intersections of gender, sexuality and race. Book publications include An Aesthetics of Narrative Performance: Transnational Film, Literature and Theater in Contemporary Germany. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2012; Nach dem Sex? Sexualwissenschaft und Affect Studies. Hirschfeld-Lectures. Göttingen: Wallstein, 2014. She is currently working on a book manuscript tentatively entitled Making Worlds: Affect and Collectivity in Contemporary European Cinema. A forthcoming article publication, “Affects in Configuration: A New Approach to Narrative Worldmaking.” Narrative 25.1 (May 2017), develops some of the theoretical framework for this book (relevant also to the intertextuality topic) for the medium of literature.
Jessica Fletcher received her MA in Film Studies from Columbia University, writing a thesis on the politics of contemporary moving image exhibition in the work of Hito Steyerl and Omer Fast. Currently she is a first year Art History PhD student at the Graduate Center, working on film and performance after 1960, focusing particularly on clubs in New York in the 1970s and 1980s. Since moving to New York Jessica has also worked at the curatorial departments of MoMA and the Whitney, as well as Artists Space.
Alwin Franke is a doctoral student in the Department of Germanic Languages, and his work centers on the narration of subjectivity in literary modernism against the background of the emerging concept milieu across biology, sociology, and literary theory. In addition to his academic work, Alwin has worked as guest editor and translator, and as an assistant to filmmaker Hito Steyerl.
Christian Kracht is a Swiss novelist whose books have been translated into twenty-seven languages. His previous novels include Faserland, 1979, and I Will Be Here in Sunshine and in Shadow. His novel Imperium was the recipient of the Wilhelm Raabe literature prize and one of Publishers Weekly’s ten best books of 2015. His most recent novel Die Toten was published in 2016 and recently won the Swiss National Book Award and the Herman Hesse Award. The English translation The Dead, translated by Daniel Bowles, will be published later this year with Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Christian lives in Los Angeles.
David Hock is a PhD. candidate in Slavic Languages and Literatures at Princeton University. His dissertation is focused on the transformation of the lyric voice in contemporary Russian poetry. Although his German is, regrettably, terrible, he participates annually in a joint research project funded by the DFG and the University of Trier that brings together German and Russian critics, poets, and scholars around the issue of lyric in its most contemporary permutations. His most recently published work has been focused on the poets Kirill Medvedev and Nika Skandiaka.
Xan Holt is a fourth year doctoral candidate in Columbia’s Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures. His research examines the influence of political topographies on literary form, specifically the impact of Cold War delineations of influence on German and Polish border-crossing narratives.
Christina Mandt is Visiting Assistant Professor of German at Williams College. She received her Ph.D. in German Literature and a graduate certificate in Gender Studies from Rutgers University. She also holds a joint B.A. and Master’s degree in Media Studies, German, and Psychology from the University of Cologne. Christina Mandt pursues interdisciplinary work at the crossroads of visual, textual, and digital studies. Further research interests range from Baroque emblematics to the films of David Lynch. Publications include an essay on digitization in David Lynch’s film Inland Empire, and an article on emblematics and mourning in the film Germany in Autumn.
Mie Mortensen has studied Russian language and culture in Denmark, Russia and the United Kingdom. She is currently a fourth year doctoral candidate in Columbia’s Department of Slavic Languages and Literature where she teaches Russian language and émigré culture. Her research interests span across many aspects of twentieth century Russian culture, but her most recent project investigates the intersection between architectural trends and literary production in the Russian and Soviet avant-garde movements.
Evan Parks is a third year graduate student in the department of Germanic Languages at Columbia University. His interests include modern German literature and culture, German-Jewish intellectual history, and the relationship between literature and philosophy. He is currently working on a project about the philosophical reception of Paul Celan.
Ying Pek is a doctoral candidate at Princeton University’s Department of Art and Archaeology. She is currently researching a dissertation on the work of Hito Steyerl in the context of postwar German art and cinema. This year, she is a Helena Rubinstein Critical Studies Fellow at the Whitney Museum of American Art Independent Study Program.
Sophie Schweiger is a third year doctoral student in the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures at Columbia University. Her interest in theatre ranges from early German bourgeois tragedy to the post-dramatic format in the work of contemporary writers and performance artists.
Daniel Bowles is an assistant professor of German Studies at Boston College, where he researches and teaches twentieth-century and contemporary German literature, culture, and history. His first book, The Ends of Satire: Legacies of Satire in Postwar German Writing, appeared in 2015 with Walter de Gruyter and treats satire as an inherently intertextual mode of writing and reading. His publications also include translations of novels by Thomas Meinecke and Christian Kracht and short texts by Alexander Kluge, Rainald Goetz, and Xaver Bayer. For his translation of Christian Kracht’s Imperium, Bowles received the 2016 Helen and Kurt Wolff Translator’s Prize.
Claudia Breger is currently Professor of Germanic Studies and affiliated with Cinema and Media Studies and Gender Studies at Indiana University, Bloomington; she will join Columbia University in July 2017 as Professor of Germanic Languages. Her research and teaching focus on twentieth- and twenty-first century culture, with emphases on film, performance, literature, and literary and cultural theory, as well as the intersections of gender, sexuality and race. Book publications include An Aesthetics of Narrative Performance: Transnational Film, Literature and Theater in Contemporary Germany. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2012; Nach dem Sex? Sexualwissenschaft und Affect Studies. Hirschfeld-Lectures. Göttingen: Wallstein, 2014. She is currently working on a book manuscript tentatively entitled Making Worlds: Affect and Collectivity in Contemporary European Cinema. A forthcoming article publication, “Affects in Configuration: A New Approach to Narrative Worldmaking.” Narrative 25.1 (May 2017), develops some of the theoretical framework for this book (relevant also to the intertextuality topic) for the medium of literature.
Jessica Fletcher received her MA in Film Studies from Columbia University, writing a thesis on the politics of contemporary moving image exhibition in the work of Hito Steyerl and Omer Fast. Currently she is a first year Art History PhD student at the Graduate Center, working on film and performance after 1960, focusing particularly on clubs in New York in the 1970s and 1980s. Since moving to New York Jessica has also worked at the curatorial departments of MoMA and the Whitney, as well as Artists Space.
Alwin Franke is a doctoral student in the Department of Germanic Languages, and his work centers on the narration of subjectivity in literary modernism against the background of the emerging concept milieu across biology, sociology, and literary theory. In addition to his academic work, Alwin has worked as guest editor and translator, and as an assistant to filmmaker Hito Steyerl.
Christian Kracht is a Swiss novelist whose books have been translated into twenty-seven languages. His previous novels include Faserland, 1979, and I Will Be Here in Sunshine and in Shadow. His novel Imperium was the recipient of the Wilhelm Raabe literature prize and one of Publishers Weekly’s ten best books of 2015. His most recent novel Die Toten was published in 2016 and recently won the Swiss National Book Award and the Herman Hesse Award. The English translation The Dead, translated by Daniel Bowles, will be published later this year with Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Christian lives in Los Angeles.
David Hock is a PhD. candidate in Slavic Languages and Literatures at Princeton University. His dissertation is focused on the transformation of the lyric voice in contemporary Russian poetry. Although his German is, regrettably, terrible, he participates annually in a joint research project funded by the DFG and the University of Trier that brings together German and Russian critics, poets, and scholars around the issue of lyric in its most contemporary permutations. His most recently published work has been focused on the poets Kirill Medvedev and Nika Skandiaka.
Xan Holt is a fourth year doctoral candidate in Columbia’s Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures. His research examines the influence of political topographies on literary form, specifically the impact of Cold War delineations of influence on German and Polish border-crossing narratives.
Christina Mandt is Visiting Assistant Professor of German at Williams College. She received her Ph.D. in German Literature and a graduate certificate in Gender Studies from Rutgers University. She also holds a joint B.A. and Master’s degree in Media Studies, German, and Psychology from the University of Cologne. Christina Mandt pursues interdisciplinary work at the crossroads of visual, textual, and digital studies. Further research interests range from Baroque emblematics to the films of David Lynch. Publications include an essay on digitization in David Lynch’s film Inland Empire, and an article on emblematics and mourning in the film Germany in Autumn.
Mie Mortensen has studied Russian language and culture in Denmark, Russia and the United Kingdom. She is currently a fourth year doctoral candidate in Columbia’s Department of Slavic Languages and Literature where she teaches Russian language and émigré culture. Her research interests span across many aspects of twentieth century Russian culture, but her most recent project investigates the intersection between architectural trends and literary production in the Russian and Soviet avant-garde movements.
Evan Parks is a third year graduate student in the department of Germanic Languages at Columbia University. His interests include modern German literature and culture, German-Jewish intellectual history, and the relationship between literature and philosophy. He is currently working on a project about the philosophical reception of Paul Celan.
Ying Pek is a doctoral candidate at Princeton University’s Department of Art and Archaeology. She is currently researching a dissertation on the work of Hito Steyerl in the context of postwar German art and cinema. This year, she is a Helena Rubinstein Critical Studies Fellow at the Whitney Museum of American Art Independent Study Program.
Sophie Schweiger is a third year doctoral student in the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures at Columbia University. Her interest in theatre ranges from early German bourgeois tragedy to the post-dramatic format in the work of contemporary writers and performance artists.