Teaching
When you come to study German at Birkbeck, you will encounter me in your first year, either in Cultural Perspectives, an introduction to the ways in which different cultural media have responded to some of the most significant events in German history, or in Understanding Culture: Theories and Texts. This lecture introduces you to a variety of theoretical perspectives, critical practices and terms helpful for the interpretation of cultural artefact, with a particular focus on literature and film. Our standard learning format is the lecture and the seminar: while lectures have usually bigger groups I aim to engage you in class discussion and short group work, just like in seminars. I work with Moodle, our virtual learning environment, to provide you with texts, handouts, presentations and images used in class so that you do not have to spend your time during seminars or lectures taking notes from the whiteboard.
On the BA, I also teach a variety of other team-taught modules which do not necessarily run every year, apart from German Language V which is always on offer.
At graduate level, I’m the Programme Director of the MA Comparative Literature, and I also teach option modules on the MA Modern Languages, MA Museum Cultures and MA Romantic Studies, for example, The Uncanny, in which we explore theories and aesthetic representations of the uncanny, especially in regard to the lively cultural exchange between Britain, Germany and France during the Romantic period.
I welcome PhD/MPhil/MA/MRes proposals relating to German literature of the 19th century, especially the gothic, the uncanny and the fantastic, to Early German film, the cultural history of the museum and its role as memory medium, cultural memory and practices of remembrance. I am currently supervising three research students working on Museum and Community, Remembrance and Reconciliation after Algerian Independence and The Politics of Memory: Unmade Holocaust memorials.
BA modules
- Understanding Culture: Theories and Texts (team-taught)
- Myth, Folk and Fairy Tale (team-taught)
- Film and Politics (team-taught)
- Introduction to Arts (team-taught)
- German Language V
- Cultural Perspectives on German History
- Sexuality and Modernity: Reading Across Cultures
MA modules
- Option: Exhibiting the Pain of Others: Museums, Violence and Memory
- Option: The City in German Literature and Film (team taught)
- Option: Nostalgia in the Museum Landscape (team taught)
- Option: The Uncanny
- MA Core Course Museum Cultures (team-taught)
- MA Core Course Aesthetics in Kinship and Community (team taught)
- Reading Across Cultures
- Research Skills
