Graduate Program in German Studies

Core Faculty | Affiliated Faculty

German Studies faculty members have achieved distinction in such areas as medieval studies, reformation studies, the philosophical tradition from Kant to Heidegger, modern social and political history with a focus on Nazi German and genocide issues, music history of all periods, contemporary political parties and the welfare state, as well as the canonical premises and advanced expressions of literature and art.

CORE FACULTY

GERMANIC LANGUAGES AND LITERATURE

William Collins Donahue, Ph.D. (Harvard), Associate Professor of German. 19th- 20th-, and 21st-century German literature and culture, realism and modernism, German Holocaust literature and film. Author of The End of Modernism: Elias Canetti's Auto-da-Fe (2001). Publications include articles on Bernhard Schlink and the moral limits of Holocaust fiction, Droste-Hlshoff and religious anti-semitism, Jews and Jewish studies in Germany, German film, teaching the Holocaust. 660-3089; wcd2@duke.edu

Norman Keul, Ph.D. (University of California, Berkeley). Adjunct Assistant Professor of German. Associate Dean of Trinity College. Germanic philology and linguistics, history of the German language, ancient Germanic languages and literatures, including especially Old Norse, Middle High German, Norse saga literature, and the cultural history of the Vikings. 684-6217; nkeul@duke.edu

Michael Morton, Ph.D. (University of Virginia). Associate Professor of German. 18th- and early 19th-century German literature. Philosophy and intellectual history. Literary theory and criticism. Author of Herder and the Poetics of Thought: Unity and Diversity in "On Diligence in Several Learned Languages" (1989) and The Critical Turn: Studies in Kant, Herder, Wittgenstein, and Contemporary Theory (1993). Articles on Leibniz, Lessing, Herder, Lenz, Hoffmann, Hofmannsthal, Wittgenstein, Mauthner, Davidson, Rorty, early modern German literature ("Der Ackermann aus Böhmen"). 660-3169; mmorton@duke.edu

Thomas Pfau, Ph.D. (SUNY Buffalo). Eads Family Professor of English and Professor of German. British Romanticism; 19th-century German aesthetic theory and philosophy; literature and music; Thomas Mann. Book publications include Idealism and the Endgame of Theory: Three Essays by F. W. J. Schelling (1994), Wordsworth's Profession (Stanford UP, 1997), Lessons of Romanticism (Duke UP, 1998) co-edited with Robert F. Gleckner, Romantic Moods: Paranoia, Trauma, Melancholy, 1780-1840 (Johns Hopkins UP, 2005). 681-3098; pfau@duke.edu

Ann Marie Rasmussen, Ph.D. (Yale). Associate Professor of German. Medieval Studies. Gender Studies. Publications include Mothers and Daughters in Medieval German Literature (1997) and co-editor (with Anne L. Klinck) of Medieval Woman's Song: Cross-Cultural Approaches (2002). Articles on medieval German romance texts, Walther von der Vogelweide, medieval poetics and gender, Gottfried von Strassburg's Tristan, intellectual history, codicology, and eavesdropping in late medieval German texts. 660-3173; annmarie.rasmussen@duke.edu

James L. Rolleston, Ph.D. (Yale). Professor of German. Director of Graduate Studies. Modern German and comparative literature. Author of Rilke in Transition (1970), Kafka's Narrative Theater (1974), Narratives of Ecstasy (1987). Articles on Expressionism, Brecht, Benn, and modern poetry and poetics; on the faculty of the Graduate Program in Literature. 660-3162; jroll@duke.edu

Ingeborg Walther, Ph.D. (University of Michigan). Associate Professor of the Practice of German. Department Chair. Language Program Director. Second language acquisition theory and practice, contemporary German theater, and foreign language and critical pedagogy. Author of The Theater of Franz Xaver Kroetz (1990). Articles and book reviews on contemporary poetry, foreign language pedagogy, cultural literacy, curriculum development. 660-3163; waltheri@duke.edu