Faculty with Related Interest in German

When pursuing an undergraduate or M.A. degree in German studies, students are encouraged to take advantage of the interdisciplinary orientation of the program. At San Francisco State University, students can expand on their interest of study by taking classes with faculty, who have a direct or indirect interest in German.

The following list is by no means comprehensive:

Dr. Arthur Chandler, (Ph.D. University of Illinois, 1973), Department of Humanities. His teaching and research interest are centered around digital culture and design- the social, philosophical, and aesthetic dimensions of internet culture, the cultural histories of San Francisco, Paris, and Vienna, International Expositions (world's fairs), the literature, art, music, and dance of Western culture. Email: arthurc@sfsu.edu

Dr. Sandra Luft, (Ph.D. in History of Ideas, Brandeis University, 1962), Department of Humanities. Her teaching and research interest's center on the modern European (sixteenth to twentieth centuries) history of ideas, with an emphasis on the theoretical and methodological assumptions of the interdisciplinary study of cultural history. Recently she has focused on contemporary post modern literature, particularly the works of Nietzsche, Heidegger, Derrida, and Foucault. This literature is part of what is called the "linguistic" turn in humanist studies. Critical of the belief in rational thought to achieve "truth" or systemic "knowledge" of the human (or natural) world, it explores the constructive "poetic" power of language in human "sense-making." She brings to bear this critical perspective in the various classes she teaches in the department. Email: srluft@sfsu.edu

Dr. Dane Johnson, (Ph.D. in English and Comparative Literature, Stanford University, 1994), Department of Comparative and World Literature. Dane Johnson specializes in twentieth-century literatures of Latin America and the United States and in literary and critical theory more generally. Kantian and post-Kantian perspectives are central to his teaching and scholarship on theories of literary value. He is also in the very early stages of two comparative projects that involve German materials: censorship of literary fiction in Spain under Franco and in the former East Germany; the criss-crossing of regional, racial, ethnic, and national identities in the US and Germany over the past twenty years or so (especially but not exclusively in prose fiction). Email: danej@sfsu.edu. For additional information see his website at: http://www.sfsu.edu/~wclit/dane.htm

Dr. Kitty Millet, (Ph. D. in Cultural Studies and Comparative Literature, University of Minnesota, 1995), Department of Comparative and World Literature. Her teaching and research interest include, Holocaust & Literature, Comparative Literature in the Age of Multiculturalism, Literary Theory, Modernism and Desire. Email: kmillet1@sfsu.edu. For additional information see her website at: http://online.sfsu.edu/~kmillet1/

Dr. Ellen Peel, (Ph.D. Comparative Literature, Yale University, 1982), Department of Comparative and World Literature. Dr. Peel has taught and continues to teach courses that include German literature and music such as "The Faust Legend in Music and Literature," and other authors including Heinrich Heine and E.T.A. Hoffmann. Her research and teaching interests include the novel, women's literature, and feminist theory. She often includes German authors such as Christa Wolf in her teaching of these topics. Email: epeel@sfsu.edu. For additional information see also her website at: http://www.sfsu.edu/~wclit/ellen.htm

Dr. Christopher R. Jackson, (Ph.D. in History, Harvard University, 1993), Department of History. Dr. Jackson teaches courses on 20th century Europe, on the Holocaust, and has taught on Modern Germany. His research interests include German labor history, legal history, and the ideologies of industrial relations in the 20th century. Email: jacksonc@sfsu.edu

Dr. Wai-Leung Kwok, (Ph.D. in English Literature with emphasis on Literary Theory, University of California, Irvine, 1990), Department of English. His field of specialization is British Romantic Literature and relationship between philosophy and literature. He has taught courses on Romantic Literature and Theory, Modern Criticism, Deconstruction, Benjamin and Adorno. Dr. Kwok is also very interested in German Romantic poetry and German philosophy (Hölderlin, Schlegel, Hegel, Kant, Nietzsche, Heidegger). Work-in-Progress: The Laws of Reading: the Rhetoric of Death and Temporality in the Literature of the Sublime. Email: wkwok@sfsu.edu

Copyright © 2003 Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures
Last Update June 22, 2003