The Department of German Studies offers students a wide variety of opportunities to explore the language, literature and culture of German-speaking countries. Courses are offered in English translation as well as in German, with subjects ranging from medieval to contemporary literature and include studies of film, visual culture, intellectual history, music, psychology and women's studies. The department also offers opportunities to explore Dutch and Swedish language.

The department is home to New German Critique, a leading journal that is devoted to publishing research on German culture in the 20th and 21st centuries, with particular focus on the history and theory of literature, theatre, media, intellectual history and the graphic arts. Students also have the opportunity as part of Cornell's Study Abroad program to attend the renowned Berlin Consortium for German Studies. The department works closely with the U.S.A.-Interns program to provide qualified students summer internships with German companies and agencies. All Cornell students are eligible to apply for a Certificate in German Language Study, which formally recognizes their study beyond the third semester (GERST 2000) of German language in the Department of German Studies.

Department website

Mari Jarris

Postdoctoral Associate

Publications

“Precarity and Form: Lu Märten’s Intervention in the Worker’s Autobiography,” in: Sophie Duvernoy, Karsten Olson, and Ulrich Plass (eds.), Representing Social Precarity in German Literature and Film, Bloomsbury Press (forthcoming 2023).

“Utopie des Alltags. Formen der Zukunft in den Schriften Lu Märtens,” in: Vanessa Briese, Christopher Busch, Stefan Geyer, Alexander Kling and Tímea Mészáros (eds.), Alltag! Literaturgeschichte eines Theoriereservoirs seit dem 18. Jahrhundert, Wehrhahn Verlag (2023).

Co-authored with Helen Stuhr-Rommereim, “Nikolai Chernyshevsky’s What Is to Be Done? and the Prehistory of International Marxist Feminism,” Feminist German Studies, vol. 36, no. 1 (Spring/Summer 2020), 162-192.

“Utopizm i gender v romane N.G. Chernyshevskogo «Chto delat’?»,” in: A.A. Demchenko (ed.), N. G. Chernyshevskii. Stat’i, issledovaniia i materialy: Sbornik nauchnykh trudov, vol. 22, Izdatel’stvo Saratovskogo universiteta (2020), 51-56.

(trans.) Walzer, Dorothea. “Marx as a Model and Question: Alexander Kluge’s Critical Inquires,” New German Critique, vol. 47, no. 1 (February 2020), 25-56.

(trans.) Fore, Devin. “‘Aktueller Realismus.’ Sowjetische Faktographie und die Noetik der Zeitung.” Die Wirklichkeit des Realismus, Wilhelm Fink Verlag (2018), 193-211.

Klarman Hall
183 Goldwin Smith Hall
mjarris@cornell.edu

Education

  • Ph.D., Comparative Literature and Gender & Sexuality Studies, Princeton University
  • Dr. phil., German Literature, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
  • B.A., German Studies and College of Social Studies, Wesleyan University

Departments and programs

Michele Lichtenstein

Graduate Student

Klarman Hall
msl279@cornell.edu

Departments and programs

Brehan Brady

Graduate Student

Klarman Hall
bfb46@cornell.edu

Departments and programs

Luke Witchey

Graduate Student

Klarman Hall
lew224@cornell.edu

Departments and programs

Wei Wang

Graduate Student

Klarman Hall
ww475@cornell.edu

Departments and programs

Rajvi Thakore

Graduate Student

Klarman Hall
rt454@cornell.edu

Departments and programs

Anna Reynders

Graduate Student

Klarman Hall
ar956@cornell.edu

Departments and programs

Martina Victoria Villalobos

Graduate Student

Klarman Hall
mvv23@cornell.edu

Departments and programs

Willow Groundwater-Schuldt

Graduate Student

Klarman Hall
wg248@cornell.edu

Departments and programs

Emir Yigit

Graduate Student

Publications

“Reconciling Hegel with the Dialectic: Islam and the Fate of Muslims in Hegel’s Philosophy of History” - co-authored with Zeyad el Nabolsy, Hegel Bulletin, forthcoming.
“Hegel and Nietzsche on Self-Judgment, Self-Mastery, and the Right to One’s Life” - Nietzsche-Studien 52.1, 148-170, 2023.
“Disenchantment as Reenchantment and the Genesis of the Pöbel in Gottfried Keller’s Romeo und Julia auf dem Dorfe (1856)” - The German Quarterly 95.3, 293-308, 2022.
“Dialectical Abnormality?  Jewish Alienation and Jewish Emancipation between Hegel and Marx” - Naharaim: Journal of German-Jewish Literature and Cultural History 16.1, 79-100, 2022.

Klarman Hall
eyy9@cornell.edu

Departments and programs

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