25 July 2003

Warning: This Page is Under Construction!! [for the foreseeable future!]

Before coming to Appalachian in the summer of 2003, I spent 8 years teaching at Goshen College, a small liberal arts college in northern Indiana. I originally hail from Binghamton NY (in what is known as the Southern Tier just south of the Finger Lakes region).  In 1987, I received my BA in English (with a minor in biology) from the University of Rochester in Rochester, NY. After spending a year in Cologne, Germany, with a Fulbright Study Grant (my topic was the 19th century German dramatist Georg Büchner and Shakespeare), I continued my graduate studies in German at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Penn State University. I received her Ph.D. from Penn State in 1995, and promptly moved my family out to the Midwest again.  While we enjoyed our time in Indiana, we are thrilled to be in North Carolina's High Country.  It really has not taken us long to get used to the mountains and the hospitality!

While my research specialty is medieval German literature, I enjoy teaching a wide variety of courses, from the beginning (1010-1022) through the intermediate (1040-1050) to the advanced levels.  I can honestly say that I has taught an entire curriculum of German Studies courses, through a wide range of survey courses in every major literary epoch of German literature from beginnings of German literature in the Middle Ages through the 20th century. I was also very excited to develop a new course recently entitled "Speaking the Unspeakable: Representations of the Holocaust in Literature and Film."  
 
Some of my favorite courses have been German Literature after 1945, 19th Century German Literature, German Literature through the Reformation, and Arthurian Literature. Another favorite is also a course on Creative Mythology, which discusses works from the Odyssey to Tolkien and Christa Wolf's Medea. The latter two courses fall within my areas of academic research, namely medieval German literature with an emphasis on German adaptations of the Arthurian material. Other interests, in addition to older languages like Old Icelandic and Middle High German, include gender studies and medievalism. These interests link the Middle Ages and our own time, for indeed history is a model on which we base our own experience!

My family includes Jack Hellenbrand, who is an alum of the University of Wisconsin with an M.A. in German from Washington University in St. Louis.  He is a high school teacher of German and Social Studies.  We also claim Ryan (age 8) and Matthew (age 5).  When we are not in various classrooms we enjoy camping, hiking, soccer, music-making (Ryan and I play violin) and music listening (in German, Rolf Zuckowski is a current favorite).  And, of course, we love learning languages.

Here are a few pictures from our summer in eastern Germany (Jena and Weimar and the surrounding areas) with a student group in 2001.

             
Jack and Ryan Hellenbrand on the Löbdergraben in            Ryan and Matthew looking out over Jena-Ost           
Jena, summer 2001, waiting for the tram                             from the battlefield memorial at Cospeda.

                       
This is the Erfurter Dom on the left, view from the             Matthew's favorite German foods are still Bratwurst
Markt.                                                                             and Gummibärchen.