Candidates: 2020 GSA Elections

Standing for: 1. Vice President

    • Sara F. Hall
    • Name: Sara F. Hall
    • Candidate Statement:
      Sara F. Hall (Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley, 2000) is Associate Professor of Germanic Studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago, where she chairs the minor in Moving Image Arts. From 2017-2019 she served as Interim Director of UIC’s School of Literatures, Cultural Studies and Linguistics, having previously served as Associate Dean for Academic Affairs in the UIC Honors College and Director of the Office of Undergraduate Research in the Office of the Vice Provost for Undergraduate Affairs. She co-authored a Mellon-funded Engaged Humanities Initiative grant for undergraduates and has received support for her own research from the DAAD and the Berlin Program for Advanced German and European Studies. Her two dozen articles and essays on silent film, New German Cinema, contemporary television, gender and economics, and intermediality have appeared in academic anthologies and journals including German Studies Review, German Quarterly, The Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, and Modernism/Modernity. Her recent article in the journal Communication: The European Journal of Communication Research won the 2019 Society for Cinema and Media Studies Central/South/East European Essay Prize. She serves on the editorial board of Screen Bodies: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Experience, Perception, and Display and as a peer reviewer for journals in film studies and German Studies as well as for major funding agencies. Since 2003, she has organized and/or participated in a dozen panels at the GSA annual conference on topics such as German film theory, early women filmmakers, and German film and the law. She co-chaired the 20th and 21st Century Germanistik and Cultural Studies section of the Program Committee from 2013-2015 and served a term on the GSA Executive Board from 2016-2019. Moreover, she served on the GSA Treasurer search committee in 2018 and chaired the Graduate Student Essay Prize selection committee in 2019.
    • Derek Hillard
    • Name: Derek Hillard
    • Candidate Statement:
      Derek Hillard (Ph.D., Indiana University, 2001) is Professor and Head of the Department of Modern Languages at Kansas State University. His first monograph is Poetry as Individuality: The Discourse of Observation in Paul Celan (Bucknell UP, 2010). He was awarded a DAAD grant to carry out research at the Freie Universität Berlin in 2001 and a Marbacher Stipendium in 2010. Since his first GSA in 1999, he has participated in numerous GSA panels, round tables, and seminars. Interested in the intersection of literature, arts, history, and studies of emotions, he co-founded with colleagues in history an interdisciplinary GSA network, the Emotions Studies Network. Interactions with GSA colleagues led to a recent co-edited volume (with Heikki Lempa and Russell Spinney), Feelings Materialized: Emotions, Bodies, and Things in Germany (Berghahn, 2020), with contributions from scholars who had presented research at interdisciplinary Emotions Studies events. Such collaborations in emotions studies continue with a second project—likewise the result of recent GSA interdisciplinary seminars—to be co-edited with Erika Quinn and Holly Yanacek. In addition to research on Paul Celan and emotions studies, he has published on German modernists, such as Alfred Döblin and Ernst Jünger, and was awarded the DAAD/GSA Article Prize in 2007 for an essay on R. M. Rilke published in the German Studies Review.

Standing for: 2. Secretary

    • David Imhoof
    • Name: David Imhoof
    • Candidate Statement:
      David Imhoof (Ph.D., University of Texas, 2000) is Professor of History at Susquehanna University in Selinsgrove, Pennsylvania. An active GSA member since 1994, he helped found and has co-directed the Music and Sound Studies Network since 2013. He served in 2014-2015 on the Program Committee and, since 2017, on the Arts Night Committee. Imhoof was also one of the Editors of H-German from 2002 to 2007. His textbook So, About Modern Europe: A Conversational History from the Enlightenment to the Present is forthcoming from Bloomsbury Press in 2021. His monograph Becoming a Nazi Town: Culture and Politics in Göttingen between the World Wars appeared with University of Michigan Press in 2013. In 2016 he co-edited the collection The Total Work of Art: Foundations, Articulations, Explorations (Berghahn Books) and included an essay on musical film in Germany. Also in 2016 he co-edited a special issue of Colloquia Germanica on Sound Studies in modern Germany. More generally he has published on sports, film, and sharpshooting in interwar Germany and is currently working on a history of the recording industry in twentieth-century Germany. At Susquehanna University Imhoof teaches European, German, Holocaust, and cultural history. He helps direct Susquehanna’s study away program, which is a requirement for all students, and teaches courses preparing students for these cross-cultural experiences and allowing them to reflect on what they learned. For ten years, as well, he has directed a three-week program for students to Austria each summer. He was Chair of History for nine years and currently serves as Faculty Athletic Director.
    • Christine Rinne
    • Name: Christine Rinne
    • Candidate Statement:
      Christine Rinne (Ph.D., Indiana University, 2005) held positions at Dartmouth College and the University of Nevada, Reno before joining the faculty of University of South Alabama in 2008. She is currently Associate Professor of German in the Department of Modern and Classical Languages and Literature. In addition to teaching all levels of German, she directs the International Studies program and coordinates the Global Engagement Certificate. In 2018, she won a $467,000 Undergraduate International Studies and Foreign Language Program grant from the US Department of Education. Dr. Rinne’s research focuses on reproductive labor and material culture, and she has published articles on Sigmund Freud, post-colonial literature, and historical reality television. She is currently working on a manuscript that analyzes the content and format of newspapers published by German POWs held at camps in Alabama from 1943-46. In addition to presenting her research at numerous German Studies Association conferences, Dr. Rinne served on the 2016 and 2017 GSA program committees, helping organize the 20th/21st-century Germanistik panels and roundtables.

Standing for: 3. Board Member - Cultural Studies/Germanistik

    • Ela Gezen
    • Name: Ela Gezen
    • Candidate Statement:
      Ela Gezen (Ph.D., University of Michigan, 2012) is Associate Professor of German at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Her research and teaching focus on twentieth-century German and Turkish literature and culture, with emphases on literatures of migration, theater, minority discourses, historical and theoretical accounts of transnationalism, and literary and cultural theory. She is the author of Brecht, Turkish Theater, and Turkish-German Literature: Reception, Adaptation, and Innovation after 1960 (Camden House, 2018) and co-editor of two special issues, Colloquia Germanica (“Transnational Hi/Stories: Turkish-German Texts and Contexts,” 2014) and the Jahrbuch Türkisch-deutsche Studien (“Turkish-German Studies: Past, Present, and Future,” 2015). In addition, she has published articles on music, theater and literature, focusing on the intersection between aesthetics and politics in both Turkish and German contexts. These have appeared in Gegenwartsliteratur: Ein germanistisches Jahrbuch, the German Studies Review, Comparative Drama, Literature Compass, and undercurrents: Forum für linke Literaturwissenschaft, among other venues. Currently, she is working on her second book, Cultures in Migration: Turkish Artistic Practices and Cultural-Political Interventions in West Berlin, 1970–1980, is editing a special issue on Aras Ören (forthcoming with Monatshefte), and she is co-editor of Minorities and Minority Discourses (under review for Berghahn Books’ Spektrum series), an edited volume based on the 2017 conference she co-organized with Jonathan Skolnik and Priscilla Layne. She has attended every GSA conference since her very first in 2008, and in addition to presenting papers, has collaborated with colleagues on organizing seminars (Turkish German Studies, (Post)Migrant Theater, Non-Citizenship and Artistic Practice), panel series (Literature and Refuge, Turkish-German Texts and Contexts, Minorities and Minority Discourse) and roundtables (Theorizing Refugees). Besides serving on the GSA’s Program and Arts Night committees, she is on the editorial board of the Brecht Yearbook, and chapter vice president of the AATG MA chapter.
    • Chunjie Zhang
    • Name: Chunjie Zhang
    • Candidate Statement:
      Chunjie Zhang (Ph.D., Duke, 2010) is Associate Professor of German at the University of California, Davis. She works on the long eighteenth century, global modernisms, Asian-German studies, contemporary refugee literature, and postcolonialism. Her scholarship and teaching endeavor to explore transcultural perspectives in German literature and culture. She is on the program committee for the American Society for Eighteenth Century Studies 2021. Her first book Transculturality and German Discourse in the Age of European Colonialism (Northwestern UP 2017) situates German literature and philosophy in the polycentric global eighteenth century and delineates the contour of a transcultural discourse. Moving beyond the question of empire or enlightenment, her book reads travel writing, literature, and philosophy to shift ground from predominantly critiquing Eurocentrism toward diligently detecting global connections and enhancing the visibility of non-European contributions in global modernity. Actively engaging in Asian German studies, Chunjie edited the scholarly forum on “Asian German Studies” with German Quarterly (93.1, Winter 2020). The contributors discuss the state of this emerging interdisciplinary field and reviews themes such as Chinese-German, Japanese-German, Indian-German, Vietnamese-German connections related to exile studies, Turkish-German studies, global German studies, and transpacific German studies. Chunjie also initiated and co-edits a new book series “Asia, Europe, and Global Connections” (Routledge). Her edited book Composing Modernist Connections in China and Europe (Routledge, 2019) stresses modernist connections beyond the bifurcation between East and West. She also co-edited the issue “Goethe, Worlds, and Literatures” (Seminar: A Journal of Germanic Studies, 2018) that shows the different constructions of Goethe as a classical writer for the concept of world literature in various historical and cultural contexts. Among her articles, she recently wrote about the refugee crisis as well as social distancing and the aesthetics of touch. Her recent research has been supported by the Humboldt Foundation, the DAAD, and the University of California.

Standing for: 4. Board Member - History

    • Joanne Miyang Cho
    • Name: Joanne Miyang Cho
    • Candidate Statement:
      Joanne Miyang Cho (Ph.D., University of Chicago, 1993) is Professor of History at William Paterson University of New Jersey. She also taught at Hope College and Ewha Womans University in South Korea (Visiting Lecturer). Her experiences include departmental chair, graduate director, series co-editor for “Palgrave Series in Asian German Studies,” a Columbia University Seminar chair/co-chair, and overseas representative of Korean Historians of Germany. She has been involved in the GSA in the following capacities: the conference Program Director (2019, 2020), a member of the conference Program Committee (2016, 2017), and a co-coordinator for the Asian German Studies Network (2017-present). Since 2012, she has organized/co-organized nearly sixty panels and roundtables on Asian German topics. She has edited/co-edited Transcultural Encounters between Germany and India (2014), Germany and China since 1800 (2014), Transnational Encounters between Germany and Japan (2016), Gendered Encounters between Germany and Asia, 1800-2000 (2016), Transnational Encounters between Germany and Korea (2018), and Germany and East Asia since 1900 (2018). She has published two dozen book chapters and articles on Asian German relations and the politics of civilization and on a number of twentieth-century German intellectuals. She is currently working on two book projects: Karl Jaspers’ global history of humankind and German-speaking Jewish refugees in Shanghai. Fellowships include the Fulbright Fellowship, Max Planck Institute for History, the Leibniz Institute for European History, and the DAAD.
    • Indravati Félicité
    • Name: Indravati Félicité
    • Candidate Statement:
      Indravati Félicité (Ph.D., University of Paris-Sorbonne, 2012) is Maîtresse de conférences in early modern European and German History at the University of Paris. In that position she has been a member of various academic committees in France. She has been the recipient of fellowships and grants from the DAAD and the German Historical Institute (Paris and Washington, D.C.). In 2016 she published the monograph “Négocier pour exister” in the series “Pariser Historische Studien” of the German Historical Institute Paris (De Gruyter-Oldenbourg). This book, also available in German (Böhlau, 2017), stresses the particular goals and practices of German diplomacy after 1648 in order to reevaluate the Holy Roman Empire beyond its traditional pessimistic depiction as a divided and, therefore, deficient state. She has published several articles in journals as well as chapters in collective volumes, mainly in France and Germany, and has been invited by various German institutions (universities, archives, historical associations) to present her research on the Empire as a global player from the bottom-up perspective of individual diplomats, small German states and networks. In her habilitation project she seeks to internationalize the history of the Holy Roman Empire by examining commercial relations, cross-cultural interactions, and the German involvement in contemporary debates on globalization and imperialism. She is currently editing a volume on diplomats (Classiques Garnier, 2020, manuscript under contract). She has regularly presented papers at the GSA for many years, and also has organized and commented panels, mostly on the topic of the international and diplomatic history of early modern and modern Germany. In 2019 she co-organized a GSA Roundtable on “The New Diplomatic History in the German Lands.”

Standing for: 5. Board Member - Politics, Economics, Society

    • Robert Mark Spaulding
    • Name: Robert Mark Spaulding
    • Candidate Statement:
      Robert Mark Spaulding (Ph.D., Harvard University, 1989) is Professor of History at UNC Wilmington. He was a Visiting Professor at Peking University in 2004. Prof. Spaulding's research and teaching interests center on German, European, and global political economy, particularly trade, and international relations. He teaches regularly at all levels of the curriculum from HST 101 to graduate courses on Weimar and Nazi Germany. His book Osthandel and Ostpolitik from Bismarck to Adenauer (Berghahn, 1997) was a finalist for the AHA’s prize as best book in European International History. He has just completed a short book for undergraduates, The Global Medieval: Trade and Contact in Four Great Ports of the Afro-Eurasian World, 1000-1500 (Cognella, 2020). His essays on German, European, and global trade have appeared in numerous journals, including Agricultural History, Central European History, Diplomatic History, the Vierteljahrschrift für Sozial- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte, and in several important collections such as the Oxford Handbook of the Cold War. He has also published in International Organization, the leading journal of international relations. He organized the 40th anniversary forum for Mack Walker’s German Home Towns that appeared in Central European History (September 2014). He was Guest Editor of the special thematic issue “New Research on Cities and Towns in Central Europe” for German History (September 2017). In 2006 and 2020 he was an invited participant at week-long seminars at the Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies (USHMM) in Washington, D.C. His research has been funded by the DAAD, the Council for European Studies, the Ford Foundation, and the American Philosophical Society. He has presented, moderated, and commented at many GSA panels since his first GSA presentation in 1993. Prof. Spaulding was a member of the GSA Program Committee in 2015 and 2016.
    • Jonathan R. Zatlin
    • Name: Jonathan R. Zatlin
    • Candidate Statement:
      Jonathan R. Zatlin (Ph.D., University of California at Berkeley, 2000) is Associate Professor of History at Boston University, where he also served as Associate Director of Kilachand Honors College (2012-2016). His initial work explored the history of German communism, focusing on the social construction of value in East Germany to understand German unification. Out of that research emerged The Currency of Socialism. Money and Political Culture in East Germany (Cambridge University Press, 2007), Selling Modernity: Advertising in Twentieth-Century Germany (Duke University Press, 2007), co-edited with Jonathan Wiesen and Pamela Swett, and over two dozen book chapters and articles in journals such as Central European History, German History, German Politics and Society, American Historical Review, Contemporary European History, Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook, and Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft. More recently, he has turned from the category of class to the problem of race in German history. He co-edited Dispossession: Plundering German Jewry, 1933-1953 (University of Michigan Press, 2020) with Christoph Kreutzmüller and is currently completing his second monograph, German Fantasies of Jewish Wealth, 1790-1990 (University of Chicago Press, forthcoming). He was awarded the Fritz Stern Dissertation Prize in 2001, the Hans Rosenberg Article Prize in 2011, and the DAAD Prize for Distinguished Scholarship in German and European Studies in 2011. He has been the recipient of fellowships from the DAAD, the American Council of Learned Societies, the Mellon Foundation, and the Alexander von Humboldt Stiftung. He has also been active in professional organizations related to German history, serving on the executive board of the Central European History Society (2013-2016), the editorial board of Central European History (2014-2017), and the academic advisory board of the Leo Baeck Institute-New York (2016-present). He has been a regular attendee at GSA meetings since grad school, and in 2019 served on the GSA Program Committee.

Standing for: 6. Board Member - Graduate Student

    • James Blackwell
    • Name: James Blackwell
    • Candidate Statement:
      James Blackwell is a Ph.D. candidate in African History at Michigan State University. His dissertation explores the history of Igbo and Ibibio labor migration between southeastern Nigeria and British Southern Cameroon, formally German Kamerun, from 1900 to 1975. By beginning in German Kamerun, he engages not only with the partition of Cameroon between the British and French, but Germany’s reengagement with Cameroon following World War I. He was an editorial assistant for the Journal of West African History, from 2016-2017, and assisted in its international launch. He was awarded the TIAA Ruth Simms Hamilton Graduate Merit Fellowship in 2018, to complete dissertation fieldwork in Nigeria. In addition to his dissertation, he is also an executive producer and historical consultant on a documentary that explores the African Diaspora. As a member of both the GSA and Black Studies Network, he has continued to center questions surrounding German imperialism and its relationship with the African Diaspora.
    • Kevina King
    • Name: Kevina King
    • Candidate Statement:
      Kevina King is a PhD student in German and Scandinavian Studies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst where she earned her Master’s with a focus on Black German history, Black German music, and the Black Diaspora. She is currently working on her dissertation, “Black German Resistance in the Twenty-First Century,” which examines Black German radical thought and artistic expression via digital media, including music and podcasts. Her chapter "Black, PoC, and Migrant Lives Should Matter: Racial Profiling, Police Brutality and Whiteness in Germany," in the 2018 edited volume Rethinking Black German Studies: Approaches, Interventions and Histories, edited by Tiffany Florvil and Vanessa Plumly, focuses on racial profiling in Berlin since 2001 and local organizations fighting to mitigate the systemic consequences. She is the project and research assistant at the DEFA Film Library where she coordinates the upcoming DEFA Film Library Summer Film Institute Authority and Alterity in East German Movies: Political Experiments, Rebel Youth and Civil Unrest. At the 2019 GSA, she organized the film screening and the Q&A with DEFA film director and media artist Lutz Dammbeck during the Arts Night. This year will be her fourth year attending the GSA having taken part in GSA panels, seminars, and round tables hosted by the Black Diaspora Studies Network. Besides her engagement at the GSA, she also regularly takes part in panels at the Black German Heritage and Research Association (BGHRA) Conference, the Afroeuropean Network Conference, and at this year’s Women in German Conference. Kevina is co-organizer of the guest-related panel featuring Black German filmmaker, Sheri Hagen. Kevina has been an invited guest speaker at the University of Nevada Las Vegas, Elms College, and recently presented “W. E. B. DuBois and His Time in Germany” at The W. E. B. DuBois Center at UMass Amherst.