D. Board: Graduate Student Representative

Charlie Johnson received their MA from the University of Illinois in Chicago in 2021 and is currently a PhD student, TA, and Head TA in the department of Germanic Studies at UIC. As a TA, Charlie is committed to practicing inclusivity in the classroom with an emphasis on gender-inclusive language. While interested in inclusive pedagogy, Charlie’s dissertation “Trans/Figurations” investigates ruptures in binaries and gender identity in German literature from the late eighteenth century to the early twentieth century and the ways in which gender is entangled with the concept of "Bildung." In 2019 they received the Max Kade Fellowship and have earned Max Kade travel grants for attending conferences and studying abroad. They have also received the Astrida Orle Tantillo Bridges award, a competitive, merit-based internal scholarship that has been used to carry out various projects relating to their research. They have also won Robert Kauf awards for excellence in teaching and research. Charlie recently presented a paper at ACTFL on the topic of gender-inclusive language and one titled “Gender Ambivalence in Musil’s Törleß” at the Austrian Studies Association conference. They are working on a forthcoming publication on gender-inclusive language with Unterrichtspraxis. Charlie is a member of the German Studies Association, the Austrian Studies Association, AATG, and ACTFL.

I am a PhD candidate in the Georgetown University German Department. In my dissertation I explore the depiction of marginalized bodies in twenty-first-century German-language literature, drawing on material feminist approaches while also engaging critically with concepts of race and disability. I have had the pleasure of sharing my work on these topics at GSA conferences over the past three years—presenting on panels in 2021 and 2023 and participating in a seminar on Medical Humanities in 2022—where I benefited greatly from meeting like-minded scholars. If elected for the role of GSA graduate student representative, I would advocate for the scheduling of more professionalization events for junior scholars at the annual conference. In addition to the existing graduate student reception and Emerging Scholars Workshop, events such as CV clinics or the implementation of mentorship programs would create spaces for graduate students to develop their resumes, learn more about different job opportunities, and expand their networks beyond their institutions. Given that conferences can be difficult to navigate, particularly for groups that have been underrepresented in academia, I hope that such programming would make opportunities for professionalization at the GSA more accessible and foster greater graduate student engagement at the conference.