Core Faculty

Core faculty

Fritz Breithaupt

Fritz Breithaupt

Provost Professor, Germanic Studies

  • fbreitha@indiana.edu

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sR-9J5_8Imw&t=14s

Research Interests
literature and cognitive science; empathy; narrative; emotions; German and European literature, philosophy, and culture since 1700; aesthetics; intellectual history of money; Goethe

Michel Chaouli

Michel Chaouli

Professor, Germanic Studies

  • chaouli@indiana.edu

Research Interests
literature and philosophy; aesthetic theory; literature starting around 1750; poetic criticism

Irit Dekel

Irit Dekel

Assistant Professor, Germanic Studies

Assistant Professor, Jewish Studies

Adjunct Assistant Professor, Sociology

Director: Olamot Center for scholarly and cultural exchange with Israel

  • idekel@iu.edu
  • Global and International Studies Building 3128

Research Interests
memory studies; media and the public sphere; ethnicity and race; contemporary german culture; museums

Susanne Even

Susanne Even

Clinical Professor, Germanic Studies

Language Coordinator, Germanic Studies

Research Interests
foreign language pedagogy; innovative teaching and learning approaches; performative pedagogy; intercultural and multilingual competence; bilingual novels; curriculum development for higher education

Tracy Alan Hall

Tracy Alan Hall

Professor, Germanic Studies

Editor, Journal of Germanic Linguistics

  • tahall2@indiana.edu

Research Interests
general and Germanic linguistics, phonology, morphology, and historical linguistics

Günther Jikeli

Günther Jikeli

Associate Professor, Germanic Studies and Jewish Studies

Associate Director, Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism

  • gjikeli@indiana.edu
  • (812) 856-1150
  • Global and International Studies Building 3121

Günther Jikeli heads IU's Social Media & Hate Research Lab.

Research Interests
Antisemitism after the Holocaust; antisemitism in social media; racism, discrimination and education; Jewish-Muslim relations; national socialism: forced labor and the Holocaust.

Dov-Ber Kerler

Dov-Ber Kerler

Professor, Germanic Studies

Professor, Jewish Studies

Dr. Alice Field Cohn Chair, Yiddish Studies

Adjunct Professor, Comparative Literature

Affiliated Faculty, Robert F. Byrnes Russian and East European Institute

  • dkerler@indiana.edu
  • (812) 855-1951
  • Global & International Studies Building 3125

Research Interests
history, dialectology, sociology, and the Linguistic Analysis of Yiddish; history of Old Yiddish literature (15th to 18th Century); Yiddish-Slavic linguistic and cultural contacts; Yiddish and modern Israeli Hebrew; modern Yiddish poetry

Teresa Kovacs

Teresa Kovacs

Assistant Professor, Germanic Studies

Affiliate Faculty, Cultural Studies

Adjunct Assistant Professor, Theatre, Drama and Contemporary Dance

  • tekovacs@iu.edu
  • (812) 855-1080
  • Global and International Studies Building 3104

Research Interests
contemporary theater and performance; theater theory; posthumanism; landscape and urbanism; globalization, migration and transcultural theater; politics of aesthetics; cultural analysis; intermediality; comedy; gender and queer theory; Elfriede Jelinek; Christoph Schlingensief

Nikole Langjahr

Nikole Langjahr

Senior German Lecturer, Germanic Studies

Director of Undergraduate Studies

  • nilangja@indiana.edu

Research Interests
language pedagogy; intercultural communication

Gergana May

Gergana May

Senior Lecturer, Germanic Studies

Coordinator of Norwegian Program

  • ggmay@indiana.edu

Research Interests
Norwegian language; Scandinavian literature and theatre; Ibsen and Strindberg; literary theory and criticism; translation for the theatre

Benjamin Robinson

Benjamin Robinson

Associate Professor, Germanic Studies

Research Interests
20th-century and contemporary literature and culture, especially with respect to institutions of law, economics and science; modernism and socialism; questions of literary reference and realism, particularly as they are thought about in phenomenological and sociological traditions

Christopher D. Sapp

Christopher D. Sapp

Professor, Germanic Linguistics and Philology

Director of Graduate Studies, Germanic Studies

Adjunct Professor, Department of Linguistics

  • csapp@iu.edu

Research Interests
Morphology and syntax of German, Language variation and change, Medieval Germanic languages and philology

Lane Sorensen

Lane Sorensen

Lecturer of German, Germanic Studies

Outreach Coordinator, Germanic Studies

  • lasorens@iu.edu

Research Interests
Foreign language pedagogy and outreach; Germanic philology; Vikings and Sagas; Low German language and culture; 'liver-rhyme' poetry and 'Gesellschaftslyrik'

Johannes Türk

Johannes Türk

Associate Professor, Germanic Studies and Comparative Literature

Director of the Institute of German Studies

Chair, Germanic Studies

  • joturk@indiana.edu

Research Interests
literary theory; aesthetic theory; rhetoric; philosophy; the history of the German and the European novel; modernism; literature and life sciences (especially Immunology); trauma and literature