Thomas O. Beebee Professor of Comparative Literature and German (Ph.D. University of Michigan, 1984) is the director of the graduate program in Comparative Literature. His fields of specialization include criticism and theory, epistolarity, eighteenth-century literature, translation (theory, practice, and literary mimesis), mental maps in literature, and law and literature. Publications include Clarissa on the Continent (1991), The Ideology Of Genre (1994), and Epistolary Fiction in Europe (1999). Articles include "Johann Jakob Dusch and the Genealogy of Epistolary Fiction," "A Literature of Theory: Christa Wolf's Kassandra Lectures as Feminist Anti-Poetics" (with Beverly Weber); "The Öffentlichkeit of Jürgen Habermas," and "Ways of Seeing Italy: Goethe's Italienische Reise and its Counter-Narratives." He has completed a book manuscript on "true imaginary places" in post-1800 European and American fiction. Work on structural couplings of German law and literature, eschatechnologies of the Americas, and transmesis (literary works that pretend to be translations when they are not, or which provide a mimesis of translation) are in progress. Office: 445 Burrowes (863-4935). E-mail: tob@psu.edu
Linda J. Ivanits, is an Associate Professor of Russian and Comparative Literature. She received her PhD in Russian literature from the University of Wisconsin in June 1973. Her dissertation treated the grotesque in the Symbolist writer F. K. Sologub's novel The Petty Demon. In August 1973 Dr. Ivanits joined the Department of Slavic Languages at Penn State where she taught a variety of courses on Russian language, literature and folklore. Her research interests include nineteenth and twentieth-century Russian literature and Russian folklore. She has written a number of articles on F. K. Sologub and F. M. Dostoevsky. Her major work to date is the book Russian Folk Belief (M.E. Sharpe, 1987). She is presently completing a book on the role of the Russian people in the work of Dostoevsky. Dr. Ivanits has also served as Associate Editor for Literature and Folklore of The Slavic and East European Journal and as Series Editor for Folklores and Folk Cultures of Eastern Europe published by M.E.Sharpe. Office: 408 Burrowes (865-1681). E-mail: lji1@psu.edu
Carrie Jackson joined the faculty as an assistant professor in Fall 2005. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, specializing in Germanic linguistics and second language acquisition. Her research and teaching interests include psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics, language acquisition and foreign language pedagogy. Over the years she has taught a wide range of German language courses, as well as Dutch and English as a second language courses, both at UW-Madison and at the University of Texas at Austin.Office: 415 Burrowes (863-7488). E-mail: cnj1@psu.edu
Galina Khmelkova has been teaching Russian at Penn State since 1991. She graduated in 1974 from Patrice Lumumba People's Friendship University in Moscow and has been teaching Russian language and culture in Laos, Slovakia, and at the Pedagogical University in her hometown of Volgograd, Russia. She has taught a wide range of courses, including Beginning, Intermediate and Advanced Russian, Russian Culture and Civilization (both in Rusian and in English), Business Russian, Russian Literature, Readings in Russian History and Culture, Russian Conversation and Russian Comprehension. Recently she developed and taught her Russian culture class as a web-based course. She also taught an introduction to Russian for agriculturalists via interactive video hook-up to students at various agricultural colleges in the USA. Ms. Khelkova is the recipient of several awards, including the Jan Amos Komenski Medal for Teaching, Slovakia, 1986, and the College of the Liberal Arts Excellence in Teaching Award for Non-Tenure Line Faculty, 2003. E-mail: gak2@psu.edu
Martina Kolb holds a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature (Yale University), a Staatsexamen in Modern Philology (Universität Tübingen), and an M.A. in German Studies (University of Oregon). She wrote her dissertation under the direction of Harold Bloom and Peter Brooks — Journeys of Desire: Liguria as Literary Landscape —, and was Instructor in German at Yale, as well as for courses in ancient philosophy, literary theory, detective fiction, and modern poetry.
Before joining Penn State, Martina was Visiting Assistant Professor at Bilkent University in Turkey (Humanities Program), as well as the recipient of a number of awards, among them a Whiting Dissertation Prize Fellowship, her Graduate Affiliation at the Whitney Humanities Center, a Fondazione Bellonci Fellowship, two Beinecke Library Fellowships, and two Postdoctoral Fellowships (Universities of Bologna and Konstanz).
Martina’s interests are comparative poetics, international modernism, theater between Orient and Occident, psychoanalysis, and detective fiction. She has presented invited papers on a variety of visual-verbal encounters, among them Goethe’s travelogues, Freud’s dream interpretation, Benjamin’s translation theory, and Dante and Kafka’s metamorphoses. Her publications include articles on the uncanny in Uwe Johnson, Ezra Pound’s prison poetry, and Bertolt Brecht’s appropriations of Eastern theater. She currently works on a book on Mediterranean geopoetics. Office: 416 Burrowes (865-0068). E-mail: muk23@psu.edu
Willard Martin earned his B.A. (1961) in history at Goshen College and his M.A. (1966) and Ph.D. (1973) in German at Penn State. Throughout his career he has combined teaching and administration. His teaching has included a variety of undergraduate courses in German language, literature, and culture. In administration he was director for academic affairs at the McKeesport Campus of Penn State, academic dean of Goshen College, and chief administrator and dean of the Schwäbisch Gmünd campus of UMUC in Germany. He served on many committees at these locations and as a board member of the Pennsylvania German Society for nine years and the James Byrnes Society in Stuttgart, Germany, for five. He directed a study abroad group for a semester in the former East Germany and a study abroad program for two years in Marburg, Germany. At Penn State he and a colleague did research on the Pennsylvania German dialect, and he started a course on Pennsylvania German culture. He has given numerous speeches on the Amish and plain Mennonites to a variety of groups and organizations. Currently he teaches mostly elementary and intermediate German courses and an evening section of Pennsylvania Germans: The Culture of the Sectarians in the spring semester. Office: 428 Burrowes (863-6358) E-mail: wmm10@psu.edu
Bettina Mathes Before coming to Penn State Bettina Mathes taught Gender Studies and Cultural Studies at Humboldt University, Berlin where she earned a Ph.D. in 2000. Her areas of specialization are Early modern culture, science, and arts. Gender Studies. Islam in Europe. History of psychoanalysis. The Faust figure. DEFA-films (East German studio films).
She is the author of Verhandlungen mit Faust. Geschlechterverhältnisse in der Kultur der Frühen Neuzeit (Helmer 2001) and the editor of Schlüsselwerke der Geschlechterforschung (VS Verlag 20005). She has just completed two books: Under Cover. Das Geschlecht in den Medien (transcript September 2006) is a study of the bodily origins of different media and Verschleierte Wirklichkeit: die Frau, der Islam und der Westen, co-written with Christina von Braun, (Aufbau, 2007) which explores the historical and cross-cultural dimensions of the current debate about the ‚muslim‘ veil and headscarf in Europe. She is the editor of Die imaginierte Nation: Identität, Körper und Geschlecht in DEFA-Filmen (2007) a collection of essays addressing the interplay of gender and nationalism in DEFA-films.
Among her current projects are a book about the ‘phantoms’ of psychoanalysis.
This fall semester she co-teaches a graduate class on “Muslim Dialogues”. Office: 421 Burrowes (863-7487) E-mail: bem12@psu.edu
For more information visit her website www.bettinamathes.net
Irina Mikaelian, Ph.D., University of Provence, France, 2002; graduated from Moscow State University in 1982. Initially specialized in Romance (French and Italian) Languages, she taught French and Italian at The Russian State University of Humanities, Moscow. Subsequently, she spent ten years in France (1994 - 2004) teaching Russian Language and related subjects, such as History of Russian Languages, Advanced Russian Grammar and Syntax, Translation from and into Russian, Russian History reflected in Russian Cinema. She taught, in particular, at the University of Provence, University of Lyon, and University of Grenoble. Her main research interests lay in Russian and general linguistics with particular emphasis on syntax and semantics. She has presented papers at international scientific meeting on Slavic, Russian and general linguistics in Russia, France, Spain and the USA. Office: 419 Burrowes (863-7486) E-mail: ixm12@psu.edu
Michael M. Naydan received his BA and MA from The American University, and his Ph.D. from Columbia University. He taught at Yale and Rutgers Universities before coming to Penn State in 1988. He has published numerous articles and book reviews on literary topics and has translated extensively from Ukrainian, Russian and Romanian. His books include: The Poetry of Lina Kostenko: Wanderings of the Heart (1990), Marina Tsvetaeva's "After Russia" (1992), "The Windows of Time Frozen" and Other Stories by Yuri Vynnychuk (2000), and The Complete Early Poetry Collections of Pavlo Tychyna (2000). He co-edited and co-translated From Three Worlds: New Writing from Ukraine (1996) as well as the anthology A Hundred Years of Youth: A Bilingual Anthology of 20th Century Ukrainian Poetry (2000). He has co-translated a book of translations of Olga Sedakova's poetry, Poems and Elegies (2004), and Igor Klekh's prose, A Country the Size of Binoculars (2004). His translation of Yuri Andrukhovychs novel Perverzion is forthcoming with Northwestern University Press. He has received the Eugene Kayden Meritorious Achievement Award in Translation (1993), the 1996 Award in Translation from the American Association of Ukrainian Studies, and the Nytchenko Prize from the League of Ukrainian Philanthropists (2001). Office: 404 (865-1675) E-mail:mmn3@psu.edu
Cecilia Novero is Assistant Professor of German, Comparative Literature and Womens Studies. She received her Ph.D. in German from the University of Chicago with a dissertation devoted to the European avant-garde movements through 1940 and the presence of metaphors of incorporation and consumption in their works. She is currently completing a book on the uses of food in the European avant-garde until 1980 which will soon be published by the University of Minnesota Press. Before coming to PSU, Dr. Novero has taught courses on German language, literature, art, film and food at the University of Chicago, at the University of Michigan (where she held a teaching post-doc), and at Vassar College. Her research interests focus on avant-garde theory, cultural studies and critical theory. In addition, she is doing research in European contemporary travel accounts and post-Wende authors and films. She has just started new research on the history of film festivals. Her publications range from studies of food in film and literature, contemporary German authors and popular travel books to artistic movements across the European nations. She is fluent in Italian, English, German and French. E-mail: cin1@psu.edu or visit her web page.
B. Richard Page received his Ph.D. in Germanic linguistics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1994. He teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in the areas of linguistics, German, and Pennsylvania German culture. His research interests include older Germanic dialects, historical linguistics, language change, language contact, Pennsylvania German, and phonology. He has published articles on Germanic linguistics in a variety of journals including Beiträge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und Literatur, Diachronica, and the Journal of Germanic Linguistics. Dr. Page's current research focuses on the interplay between prosodic change and sound change in the histories of Germanic languages. In addition, he is working with Julia Kasdorf , the Mifflin County Mennonite Historical Society and Penn State University Libraries to collect oral histories of Pennsylvania German Anabaptists in nearby Big Valley. Office: 407 Burrowes (863-8964) E-mail:brp3@psu.edu
Daniel Purdy, the director of German graduate studies, was born in Berlin and raised bi-lingually in New York City. He received his Ph.D. from Cornell University in 1992. Before arriving at Penn State, he taught for nine years at Columbia University. Daniel Purdy serves as editor for the North American Goethe Yearbook. His research connects the famous figures of German intellectual history with popular culture, both in Germany and the United States. In 1998, he published his study on consumer culture and male identity, entitled The Tyranny of Elegance: Consumer Cosmopolitanism in the Era of Goethe, with Johns Hopkins University Press. In 2005 the University of Minnesota Press published his collection of historical writings about style, The Rise of Fashion. At the moment he is completing a study of German archtiectural theory, entitled The Architecture of Interiority: Kant, Goethe and the Ideal Building. He has published numerous articles on neo-classical aesthetics, Adolf Loos, Herder, Goethe, E.T.A. Hoffmann, Sophie Mereau, the Prussian Army, and the Pennsylvania German press of the eighteenth century. He is co-director of the Imaginary Cities project [http://www.earlymod.psu.edu/], as well as the Max Kade Research Institute [http://www3.la.psu.edu/histrlst/maxkade/maxkade.html]. Professor Purdy has received grants from the DAAD, the Stiftung Weimarer Klassik and the Humboldt Foundation. Office: 406 Burrowes (863-1353) E-mail: dlp14@psu.edu
Dennis Schmidt, a professor of Philosophy at Penn State since 2002, began a partial appointment in the German Department as of Fall 2005. Professor Schmidt's areas of specialization include Ancient Philosophy, Post-Kantian Continental Philosophy, Aesthetics, and Literary Criticism. He is the author of several books, including Lyrical and Ethical Subjects (SUNY Press, 2005), On Germans and Other Greeks (Indiana University Press, 2001), and The Ubiquity of the Finite (MIT Press, 1988). Among his current research projects are a book about the idea of nature and an investigation of the notion of freedom. He is presently finishing a memoir about his teacher, Hans-Georg Gadamer, entitled Becoming A Philosopher: On Memory and Responsibility. He is also currently working on a number of smaller scale projects dealing with a variety of topics such as translation, Walter Benjamin, Heidegger, the Funeral Oration in Athens , the notion of earth, and the idea of race in Nazi Germany. In Spring 2006, Professor Schmidt will teach a seminar on tragedy and an introduction to German philosophy for graduate students in German literature. Office: 208 Sparks (865-1919) E-mail: djs61@psu.edu
Adrian Wanner Professor of Russian and Comparative Literature, has been head of the Department of Germanic and Slavic Languages and Literatures since January 2001. He is a native speaker of (Swiss) German with an M.A. in French philology from Zurich University and a Ph.D. in Russian literature from Columbia University. His research interests include symbolism, literary relations between Russia and Western Europe, the translation of poetry, utopian and genre studies, and Russian “translingual” writers. He has published numerous articles in Slavic and comparative literature journals and is the author of two monographs: Baudelaire in Russia (University Press of Florida, 1996), and Russian Minimalism: From the Prose Poem to the Anti-Story (Northwestern University Press, 2003). In addition he has published German verse translations of the poetry of Alexander Blok (Suhrkamp Verlag, 1990) and Innokenty Annensky (Pano Verlag, 1998), as well as an annotated bilingual anthology of Russian prose poems in his German translation (Pano Verlag, 2004). His latest book, a bilingual Romanian-German edition of Romanian poet Liliana Ursu, came out in fall 2005. Prof. Wanner's current research project is a study of translingual Russian writers. Office: 403 Burrowes (865-5481) E-mail:ajw3@psu.edu
N. Hülya Yilmaz is Senior Lecturer and Language Program Director in German and Instructor in Comparative Literature Studies. She earned her B.A. and M.A. in German literature (Hacettepe University, Ankara, Turkey) and completed her dissertation, a comparative study, on the influence of Sufism upon 19th and 20th century German poetry. Dr. YILMAZ authored a book on the same subject, Das Ghasel des islamischen Orients in der deutschen Dichtung (1991, Peter Lang.) She specializes in contemporary German literature with a primary focus on Germany's minority authors and the implementation of feminist theory in modern day Germany. Her current research interests include migrant literature of Germany; Islam in Germany and the U.S.; transnational and diasporic literatures; and gender and identity issues within Islam. Her teaching background and interests encompass German language, literature and culture; Germany’s ghazal writers and Turkish authors; female representation in German mainstream and migrant writings; and literary reflections of Islamic feminist practices. Office: 418 Burrowes (863-7489) E-mail: hnu1@psu.eduhttp://www.personal.psu.edu/faculty/h/n/
hnu1/index.html
Vickie L. Ziegler Professor of German Literature and Medieval Studies, came to Penn State after receiving her Ph.D. at Yale University. She teaches graduate courses in Middle High German language and literature, on the German Novelle and legal issues in medieval European literature, as well as undergraduate survey courses in German literature and language courses. She has written three books and co-edited two others, as well as a number of articles. Her two first books were on Middle High German Minnesang, The Leitword in Minnesang, and on Achim von Arnim and E.T.A. Hoffmann, Bending the Frame: The Cyclical Narrative in German Romanticism. Her most recent book, Trial by Fire and Battle in Medieval German Literature, appeared in Spring 2004. Her current research plans include another book on literary accounts of legal matters. Professor Ziegler's interdisciplinary research interests parallel her administrative ones. Under her direction, medieval studies at Penn State has grown from a tiny program to a nationally respected Center for Medieval Studies. Professor Ziegler is currently on the board of CARA, the Medieval Academy organization for center directors, and President of TEAMS, the consortium for teaching the Middle Ages. Office: 420 Burrowes (863-7484) E-mail: vlz1@psu.edu
Eleonora K. Adams is Associate Professor of German. She teaches German and Russian at Penn State Abington, but holds her tenure in the German Department at University Park. She received her Ph.D. from University of Pennsylvania, with a comparative study of Franz Werfel and Lev Tolstoy. Her scholarship includes publications and conference presentations on Werfel, Tolstoy, Hoffmannsthal Arthur Schnitzler and Mychaylo Kotziubynskyj, as well as several aspects of Russian and Ukrainian literature. Her current research is focused on a group of post WWII German rocket scientists, who while living an isolated life in Russia, had created an intellectual life (apart from their professional life) for themselves and their families on the secluded island of Gorodomlya. E-mail: eka2@psu.edu
Gabriela Appel is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Linguistics and Applied Language Studies and an Affiliate of the Department of Germanic and Slavic Languages and Literatures. She holds a Staatsexamen für das Lehramt (magna cum laude) in Foreign Language Education from the University of Kassel (Germany) and a doctoral degree in Applied Linguistics from the University of Delaware. Before coming to Penn State in 1999, she taught for eight years at Cornell University and two years at the University of Delaware. At University Park, in addition to having taught German language and Business German courses, she offers a graduate seminar on Second Language Vocabulary and one on Second Language Reading. Her research interests are in Vocabulary Learning and Teaching, Assessment and Evaluation and Teacher Education. Since 2001, she is an Associate Editor of the Modern Language Journal and since 2002, the Program Coordinator of the Center for Advanced Language Proficiency Education and Research (CALPER) at Penn State. Email: gxa9@psu.edu.
Greg Eghigian is an associate professor of modern European history, specializing in the history of 20th century Germany. He received his Ph. D. from the University of Chicago in 1993. Before coming to Penn State, he was Schmidt Fellow at the University of Chicago and taught at the University of Texas at Arlington. His research and teaching interests focus on modern German political, social, cultural, and intellectual history with a particular interest in the history of the self and the human sciences in 20th century Germany. His publications have examined such topics as the role of sacrifice in German nationalism, pain and disability in German social policy, madness and identity following World War II, and East German conceptions of deviance. He is currently working on a book, tentatively entitled "The Reconstructed Personality: Crime, Politics, and Forensic Psychology in Germany, 1933-1989," that examines how politics and psychology defined ideals of personhood and normality in Nazi, West, and East Germany. Email:gae2@psu.edu
Hartmut Heep was educated at the University of Mainz, Germany. In 1993, he received his doctorate in Comparative Literature from the University of Illinois. He is Associate Professor of German and Comparative Literature and the author of A Different Poem: Rainer Maria Rilke's American Translators Randall Jarrell, Robert Lowell, and Robert Bly, as well as the editor of Unreading Rilke: Unorthodox Approaches to a Cultural Myth. Dr. Heep has published on Brecht, Schiller, Flaubert, Apollinaire, and gender studies. He recently received a Fulbright Lectureship award and will be teaching American and Gender Studies at the University of Mumbai, India.
Barton W. Browning specializes in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century authors with a particular emphasis on the works of Heinrich Julius von Braunschweig. As a fellow of the Herzog August Library at Wolfenbüttel, he has received several grants to pursue his research on Lohenstein and Mannerist drama. In addition to his service as a member of the editorial board of Colloquia Germanica and as a reader for various journals, he was also a founding officer of the Society for German Renaissance and Baroque Literature. His further scholarly interests include the development of German drama in its historical context and nineteenth-century Austrian prose with a special emphasis on Adalbert Stifter. On occasion he also makes forays into the early twentieth century as in the work of Joseph Roth. His most recent work deals with literary depictions of the seven deadly sins during German Renaissance with special attention to the sin of gluttony and such inverted guides to correct behavior and proper table manners as Dedekinds Grobianus. In addition to his role as departmental undergraduate advisor, he also serves as advisor for Schreyer Honors College students and for Delta Phi Alpha, the national German honorary society. E-mail: bwb2@psu.edu
Francis G. Gentry (emeritus) came to Penn State from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1991 as head of the Department of German, a position he held until 1997 when he stepped down to be able to devote more time to his research and teaching interests. His research agenda encompasses broad areas of Medieval culture and Medieval German literature as well as also the reception of the Middle Ages in the modern period. He is the author and editor of seven books and a few dozen articles, most recently the Companion to Middle High German Studies (Brill) and The Nibelungen Tradition: An Encyclopedia (Routledge), of which he is co-editor. He has been a faculty member at SUNY-Albany and the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he was also department chair. In 1984 he served as a Lehrstuhlvertreter (Lehrstuhl Schupp) at the Universität Freiburg. He is past president of the Medieval Association of the Midwest. He served on the editorial board of the German Quarterly (1991-1994), was for many years the German Editor for Studies in Medievalism, and the book review editor for Monatshefte. He has lectured extensively both here and abroad on medieval and modern topics and was a recipient of an Alexander von Humboldt Fellowship (1978/79, 1984) for research in Munich and Freiburg. E-mail: fgg1@psu.edu.
Manfred E. Keune (emeritus) came to PSU in 1967 as assistant professor of German and retired in 1999. As a member of the former Department of German and the current Department of Germanic and Slavic Languages and Literatures his research and publications concentrated on 19 th and 20 th century literature and focused on Theodor Fontane, Lion Feuchtwanger, Günter Kunert, Fritz Reuter and B. Traven. He co-edited and contributed to the books The Berlin Wall-Reality and Symbol and Kunert Werkstatt. In his work on intercultural relations, he taught high school teachers in NEH programs and courses in German-American relations. He has worked extensively as a translator and has taught, written, and published poetry. Among his teaching and curriculum design activities, he worked with Education Abroad programs, Intensive German, German Studies courses, German Business and Engineering and a wide variety of culture, language, and literature courses and seminars on the undergraduate and graduate level. In his retirement, he continues to write and is a member of the P.E.N. Center of German Writers Abroad. He continues to teach seminars on communication and German cultural history for the Renaissance Academy of Florida Gulf Coast University and CALL( Community Academy for Lifelong Learning) in State College, Pennsylvania. In the last twenty years he became interested in the emerging discipline of ontological design which focuses on the power of language in private and professional endeavors. Combining his academic and organizational background, he coaches in the domains of ethics, communication, and conflict resolution. Manfred E. Keune was born in Germany where he worked in industry, and he graduated from Bowling Green State University (BA) and Michigan State University (MA, PhD). He resides in Centre Hall, Pennsylvania.
William Schmalstieg, Sparks Professor emeritus of Slavic and Baltic Linguistics, taught at Penn State from 1964 until his retirement in 2001. From 1969 to 1991 he served as head of the Department of Slavic Languages. His teaching concentrated on Slavic linguistics, Russian, Old Church Slavic as well as courses in Baltic languages and linguistics, primarily Lithuanian. Bill Schmalstieg is the author of numerous books and articles in the fields of Slavic, Baltic and Indo-European linguistics. His historical grammars of Old Church Slavic and Old Russian are widely used in North American universities. He has done path-breaking work on Lithuanian syntax and Baltic verb morphology, and he is also known for his important publications on Old Prussian. After Lithuania regained its independence in 1991, the Lithuanian government officially honored Professor Schmalstieg for his accomplishments in the study of the Lithuanian language.
Ernst I. Schürer (emeritus) has taught undergraduate and graduate courses on modern German literature and culture, with emphasis on expressionism, literature in exile, drama and theater, German business, and Pennsylvania German culture. While his research interests are centered on German literature form naturalism to the present, especially in the field of expressionism and drama, he also likes to investigate the riddle of B. Traven, follow the tracks of German immigrants to Pennsylvania, discuss Emil Nolde's art as well as Carl Sternheims fascination with photography. At the present time Professor Schürer is working on articles on B. Travens novels and expressionist drama and a monograph provisionally entitled "The Economy as a Motif in Modern German Drama". His latest publications include Else Lasker-Schüler: Ansichten und Perspektiven - Views and Reviews (Tübingen, 1999), German Expressionist Plays (New York, 1997), The Berlin Wall. Representations and Perspectives (New York, 1996), and Franz Jung. Leben und Werk eines Rebellen (New York, 1994). E-mail: exs2@psu.edu
Gerhard F. Straßer retired in 2004 as professor emeritus after 25 years at Penn State. Some of his recent publications focus on the work of the German 17th-century polyhistor, Athanasius Kircher; in commemoration of his 400th birthday on May 2, 2002, he organized an exhibit at the Herzog August Bibliothek for which a "virtual tour" is available at http://www.hab.de/ausstellung/kircher/index.htm. In 2000, he published Emblematik und Mnemonik im Zusammenspiel, and in 2004 the co-edition of a symposium entitled Die Domänen des Emblems, highlighting his renewed interest in emblematics and mnemonics. In 2004, Dr. Straßer returned to his native Bavaria. He continues his research work at the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek in Munich, where he prepared two publications that have just come out: "The Rise of Cryptology in the European Renaissance" appeared in The History of Information Security. A Comprehensive Handbook. Amsterdam (Holland) et al.: Elsevier 2007, 277-325, while a piece in the field of emblematics was published in a collection of conference papers: "Wissensvermittlung durch Bilder in der Frühen Neuzeit: Vorstufen des 'pädagogischen Realismus'." In Evidentia. Reichweiten visueller Wahrnehmung in der Frühen Neuzeit. Münster (Germany): LIT-Verlag 2007, 189-214. In September of 2007, he co-organized a symposium at the Herzog August Bibliothek with Thomas Stäcker of this library on "Bibliotheken und ihre Nutzer, 1650-1850." Dr. Straßer is currently preparing an exhibition on the heroic rescue by a local policeman of 13 Nazi concentraction camp prisoners on their death march through Bavaria in April of 1945, which will open at Penn State March 19, 2008. E-mail: gfs1@psu.edu
