German
Undergraduate Program
Graduate Program
Resources

German
Undergraduate Program
Graduate Program
Resources

Recent Graduates

2025

Rose Fisher
Position: Assistant Professor of German, Michigan State University
Dissertation: Grammatical Gender and Number in Pennsylvania Dutch: Continuing Down the Path of Nominal Deflection
Advisor: Mike Putnam

Carolin Jolitz
Position: Lecturing Fellow of German (multi-year), Duke University
Dissertation: Exploring the Effectiveness of a Grapheme-Phoneme Correspondence Intervention with Captioned and Non-Captioned Video on L2 Phonological Acquisition
Advisor: B. Richard Page, Mike Putnam

Alexis Wilt
Position: Project Manager, DEIB Office in Office of University Development, Penn State
Dissertation: Investigating the Interactions of Short- and Long-Term Blocking Effects in the L2 Aquisition of the German Perfekt
Advisor: Carrie Jackson

2024

Chao Tang
Dissertation: The Active Influence of Taoism on German Literature at the Turn of the 20th Century
Advisor: Daniel Purdy

2023

Andrew Hoffman
Dissertation: The Same, but Different: Markedness & the Verb in Gottenscheerisch
Advisor: Mike Putnam, B. Richard Page

Valerie Keppenne
Position: Research Data Management Specialist, Survey Research Center, Penn State University
Dissertation: When Predictions Aren’t Perfekt: The Joint Roles of Prediction, Corrective Feedback, and Prediction Error in L2 Learning
Advisor: Carrie Jackson

Hannah Matangos
Position: Program Assistant, Art of the Rural
Dissertation: Light/Play: Art, Vision, and Futures since 1920
Advisor: Sabine Doran

Anna Wells Piotti Castonguay
Position: Assistant Director of Inclusive Teaching, Bates College
Dissertation: Evaluating the Influence of Professional Development Programming on German Language Instructors’ Engagement with and Understanding of Social Justice Pedagogy
Advisor: Carrie Jackson

Will Weihe
Position: Visiting Assistant Professor of German, William and Mary
Dissertation: Race in (Counter) Revolution: Imaging Modern Germany through Colonial Genocide and Resistance in the Works of Heinrich von Kleist
Advisor: Sabine Doran, Daniel Purdy

Chrisann Zuerner
Position: Assistant Professor, General Faculty, University of Virginia
Dissertation: Shattered Frames, Re-Imagined Pasts: Objects Of Memory In The Works of Maja Haderlap, Melinda Nadj Abonji, and Marcia Bodrozic
Advisor: Bettina Brandt

2022

Katherine Kerschen
Position: Lecturer (multi-year), Washington University in St. Louis.
Dissertation: Targeting Lexical-Conceptual Links to Improve Productive L2 Vocabulary Knowledge
Advisor: Carrie Jackson

Robert Klosinksi
Position: Instructor, IGS Schöppenstadt
Dissertation: The Stop Contrast of Bernese in Misiones and Ohio: A Synchronic and Diachronic Analysis
Advisor: Mike Putnam

Maike Rocker
Position: Assistant Professor of German, Texas Tech University
Dissertation: Variation in Finite Verb Placement in Heritage Iowa Low German: The Role of Prosodic Integration and Information Structure
Advisor: Mike Putnam

2021

James Kopf
Position: Visiting Teaching Professor, College of William and Mary
Dissertation: Investigations Concerning Music and the Soundscaep: Heidegger, Ingarden, Reik
Advisor: Daniel Purdy

2020

Mallory Bubar
Position: Education Projects Manager for the Transatlantic Outreach Program (TOP), Goethe Institute
Dissertation: The Figure of the Child in Holocaust Representations
Advisor: Sabine Doran, Samuel Frederick

Nora Vosburg
Position: Assistant Professor of German, St. Olaf College
Dissertation: Plautdietsch spoken in Southwestern Kansas
Advisor: Mike Putnam

2019

Bianca Gavin
Position: Lecturer and German Program Coordinator, SUNY- New Paltz
Dissertation: Learning Second Language Vocabulary Through Communicative Classroom Activities: Does Number of Encounters Make A Difference?
Advisor: Carrie Jackson

2018

Lauren Brooks
Position: Associate Teaching Professor, North Carolina State University
Dissertation: Kafka Goes to New York: Reading Kafka in Seinfeld’s America
Advisor: Tom Beebee, Claire Colebrook

Hyoun A Joo
Position: Assistant Professor of German, Georgia Institute of Technology
Dissertation: Clausal architecture in naturally acquired German: Korean immigrants in Germany
Advisor: Mike Putnam

Ines Martin
Position: Associate Professor of German, United States Naval Academy
Dissertation: Bridging the Gap Between L2 Pronunciation Research and Teaching: Using iCPRs to Improve Novice German Learners’ Pronunciation in Distance and Face-to-Face Classrooms
Advisor: B. Richard Page

2017

Katherine (Anderson) Gregoire
Position: German Instructor, Clarke University
Dissertation: Foreign Writing Agency: Abbas Khider & Maria Cecilia Barbetta Writing Towards Catharsis in German as a Foreign Language After Trauma
Advisor: Tom Beebee

Courtney Johnson-Fowler
Position: Senior Assistant Director, Center for Global Programs, Denison University
Dissertation: Cross-Language Interaction during Language Production in L1 German-L2 Italian Bilinguals
Advisor: Carrie Jackson

Patricia Schempp
Position: Academic Advisor, Penn State University
Dissertation: L2 Learners’ Processing of Grammatical Gender Varies According to Cognate Status and Proficiency: An ERP Study
Advisor: Carrie Jackson

Liese Sippel
Position: Assistant Professor of German, Binghamton University
Dissertation: The effect of peer interaction, form-focused instruction, and peer corrective feedback on the acquisition of grammar and vocabulary in L2 German
Advisor: B. Richard Page

Adam Toth
Position: Assistant Professor (NTE) of German, University of Alabama at Birmingham
Dissertation: Kafka’s Mei Lanfangs: Race Theory, Performativity, and the Undoing of German Orientalisms
Advisor: Bettina Brandt, Daniel Purdy

Jacob Van der Kolk
Position: Teaching Associate Professor of German, East Carolina University
Dissertation: The Self-Destructing Text: Hermann Broch’s Der Tod des Vergil and the Limits of Avant-Garde Narrative
Advisor: Daniel Purdy

2016

Christine Gardner
Position: Fulltime Mother, Michigan
Dissertation: The Production of Read and Conversational Speech by L1 and L2 Speakers of German
Advisor: Carrie Jackson

Nicole McInteer
Position: Head of US Universities, St. Paul's School, London, UK
Dissertation: Writing the Edge of Empire: Joseph Roth’s Galicia
Advisor: Daniel Purdy

2015

Donald Vosburg
Position: Academic Technologist, Carleton College
Dissertation: Language Learning in an MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role-playing Game): A Case Study of L2 Learners of German
Advisor: B. Richard Page

Juliane Schicker
Position: Associate Professor of German, Carleton College
Dissertation: The Concert Hall as Heterotopia: Sounds and Sights of Resistance in the Leipzig Gewandhaus 1970-1989
Advisor: Bettina Brandt

Nicholas Henry
Position: Associate Professor of German, University of Texas at Austin
Dissertation: Morphosyntactic Processing, Cue Interaction, and the Effects of Instruction: An Investigation of Processing Instruction and the Acquisition of Case Markings in L2 German
Advisor: Carrie Jackson

2014

Katja (Stuckatz) Daube
Position: Head of Office of Strategic Projects, University of Jena
Dissertation: Ein Beitrag zur Modernen Weltdichtung’: Ernst Jandl und die internationale Avant-Garde
Advisor: Martina Kolb

Alison Hendricks
Position: Associate Professor, Department of Communicative Disorders and Sciences, University at Buffalo
Dissertation: Inconsistent Input and Amount of Exposure: Child Language Acquisition of Fering, A Dialect of North Frisian
Advisor: Carrie Jackson

Kristi McAuliffe
Position: Instructor, Arizona State University
Dissertation: Exploring ‘Otherness’ through Holocaust Literature in the Undergraduate German Curriculum
Advisor: B. Richard Page

Marie Qvarnstrom
Dissertation: The Impact of Societal Changes and Attitudes on the Maintenance and Shift of Pennsylvania German Among the Old Order Amish in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania
Advisor: B. Richard Page

Ashley Roccamo
Position: Head of Digital Research and Inquiry Lab, American University
Dissertation: Comparing the Success of Pronunciation Instruction in Elementary and Intermediate German Language Classrooms
Advisor: B. Richard Page

2012

Janice McGregor
Position: Associate Professor of German Studies, University of Arizona
Dissertation: On Community Participation and Identity Negotiation in a Study Abroad Context: A Multiple Case Study
Advisor: Carrie Jackson

Yasemin Mohammad
Dissertation: Dissident Stories of Travel and Displacement: Middle Eastern Heritage German Writers’ Interventions into the Nationalist Imagination
Advisor: Daniel Purdy

2011

Joshua Brown
Position: Professor, University of Wisconsin- Eau Claire
Dissertation: Ethnoreligious identity and language shift among Amish-Mennonites in Kishacoquillas Valley, Pennsylvania
Advisor: B. Richard Page

Beate Brunow
Position: Associate Director & Associate Research Professor, Schreyer Institute for Teaching Excellence, Penn State University
Dissertation: Dramatic Inquiries: encountering Discourses on Women Artists’ Creative Conflicts
Advisor: Daniel Purdy

Jameson Kismet-Bell
Position: Assistant Professor, Boğaziçi University, Turkey
Dissertation: From Allegory to Emblem: uncovering the Brain in Lorenz Fries’ Spiegel der Artzney and Hans Von Gersdorff’s Feldtbuch der Wundarzney
Advisor: Daniel Purdy

Vladislav Rozanov
Dissertation: The real and the imaginary in the literary works of E.T.A. Hoffmann, Joseph Eichendorff, and Vladimir Odoevsky
Advisor: Daniel Purdy

2010

Tejashri Chindhade
Dissertation: Presenting and comparing early Marathi and German women’s feminist writing
Advisor: Daniel Purdy

Noelle Isenberg
Dissertation: A comparative study of developmental outcomes in web-based and classroom-based German language education at the post-secondary level: vocabulary, grammar, language processing, and oral proficiency development
Advisor: B. Richard Page

Michael Wallo
Dissertation: Intoxication, rejuvenation, community: literary expressionists and radical Weimar conservatives in early twentieth-century Germany
Advisor: Daniel Purdy

Rebecca Zajdowicz
Position: United States Federal Government
Dissertation: Engaging with the nation: German women writers of the Vormärz and constructions of national identity
Advisor: Daniel Purdy

2009

Imke Brust
Position: Associate Professor, Haverford College
Dissertation: Narrating the Imagination of Unified Nations in Post-Apartheid South Africa and Post-Wall Germany
Advisor: Daniel Purdy

2008

Nathan Shrefler
Dissertation: Readability and German Bibles
Advisor: B. Richard Page

2007

Nina Vyatkina
Position: Professor, University of Kansas
Dissertation: Development of Second Language Pragmatic Competence: The Data-Driven Teaching of German Modal Particles Based on a Learner Corpus
Advisor: Julie Belz

Dirk Lehmann
Position: Academic Coordinator, ISF International School, Frankfurt Rhein-Main
Dissertation: German in Every Particular? From Historic Settlement to Theme Towns: Example of “Little Germanies” in America
Advisor: Frank Gentry

Department ofGermanic and Slavic Languages and Literatures