Department of World Languages, Literatures, and Cultures
Associate Professor, German听Studies
German Program Coordinator
Ph.D., University of Virginia
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Fields: 20th, 19th, 18th Century German Literature and Culture, Austrian Cultural History, 18th Century European Novel, Women Writers, Law and Literature, Contemporary Literary Theory, German Environmentalism
Email:听sschmitz@holycross.edu
Office Phone: 508-793-3305
Office: Stein 461
PO Box: 94A
Office Hours: TBD each semester
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Biography
Sylvia Schmitz-Burgard has published one book on 18th-century novels by Richardson, Rousseau and Goethe and another book on 20th-century German women authors. Her research interests focus on literary, psychoanalytic, legal, and feminist issues. She also teaches courses on German environmentalism, Vienna around 1900, Metropolis Berlin as well as the Bauhaus.
Publications
In 2000,听Das Schreiben des anderen Geschlechts appeared at K枚nigshausen & Neuman: A comparative study of the creation and creativity of female writing figures in key narrative texts of the 18th century, the book examines writing and reading according to gender, narrative inscription of the body, and entanglement of desire for and simultaneous repression of the other in Richardson's Pamela novels, in Rousseau's Julie and 脡mile, and in Goethe's three Wilhelm Meister novels.
My recent book, Gewaltiges Schreiben gegen Gewalt, an interdisciplinary study of law, ethics, and literature investigates the possible evolution of a feminine ethics in literature by women. The historical parameters are the Prussian legal code of 1794, the Allgemeines Landrecht, and its regressive revisions during the 19th century, on the one hand, and the post-WWII reforms of family and marriage laws in the German civil code on the other. (W眉rzburg: K枚nighausen und Neumann, 2011)
"Psychoanalyse eines Mythos: Nachdenken 眉ber Christa T.," Monatshefte 79 (1987): 463-77.
"Normative Gender Discourse: Laplanche vs. Freud's Critics," in Fictions of Culture:Essays in Honor of Walter H. Sokel, ed. Steven Taubeneck (New York: Lang, 1991), 247-72.
"Body Language as Expression of Repression: Lethal Reverberations of Fascism in Die Ausgesperrten," in Framed by Language, ed. Jorun B. Johns and Katherine Arens (Riverside: Ariadne Press, 1994), 194-228.
"'Spieglein, Spieglein an der Wand, wer ist Subjekt in diesem Land?': Spektakul盲re Spekulationen schreibender Frauen," in Bodies, Discourses, Practices:Readings in the German Cultural Tradition, ed. Brigitte Prutti and Sabine Wilke (Dresden: Dresden University Press, 2003).
鈥溍渂erh枚rtes Leid: Ungeahndete Verbrechen in Annette von Droste-H眉lshoff鈥檚 Die Judenbuche鈥澨(Droste-H眉lshoff Yearbook 8, 2011), pp. 63-104.
鈥淔ashioning Mind or Body: Women鈥檚 Choices in 1736. Luise Adelgunde Victorie Gottsched鈥檚 Life in View of Die
Pietisterey im Fischbeinrocke, oder die Doctorm盲脽ige Frau,鈥 Daphnis 42 (2013), 237-263.
Awards in German at 海角社区
海角社区 students who excel in German are eligible for several awards. Those who are at the sophomore level and beyond are encouraged to apply for membership in Delta Phi Alpha, the National German Honor Society. Graduating seniors should apply for various scholarship programs. In addition, the German section awards excellence through yearly book prizes and certificates of merits.听
Representative Courses
GERMAN 301 Take your German to the next level-speak and write more precisely and idiomatically. Fine-tune your understanding of German grammar in order to achieve stylistic literacy. Literary, philosophical, political, and scientific writings will serve as points of departure for discussions and essay assignments.
CISS 192 BERLIN: From Prussian Capital to German Capital to modern Metropolis in 100 years. By the early 1900s Berlin had become a magnet for political, social, and artistic subversions. A lack of traditions, anonymity, and a 'frontier,' anything goes mentality made Berlin a "hellhole and paradise in one." After WWI, Berlin was 'it': the center for the Weimar Republic, Germany's first democratic government; the off-center for the Bauhaus architectural and design movement in Dessau; and the off-off-center for the shocking radicalism of expressionism in literature and art. All the while, fascism was gaining ground, culminating in Hitler's rise to power in 1933.