Max Kade Fellows 2011-2012
John Paul Ewing
I am a Ph.D. Student in Medieval and Early Modern German Literature and have received degrees in Philosophy and English from Sam Houston State University (2007) and in Comparative Literature and German from Texas A&M University (2009). I have participated in study abroad programs with universities in Karlsruhe (2007) and Hamburg, Germany (2010-11). My research interests include, among other things, intellectual and religious history of the German middle ages and early modern period, questions tied to historiography and perceptions of history during this period, folk literature, and the early German Reformation. Recent essays under review deal with the Luther-Erasmus free will debates and moral problems concerning medieval economic discourse and usury in Sebastian Brant's "Das Narrenschiff." My past research projects have included connections between various works of German literature and theology (as well as natural science and economic discourse) and I am currently researching issues of historicity and fictionality in medieval and early modern German-language chronicles, in hopes of developing a dissertation topic in this area.
Björn Fritsche
In 2009, I received my B.A. in Germanic Studies (Linguistics and Literature) and English Studies at the Heinrich-Heine-University, Düsseldorf. There, I also graduated with a Master’s degree in Germanic Studies (2011), where I concentrated on metaphor theory, semantics (with a focus on prototype and frame theory) and cognitive linguistics. I conducted extensive research on the neurobiological basis of information processing and developed a cognitive approach to literary studies, which I deployed inter alia on the analysis of the cultural criticism and stereotypes inherent in the literature of the Fin de siècle and of the early 20th century, such as the works of Thomas Mann, Arthur Schnitzler and Frank Wedekind. Furthermore, I applied research from cognitive science to political discourse analysis of the 20th and 21st centuries, as well as to the investigation of the cognitive role of enemy pictures and stereotypes in literature and media during German Nationalism. In addition, I undertook scholarly studies on the metaphorical-framing of the War against Terror, as well as international relations discourse analysis. At the beginning of 2011, I published my first article in this field, “Kognitive Feindbildrezeption - Applikation der konzeptuellen Metapherntheorie von George Lakoff auf die neuronale Feindbilderverarbeitung“. At the moment, I am conducting research on the subconscious effects of language on human decision-making processes (with a thematic priority on xenophobic propaganda techniques) as well as political and literary theory. Additionally, I examine metaphor theories, the role of myth in German Romanticism, and the literature of the Weimar Republic. Furthermore, I am working on my next publication in the field of a neurolinguistical political discourse analysis and the instrumentalization of the media for the dissemination of ideologies.
Julia Gehrig
My undergraduate studies in “Culture and Economics: German Language and Literature, Business Administration” at the University of Mannheim were the initial point for my scientific curiosity regarding modern German literature. During my five semesters at Mannheim as well as during my semester abroad at the University of Lausanne (Switzerland), I had the chance to develop a special interest in the literature of the twentieth century, contemporary literature, and cultural studies. After obtaining my Bachelors degree in 2010, I started graduate studies at the University of Hamburg, where I majored in German literatures with a special focus on theater and media. Thanks to the Max Kade Fellowship, I was able to transfer to Indiana University Bloomington in 2011. Currently, I have a special interest in diverse manifestations/representations of power structures, i.e., in post-colonial constellations and in the presentation of economics in literature.
Franziska Krüger
I am a Speech-Language Pathology major and conducted my undergraduate and graduate studies in Potsdam, Germany. I finished the program in 2010 and worked as a speech therapist for the past year. For my final paper during my graduate studies in Germany I looked at particular phonological aspects in the acquisition of vowels in German monolingual children and Turkish-German bilingual children. Additionally, for the past three years I have worked as a research assistant in a cross-linguistic research project in Berlin. The project aimed at developing psycholinguistic experiments to test and analyze first-language acquisition in normally developing children and children with specific language impairment. I have come to IU Bloomington to learn and conduct more research in my areas of interest. Currently these lie in learning more about the Germanic languages, how to teach the German language and culture to second-language learners as well as studying the processes involved in second-language acquisition, with the main focus on phonology and morphology. During my private time I like to learn new languages like Chinese and Japanese for cross-linguistic comparisons and for fun.
