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I studied at the University of Chicago (BA, honors in German), the Philipps-Universität Marburg, the Freie Universität Berlin, and Harvard University (PhD 1990), working there primarily in German, but also in comparative literature and history. I have written and spoken on war fiction, Ernst Jünger, Kafka, reception studies, interdisciplinarity and cultural studies, Modernism and narrative, the Holocaust, Walter Gropius and the Bauhaus, and W.G. Sebald. My teaching interests include German studies broadly, modernism and narrative theory, the Holocaust and its representation, second-language and writing pedagogy, Susan Sontag, Günter Grass, Christa Wolf, postwar German film, German politics and culture, and questions of identity, loss, and memory in the central European context. I have recently also worked on war stories by Jens Rehn and Hans Erich Nossack. I also teach in Davidson's Humanities courses. I am continuing work on Sebald, on Ernst Jünger's nationalist essays from the 1920s, on an essay on Friedrich Torberg's politics of emigration, and I have a new book project on ideas and representations of German suffering. An even longer-term book project on Walter Gropius, the Bauhaus, and Modernism lays claim to much space on my bookshelves and in my files. I received Davidson's Hunter-Hamilton Love of Teaching Award in 2002 and have been the recipient of many grants and fellowships as well. I take an active interest in matters of student life at Davidson. I have directed the department's study abroad program in Würzburg three times (1992-93, 1996-97, 2003-2004). As Director of the Center for Interdisciplinary Studies at Davidson I work closely with students practicing interdisciplinary research. I also currently chair the College's Graduate Fellowships Committee. Beyond the classroom and the library I spend time in the fields and woods in Ost-Westfalen, North Carolina and Colorado, on the water hoping for wind, and with my wife Cathy (a teacher), and daughters Evelyn and Beatrice (and the dogs).