Juliane Schicker

Education & Professional History

Otto-von-Guericke University Magdeburg, FSE; Texas Tech University, MA; The Pennsylvania State University, PhD

I was born in East Germany (when it was still the German Democratic Republic) and earned a teaching certification for Secondary Education for German and English from the Otto-von-Guericke-University Magdeburg (Germany) in 2008. After that, I spent 18 months teaching German to students at Texas Tech University, while also getting a Master in German and a Minor in Linguistics. I enjoyed English-speaking academia and teaching college-age students and decided to get my PhD at the Pennsylvania State University in 2015 with the dissertation “The Concert Hall as Heterotopia: Sounds and Sights of Resistance in the Leipzig Gewandhaus 1970-1989.”

I am an award-winning teacher and scholar. I received ACTFL’s 2020 national Small Undergraduate German Program Special Interest Group Award for Outstanding German Program Development and Advocacy. In 2019, I was an Alternate for the American Postdoctoral Fellowship by the American Association of University Women for her project “Sound Imagery in the German Democratic Republic.” In 2016 together with my former student Briannon Carlsen ’17, I ranked among the top 5 translators of the “Children’s Books on Tour Translation Competition.” I also received the 2013 Harold F. Martin Graduate Assistant Outstanding Teaching Award at Penn State for my work in the German classroom.

Outside of academia, I enjoy the making of, and listening to, music in all its forms and variations, especially Hip Hop, R&B, and post-romantic/almost-modern classical music. I love being outside with my small human, especially when the sun is shining and temperatures are above freezing. I like to see the world and meet many of its people. When you meet me on campus or in class, you can ask me any question and I will be happy to answer!

PROFESSIONAL APPOINTMENTS

EDUCATION

Organizations & Scholarly Affiliations

• Diversity, Decolonization, & the German Curriculum Collective (DDGC)
• American Association of University Professors (AAUP), Carleton Chapter
• Modern Languages Association (MLA)
• Germanic American Institute (GAI)
• Women in German (WiG)
• German Studies Association (GSA)
• The American Association of Teachers of German (AATG)
• The American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL)

LANGUAGES

One part of my interdisciplinary research focuses on East German music, architecture, and the fine arts during the 1970s and 1980s with an eye to questions of artistic expressions of social change, musical engagement with socio-political issues, the reception history of art in the GDR, and issues of gender and class. I also have expertise in classroom practices, especially when it comes to social justice aspects and early language acquisition in the immersion setting. I have published, among other things, about works of the band Rammstein, contemporary HipHop artists, Gustav Mahler, the Gewandhaus in Leipzig, and didactical approaches to teaching German. All these themes inform my work in the classroom where I enjoy exploring various arguments and ideas together with my students. In addition to this research, I also work as a translator.

REFEREED JOURNAL ARTICLES

“Redesigning the Survey Course: A Focus on Music, Historically Excluded Identities, and the Canon.” Die Unterrichtspraxis/Teaching German (2024): 1–16.

“Assessments and Accessibility: Building a Critical German Program at Carleton College.” (co-authored with Kiley Kost and Seth Peabody). Die Unterrichtspraxis/Teaching German, vol. 56, no. 1 (2023): 89–92.

“Gender, Sex, and the Socialist Personality in Herrmann Zschoche’s Sieben Sommersprossen (1978).” Feminist German Studies, vol. 38, no. 2 (Fall/Winter 2022): 26–49.

“The Concert Hall as Agonistic Public Space—The Gewandhaus in Leipzig.” New German Critique, vol. 49, no. 2 (146) (August 2022): 77–106.

“Beyond Heimatsehnsucht: Rammstein’s approach to Vergangenheitsbewältigung and German Identity.” (co-authored with Nick Henry). Popular Music and Society, vol. 44, no. 4 (2020): 397­–415.

“Musical Imagery and the Canon in Sighard Gille’s Gewandhaus Mural Gesang vom Leben.” Monatshefte, vol. 112, no. 3 (2020): 479–506.

“Teaching Writing and Grammar through Critical Thinking in a Genre-Based Upper Level Undergraduate German Class.” Die Unterrichtspraxis/Teaching German, vol. 51, no. 1 (Spring 2018): 63–75.

“Straight Outta Marzahn: (Re)Constructing Collective Memory in East Germany.” (co-authored with Michael Putnam). Popular Music and Society, vol. 37, no. 1 (2014): 85–100.

“Die Beeinflussung der Jugend durch den nationalsozialistischen Sprachstil. Eine Analyse ausgewählter Liedbeispiele aus der Jungen Gefolgschaft.” Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik, vol. 162 (2011): 152–64.

BOOK CHAPTERS

“Beyond the Gewandhaus—Mahler in the GDR.” Classical Music in the German Democratic Republic: Production and Reception. Kyle Frackman and Larson Powel (eds.). Rochester: Camden House, 2015. 135–156.

“Heimatsehnsucht—Rammstein and the search for cultural identity.” (co-authored with Nick Henry). Fire, Flames and Ashes: New Perspectives on Rammstein. John Littlejohn and Michael Putnam (eds.). Jefferson and London: McFarland & Company, 2013. 99–119.

BOOK REVIEWS

German Pop Music in Literary and Transmedial Perspectives (2021). Edited by Uwe Schütte. Monatshefte, vol. 115, no. 3 (2023).

Mehr als Rock‘n’Roll: Der Radiosender AFN bis Mitte der sechziger Jahre (2014). By Anja Schäfers. Society for German-American Studies Yearbook, vol. 50 (2015): 231–234.

“Das ist unsere Party:” HipHop in der DDR (2014). By Leonard Schmieding. Society for German-American Studies Yearbook, vol. 49 (2014): 272–274.

Word and Music Studies: Essays on Performativity and on Surveying the Field (2011). Edited by Walter Bernhart in collaboration with Michael Halliwell. Comparative Literature Studies, vol. 51, no. 3 (2014): 519–524.

WEB-BASED PUBLICATIONS

“Her View From Work: One Professor’s Thoughts on Burnout and Questions of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.” Diversity, Decolonization, and the German Curriculum Blog. May 20, 2022.

“Interview with Jorge Brioso Bascó.” Third Generation Ost USA. 19 April 2022.

“Beginning Language, Complex Topics: German 101.” Critical German Studies: A Blog. 1 November 2021.

“Coursework: GERM 150 German Music and Culture.” Critical German Studies: A Blog. 1 April 2021.

TRANSLATIONS

Groves, Jason. “Eine Neubewertung der Holocaust Erinnerungskultur und ihrer Pädagogik in der Germanistik: Der Holocaust-Nakba-Nexus.” Translation, DDGC Collective, 2024. (Original Title: “Rethinking Holocaust Memory Courses and Curricula in German Studies: The Holocaust-Nakba Nexus”).

DDGC Germanists for Palestine Research Cooperative. “Palästina und die Germanistik.” Translation, DDGC Collective, 2024. (Original Title: “Palestine and German Studies”).

Sara Sadik. Eine außergewöhnliche Auszeit. Translation, Eifrig Publishing, 2022. (Original title: The Extraordinary Pause, 2021).

Gruhl, Jason and Genjō Yorke. Jeder weiß, was ein Baum ist. Translation, Eifrig Publishing, 2022. (Original Title: Everybody Knows What a Tree Is, 2021).

Herzog, Heather. Badehasen. Translation, Eifrig Publishing, 2022. (Original Title: Bunny Bath, 2021).

Roettiger, Laura. Aliana greift nach dem Mond. Translation, Eifrig Publishing, 2021. (Original Title: Aliana Reaches for the Moon, 2019).

Gelberg, J.N. Eine unerwartete Freundin. Translation, Eifrig Publishing, 2021. (Original Title: An Unexpected Friend, 2014).

Youmans, Charles (ed.). Mahler in Context. Translation of various essays, Cambridge University Press, 2020.

“Third Generation Ost—An Online Symposium 30 Years After the Fall of the Wall.” 2019, Translation, with Katrin Bahr.

Sands, Benjamin. Metamorphosis oder eine Verwandlung von Bildern mit poetischen Erklärungen. Translation, University Park, PA: Penn State, 2014.

OTHER PUBLICATIONS

DEFA Film Library. “DEFA Close-Up” (Five Posts). Instagram, Juliane Schicker, November 2022.

“Teaching Guide: The Architects.” (co-authored with Carol Anne Costabile-Heming), DEFA Film Library, 2022.

“Masur in Conversation” (digital humanities project), transcription and translation of private media of the Masur family, to be used for the archive of the International Kurt Masur Institute in Leipzig, Germany, 2019.