Robert Kelz - robertkelz@hotmail.com
“Der Verstand, O der unglückselige Verstand! Studiere nicht zu viel mein lieber Junge” –Heinrich von Kleist, 1808.
A native of New York City, I graduated "Magna Cum Laude" from Tulane University with a double-major in German and English literature in 1998 and spent the following year in Berlin on a Fulbright Scholarship. In 2002, I enrolled in Vanderbilt’s Ph.D. program in German Studies. In 2003-2004, I participant in Vanderbilt’s exchange program with the Freie Universität Berlin. In autumn of 2005 I survived my MA Exams, and the following spring my sufferings were rewarded with a research grant from Vanderbilt’s Center for the Americas to spend the 2006 summer in Argentina. In addition to consuming massive quantities of yerba mate and learning to tango, I made use of the many archival and human resources in Buenos Aires to investigate the Freie Deutsche Bühne and the Deutsches Theater in Argentinien, two German theaters of opposing political orientations which co-existed in the Argentine capital during the 1940’s and 50’s. I am currently devouring my fingernails in frightful anticipation of my Prelims in May, translating together Dr. Vera Kutzinski Ottmar Ette’s Überlebenswissenschaften and ZwischenWeltenSchreiben, working to place actor/director Jacques Arndt’s personal archive of Exiltheater in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in Vanderbilt University Library’s Special Collections Department, and experimenting with the hallucinogenic side-effects of sleep deprivation.
Conference:
" Competing Germanies: Die Freie Deutsche Bühne and the Deutsches Theater in Argentinien in Buenos Aires, Argentina 1938-1945," University of Maryland
Graduate Forum: "History as Text, Text as History" February 23-24, 2007.
Grants:
• J. William Fulbright Scholarship to Berlin, Germany, 1998-1999
• Vanderbilt Center for the Americas Summer Grant, 2006
• Vanderbilt Graduate School Summer Research Award, 2007
• DAAD Research Grant, 2007-2008
• Vanderbilt Center for the Americas Dissertation Fellowship, 2007-2008
