Kathrin Seidl-Gómez Zuluaga, M.A., Doctoral Candidate
kathrin.seidl-gomez@vanderbilt.edu
Kathrin Seidl-Gómez is currently a doctoral candidate (ABD since 2007) in the Department of German, where she also works as a teaching assistant. She is ABD since 2007, and received her MA in German literature in 2004. Before coming to Vanderbilt, Kathrin studied Italian, English and German literatures at the
University of Regensburg in Germany where she received her B.A. in 2003. In the past, she was a recipient of fellowships and research awards/grants, amongst them the VU A&S Summer Research Award, the VU Graduate School Research Grant, and the Gisela Mosig Graduate Research Fellowship.
Kathrin writes her dissertation, “The Secret Key to My Life,” or the Experience of Displacement: Ernesto Volkening as Essayist in Bogotá, Colombia., under the supervision of Meike G. Werner (Dissertation Chair), Vera Kutzinski (Second Reader), Dieter H. Sevin, and John A. McCarthy.
With her dissertation, Kathrin wants to draw attention to the life and work of NS-exile Dr. Ernesto Volkening, who started in his Colombian exile a prolific career as writer, literary critic, and, above all, as mediator between two worlds characterized by distinct languages, literatures, philosophies, and mentalities. Kathrin aims to expand the existing scholarship on NS-exile and the connected fields of identity-re-construction and re-construction of Heimat. She will further contribute with her work to the understudied area of German influence in Colombian literary, cultural, and intellectual life. At the same time, her study intends to add a new perspective to the growing and vibrant field of research on the cultural and intellectual transfer between Germany/Europe and Colombia/Latin-American countries in the mid-twentieth century.
Kathrin conducted most of her research in the Biblioteca Nacional de Colombia (Bogotá), the Biblioteca Luis Ángel Arango (Bogotá), and the Ibero-American Institute (Berlin).
