Born and raised in a suburb of Washington, D.C., I have been exposed to Swiss and German culture from birth. Summers spent visiting my grandparents, uncle, and extended family in the Swiss Alps sparked my interest in German literature, hiking, and chocolate.
In the Spring of 2004, I graduated summa cum laude from the College of William and Mary in Virginia, where I majored in English and German. My Honor’s Thesis, Obligations of the Individual: George Eliot and Duty provided me with my first glimpse of the interaction between literature and religion.
A junior year abroad in Germany at the Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster sparked my interest in Comparative Literature, where I participated in seminars on German translations of Shakespeare’s sonnets, literature and painting, and early American writing. The unique perspective available to me as the only native English speaker in the German classroom underscored the possibility of cultural and literary exchange which, to this day, I pursue in my own research and teaching.
Before I began graduate school at Vanderbilt in the Fall of 2005, I worked as an editorial assistant for Peace Hill Press, an independent publishing company in Virginia. The press specializes in educational materials, and I had the opportunity to contribute to two of the history books.
In 2007, I finished my Masters course work at the Freie Universität Berlin in Germany and I earned my Master's Degree in October of that year. After two more years of course work at Vanderbilt, I successfully completed my qualifying exams in the Fall of 2009. Now happily ABD, I am hard at work on my dissertation, with its working title of Writing for Mitmysten in Existential Crisis: Elisabeth Langgässer’s Novel, Das unauslöschliche Siegel. The intersections of culture, religion, and literature present in Langgässer’s works continue to fascinate me as I explore the ramifications of her Catholic belief and (half) Jewish classification during the Holocaust.
Involvement in the community has always been important to me, both within the Vanderbilt community and beyond in Nashville. Currently, I serve as co-chair of the Holocaust Lecture Series for 2010, and have also served as co-chair for 2009’s series, Barriers and Boundaries. I have also worked as a tutor for the Nashville Adult Literacy Council. Here at Vanderbilt, I serve as president of the Graduate Christian Fellowship.
My professional memberships include the American Association for Teachers of German, the Modern Language Association, and Women in German. My research interests are film, translation, theology, autobiography, and second language acquisition. There is a special place in my heart for Saint Augustine, Wendell Berry, and Frauenliteratur.
Conferences
62nd Kentucky Foreign Language Conference University of Kentucky, Lexington April 2009
Race and Reading in Heinrich von Kleist's Verlobung in St. Domingo
61st Kentucky Foreign Language Conference University of Kentucky, Lexington April 2008
Boundaries and Limitations of the "ich" in Gottfried Benn's Unter der Großhirnrinde and Gehirne
Myth: A Graduate Student Conference University of Massachusetts, Amherst February 2008
Livy's Early History of Rome, St. Augustine's City of God, and Lessing's Emilia Galotti: The Myth of Chastity
Elizabeth Weber