Staff Profiles
University Teaching Officers
College Teaching Officers
University Language Teaching Officers
Other Teaching Officers and Lectors
Research Fellows
Departmental Secretary
University Teaching Officers
Dr Joachim Whaley
Head of Department
University Senior Lecturer
Gonville and Caius College
Tel. 332454
e-mail: jw10005@hermes.cam.ac.ukJoachim Whaley teaches and researches in German history and culture since 1500.
He is the author of Religious Toleration and Social Change in Hamburg, 1529-1819
(Cambridge, 1985) in addition to numerous articles, reviews and contributions to
handbooks and lexicons of German history and literature. He is currently writing a
history of the Holy Roman Empire 1495-1806. Like all members of the Department he
also teaches German language, and he has a special interest in translation. He is a
Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and a Member of the Institute for Learning
and Teaching in Higher Education.
Professor Nicholas Boyle
Professor of German Literary and Intellectual History
Magdalene College
Tel. 332137
e-mail: nb215@cam.ac.ukNicholas Boyle has been Professor of German Literary and Intellectual History since 2000,
and has taught German in Cambridge since he was a student. He has a particular interest
in German literature and thought of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and
especially in Goethe, and in the
relation between religion and literature. He has so far published two volumes of his prizewinning
biography, Goethe: the Poet and the Age and is currently working on the
third and (he hopes) last. The biography has been translated into German and
in 2000 Prof Boyle was awarded the Goethe Medal of the Goethe-Institut.
In 2001 he was elected to the British Academy. His wide interests in European
literature, philosophy, theology, and politics are reflected in his book of
essays, Who Are We Now?, published in 1998, and in his most recent book Sacred and Secular Scriptures: A Catholic Approach to Literature, to be published in 2004. He has also edited various
volumes and a CD-ROM of Goethe's works, and has published a study of
Faust Part One and numerous articles on French and German literature.
Profesor Boyle is a Fellow of Magdalene College. He is married to a lawyer and has four children.
Dr Mark G Chinca
University Senior Lecturer
Trinity College
Tel. 338542
e-mail: mgc1000@cam.ac.ukMark Chinca works on medieval literature, with an emphasis on literary theory and
historical anthropology. He is the author and editor of several books and essay
collections, including History, fiction, verisimilitude (London 1993), Gottfried
von Strassburg: Tristan (Cambridge 1997), Blütezeit (Tübingen 2000); he has also
published numerous essays and articles on a wide range of genres and topics, and
reviews regularly for both British and German journals. Current research is focused
on death writing in the later middle ages, and the associated issues of memory,
exemplarity and discursivity.
Dr Peter Hutchinson
Deputy Head of Department
Reader in Modern German Studies
Trinity Hall
Tel. 332452
e-mail: ph10000@cam.ac.ukPeter Hutchinson teaches German literature from 1700 to the present
day and has a particular interest in literature since 1945, especially in
living writers. One of his specialist subjects is the history of the former East Germany,
the 'German Democratic Republic', and many of his publications have been devoted to
aspects of the literature of dissent in that society. He has a strong interest in methods
of teaching, both language and literature, and he has edited a number of modern texts
which have regularly been used at A level and in first-year university courses. For many
years he has been the literary editor of the teachers' journal Deutsch: Lehren und
Lernen, and he is Editor of the Bristol Classical Texts German Series.
Dr David R Midgley
Reader
St John's College
Tel. 338779
e-mail: drm7@joh.cam.ac.ukDavid Midgley has written extensively on German literature and thought of the
period since the unification of 1871, with a particular focus on literary modernism
(Wedekind, Horváth, Brecht, Döblin, and Musil). He has contributed especially to the
interpretation of the writings of Arnold Zweig, and his most recent book is a comprehensive
study of the literature of the Weimar Republic entitled Writing Weimar (OUP 2000). He is
currently working on cultural change in 20th-century Germany and its reflections in
literature, and leads the research group 'Cultural History and Literary Imagination'.
Dr Michael R Minden
University Senior Lecturer
Jesus College
Tel. 339437
e-mail: mrm1001@cam.ac.ukMichael Minden's publications cover a wide range of topics,
concentrating on German literary culture since 1750, with some work on early
German film. His major publications of the last few years are The German
Bildungsroman: Incest and Inheritance (Cambridge, 1997) and edited volumes
on Thomas Mann (London, 1995) and Fritz Lang's Metropolis (Rochester, 2000).
He is currently working on a cultural history of German literature.
Professor H Barry Nisbet
Professor of Modern Languages (German)
Sidney Sussex College
Tel. 338877
e-mail: hbn1000cam.ac.ukBarry Nisbet has been Professor of Modern Languages (German) at the University of
Cambridge since 1982. He was previously Reader in German at the University of Bristol and
Professor of German at the University of St Andrews. His speciality is the literature and
thought of eighteenth-century Germany, and its relation to the European Enlightenment. He
has written books on Herder and Goethe, edited six other books and published some fifty
articles and over a hundred reviews on related topics. At different times, he has served
as General Editor and Germanic Editor of Modern Language Review, and he is joint General
Editor, with Claude Rawson of Yale University, of the Cambridge History of Literary
Criticism, seven of whose projected nine volumes have so far appeared. He has also
translated four volumes of works by Kant and Hegel for Cambridge University Press.
In 1998, he was awarded a Humboldt Prize for research on Lessing, of whom he is
currently writing a critical biography.
Professor Roger C Paulin
Schröder Professor
Trinity College
Tel. 338574
e-mail: rcp1000@cam.ac.ukRoger Paulin has been Schröder Professor since 1989. He previously taught at Bristol and Cambridge and held a chair at Manchester. His major interest is literary history from 1700-1900. His chief monograph publications have been on Ludwig Tieck (1985), on the German Novelle (1985), and on the reception of Shakespeare in Germany (2003). He has published numerous articles on Goethe, Kleist, Romanticism, and on German poetry from Klopstock to Rilke. In 2002 he was awarded a Humboldt Prize.
Dr Mary E Stewart
University Senior Lecturer
Robinson College
Tel. 339155
e-mail: mes1000@cam.ac.ukMary Stewart has taught in the universities of both Munich and London (KCL)
as well as Cambridge. Her principal research interests are twofold: German Naturalism,
with regard to both drama and narrative writing, and post-1945 narrative writing,
particularly modern Swiss authors and Uwe Johnson. Recent publications include articles
on Margrit Schriber and Gerhart Hauptmann for both English and German volumes. She is
currently working on a monograph on Uwe Johnson and also looking at the short prose of
Naturalism.
Dr Sheila Watts
University Lecturer
Newnham College
Tel. 335816
e-mail: sw271@cam.ac.ukSheila Watts is a graduate of Dublin University who moved to Cambridge
in 1998 to take up a post teaching German and Germanic linguistics. The main focus of her
research to date has been on the expression of time within the verb phrase through
categories like tense, aspect and Aktionsart, and she has written on verbal prefixes, on
the development of the perfect, and on other phenomena linked to grammaticalization in the
older Germanic languages. Another interest concerns ideas about the German language in
the 17th century, and she has recently published on both the grammarian
Justus Georg Schottelius and the lexicographer Caspar Stieler.
Lastly, she is committed to all aspects of language teaching, and has published on ab initio
learners as well as on the teaching of spoken German at third level.
Dr Andrew J Webber
University Senior Lecturer
Churchill College
Tel. 338344
e-mail: ajw12@hermes.cam.ac.ukAndrew Webber teaches and researches in nineteenth- and twentieth-century
German and Austrian culture, with special interests in narrative writing and film. Much of his
published work, including his book The Doppelgänger: Double Visions in German Literature
(Oxford, 1996), is concerned with issues of subjectivity. He has an active interest in
psychoanalysis and in theories of gender and sexuality. He teaches on the Faculty's two modern
comparative papers and is currently writing a cultural history of the European Avant-Garde with
reference to a wide range of media and to several language areas in addition to German. He also
teaches translation and has most recently completed a translation of the Schreber Case for the
new Penguin edition of the works of Freud. He was until recently Director of the MPhil in European
Literature and remains actively involved in the teaching and organisation of the course.
Dr Christopher J Young
University Lecturer
Pembroke College
Tel. 338144
e-mail: cjy1000@hermes.cam.ac.ukChristopher Young has a primary teaching and research focus on medieval German literature
and subsidiary interests in the history of the German language and the sociology of sport. He is
the author of Narrativische Perspektiven in Wolframs Willehalm and co-editor of Blütezeit
(both Tübingen 2000), has addressed major conferences in the field in Europe, and organised an
international conference on thirteenth-century literacy (Cambridge 2001). In 2000-1 he was
awarded a fellowship by the Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung and spent a year researching at the
University of Cologne. His work there - an edition, translation and commentary of Ulrich von
Liechtenstein's Frauenbuch - will be published by Reclam. He is currently completing a
co-authored History of the German Language through Texts (Routledge), preparing a special edition
of American Behavioural Scientist (with Andrei Markovits) on 'Sports and Cultural Space' and
beginning a new project on German national identity at the Munich Olympics 1972. With other
members of the faculty, he has recently completed work on German Video Plus (an interactive CD
ROM) for Arnold, and is currently engaged on a co-authored German grammar for CUP.
College Teaching Officers
Dr Anita M Bunyan
College Teaching Officer
Gonville and Caius College
Tel. 332427
e-mail: amb37@cam.ac.ukAnita Bunyan teaches and researches in nineteenth and twentieth-century
German literature and history. She is particularly interested in
German-Jewish culture, has published on nineteenth century German-Jewish
authors and history, and is working on a study of Modern German-Jewish
writing. She has also published on the relationship between literature and
history.
Dr John D Guthrie
College Teaching Officer
New Hall
Tel. 762268
e-mail: jdg1003@cam.ac.ukJohn Guthrie studied at the University of Western Australia, Tübingen and Cambridge
(Corpus Christi College) and has taught at the Universities of Leicester, Leeds, and since 1984
at Cambridge, where he is Fellow in German and Director of Studies in Modern Languages at New Hall,
and Newton Trust Lecturer in the Department of German. He teaches German literature and thought
from 1720, with the main emphasis being on the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and has
research interests in drama (its language, performance, and production), poetry and poetics. He
has written books on Lenz and Büchner and Droste-Hülshoff, and edited Büchner's Woyzeck. He has
recently edited with Nicholas Boyle a volume of essays, Goethe and the English-Speaking World
(Camden House, 2001). He is currently working on a project on the language of German drama in the
period 1750-1815.
Dr Erika M Swales
College Teaching Officer
King's College
Tel. 331428
e-mail: ems32@cam.ac.ukErika Swales, a graduate of the universities of Washington and Basel, has written extensively on
German drama and prose fiction of the 18th and 19th century (a Critical Guide to Schiller's Maria Stuart;
a study, in collaboration with Martin Swales, of Adalbert Stifter; a monograph on Gottfried Keller).
Her most recent book, written in collaboration with Martin Swales, is Reading Goethe, 2001.
Dr Charlotte Woodford
College Teaching Officer
Selwyn College
Tel. 335858
e-mail: cw268@cam.ac.ukCharlotte Woodford teaches German literature and history after 1500, in
particular in the nineteenth century and the early modern period
(1500-1700). Her research focuses in particular on women's writing. Her first book, Nuns as Historians in
Early Modern Germany, was published in 2002. She is currently
working on the novels of the Austrian author, Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach (d. 1916).
University Language Teaching Officers
Mrs Annemarie Künzl-Snodgrass
Senior Language Teaching Officer
Jesus College
Tel. 335017
e-mail: amk27@cam.ac.ukAnnemarie Künzl-Snodgrass came to England in 1981 and was Lektorin for German Language and
Literature at King's College London before moving to Cambridge. She is now a Language Teaching
Officer at the Department of German and Lektorin at Jesus College. Apart from teaching the German
language at all levels, her work also involves lectures on Landeskunde and linguistic topics. Her
special interests are the teaching of ab initio German and of advanced translation, and the
development of teaching materials for computer-assisted language learning (CALL), on which she is
currently working. She is co-author of an interactive CD-ROM, Video Plus German (Arnold 2003).
Together with a colleague she has published a revision guide to German grammar, Upgrade your German
(Arnold 2003). She has co-translated from the German, with Anthony Snodgrass, a short book by
Tonio Hölscher, The Language of Images in Roman Art (Cambridge University Press 2003).
Ms Silke C Mentchen
Language Teaching Officer
Magdalene College
Tel. 335017
e-mail: scm30@cam.ac.ukSilke Mentchen, a graduate of Cologne University, has been teaching German as a foreign
language for seven years at all levels in tertiary education. She has been teaching at
the Department of German since 1997. Previously, she was the German Lector at Anglia Polytechnic University.
In addition, she has taught at Fachhochschule Münster (English as a Foreign Language) and is German Lector
for Trinity Hall and for Magdalene College where she is also Director of Studies in German.
In these capacities she teaches and examines at all levels, with a special interest in advanced
translation and beginners' language courses. Special interests include 'youth language', and modern and
contemporary German literature. She is currently working on a Grammar exercise book for post-A-level students.
Other Teaching Officers and Lectors
Dr Stephen R Fennell
Lecturer Affiliated to the Department of German
Tel. 763059
e-mail: srf22cam.ac.ukStephen Fennell has lectured in the Department of German since 1994.
Previously he was a lecturer at the University of Sydney. His specialist expertise is in
the areas of philosophy, poetry and poetics, Germanic philology, and the German life and letters
of the Eighteenth Century, and he has written and lectured internationally on Hölderlin, Goethe,
Jean Paul Richter (monograph Gleich und Gleich, Würzburg 1996), Max Müller, and Germany and
the Colonial world. His bidirectional Gothic-English dictionary is now being prepared for publication,
and his current work is on the life and works of Friedrich Hölderlin.
Dr des. Ute Wölfel
DAAD Lektorin
Sidney Sussex College
Tel. 38865
e-mail: uw204cam.ac.ukUte Wölfel studied at the Humboldt University, Berlin. She teaches and researches in early nineteenth and in twentieth-century literature. Her major interests are literature of the GDR and modern German women writers as well as gender and narrative theory. She has published on German post-war literature and has recently co-edited a volume of essays, Krieg und Nachkrieg. Konfigurationen deutschsprachiger Literatur (1940-1965) (Erich Schmitt, 2004). A second volume on GDR Literature is forthcoming (Königshausen & Neumann).
Research Fellows
Dr Bettina Bildhauer
Research Fellow
Emmanuel College
e-mail: bb221@cam.ac.ukBettina Bildhauer studied at Cologne and Cambridge. Her research and
teaching focuses on medieval German literature and culture, with a
particular emphasis on bodies and gender. She has co-edited The Monstrous
Middle Ages, (Cardiff 2003), and her book Medieval Blood is forthcoming. She
is currently working on representations of the Middle Ages in post-war
German film.
Dr Lucia Ruprecht
Research Fellow
Churchill College
e-mail: lr222@cam.ac.ukLucia Ruprecht graduated from the Universities of
Tübingen and Aix-en-Provence and completed her PhD at
Cambridge. She researches and teaches in nineteenth
and early twentieth-century German literature and
culture. Her work to date has focused on questions of
intermediality between literature and the history and
theory of dance. She has a strong interest in literary
and cultural theory and is co-editor of Performance
and Performativity in German Cultural Studies, (Oxford,
2003). She is currently working on the notion of
charisma in early twentieth-century cultural theory,
literature, film and dance.
Secretary
Ms Sharon Nevill
Departmental Secretary
Tel. 335037
e-mail: sdn20@cam.ac.uk
The Department of German Office is in Room 201 in the Raised Faculty Building, Sidgwick Avenue
Office opening hours are:
9:15 - 13:00 and 14:00 - 17:15 Monday to Thursday
9:15 - 13:00 and 14:00 - 16:15 Friday
