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Well, as is natural for any graduate student, school is my life. That's been the case for about 24 years now, and it shows no sign of letting up. I'm really quite happy about that! I do love school, and I've found the German Department here at the University of Wisconsin in Madison to be an extraordinarily wonderful place to study. I'm currently working toward a Ph.D. in German. It'll take a bit longer until I'm done -- I'm hoping to be finished by Fall 2006 -- but I think it's well worth it! I used to have a copy of my resumé on this site, but found that I was getting a lot of spam offers for jobs based on that document. So I'll just summarize my academic interests and development here. First off, as I said, I'm a graduate student in German Literature at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. I passed my preliminary Ph.D. examination ("with distinction", yay!) in 2000; if you'd like to look at the reading list of works I had to be able to talk about for that, please feel free. Since passing my prelims, I've been working on actually writing my dissertation. It's coming along, but it's very slow to progress, mostly due to external distractions, otherwise known as 'life'. I do have a slightly outdated abstract of my dissertation available; it's not perfect, since I'm still in the process of writing and changing things around a bit, but the basic ideas are covered there. If you'd prefer not to read the abstract, a summary in one sentence: I'm looking at the life and works of the German Symbolist poet Stefan George, focusing on the apparent disconnect between his politics (nationalism), his poetics (decadent aestheticism, symbolism) and his personal qualities (homosexuality), and attempting to resolve some of the seeming contradictions between those attitudes. The other major aspect of my academic life at present is my teaching, about which you can find more information on my teaching materials page. I'm currently employed as a Teaching Assistant here at the UW, although I have spent several semesters as a Lecturer as well, teaching higher-level classes. I've taught first through sixth-semester German courses, which at the higher levels involve quite a bit more than just language instruction. In addition, I had a one-year Fulbright Teaching Assistantship in 1993, during which I taught English in a German Gymnasium. Once I'm finished with my dissertation here, I hope to get a job as a professor at a small liberal arts college (preferably not a large university), where I can teach not only German language classes but literature and culture courses as well. Of course, the main purpose of this page started off as a showcase for my writing. I LOVE to write, and I make a point of putting as much time into my academic writings as is humanly possible. As a result, I've put up a fairly extensive archive of my term papers, reports, and other miscellaneous articles I've written, dating back to my undergraduate studies. One reason for this is, of course, self-promotion -- who doesn't love to see their work online? But much more important to me is to make this a resource for others. I've been very frustrated and disappointed in my Web searches when looking for German literary resources on the Web; it seems that most journals and individuals don't care to publish their work. So, please feel free to read my essays and articles and papers, which you can find on my writing page. You're more than welcome to cite or quote them in your own work, or to direct others here to read them, too. I'm always open for comments on my writings, and would love to know if you've found anything here of use, either purely recreationally, or for academic purposes. Don't be offended if I'm too busy to answer back, though -- I get a fair number of emails from casual readers, and don't always have the time or energy to respond. Please remember, though, that these writings are MINE -- in other words, please respect the copyright, and do not plagiarize or attempt to pass these off as your own work.
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