Department of Modern Languages

Dr. Necia Chronister

Professor and German Language Program Coordinator

 

Research & Teaching Interests Photo of Dr. Necia Chronister

German literature since 1989, contemporary German women writers, German film and television, Gender Studies, L2 Literature Pedagogy (see her MA Students' L2 Literature and Teaching projects here).

Publications

Edited Volume

  • Juli Zeh: A Critical Companion. Edited by Necia Chronister, Sonja E. Klocke, and Lars Richter. De Gruyter, 2024

Monograph

  • Domestic Disputes: Examining Discourses of Home and Property in the Former East Germany. De Gruyter, 2021.

Articles in Refereed Journals or Edited Volumes

  • “Juli Zeh’s Landscapes of the Capitalocene.” Juli Zeh: A Critical Companion. Ed. Necia Chronister, Sonja E. Klocke, and Lars Richter. De Gruyter, 2024. 113-131.
  • “Reading as a Trans-Corporeal Act.” The Health Humanities in German Studies. Ed Stephanie M. Hilger. Bloomsbury Academic, 2024. 303-314.
  • “Beyond the Simulation: Reading, Trans-Corporeality, and Juli Zeh.”
  • Die große Mischkalkulation: Institutions, Social Import, and Market Forces in the German Literary Field. Eds. William Collins Donahue and Martin Kagel. Paderborn: Fink Wilhelm Verlag, 2020. 69-88.
  • “Considering a Nation-Critical Model.” The German Quarterly 92.4 (2019): 448-445.
  • “Situating the Self in Historical Narratives: ‘Narrative’ and ‘Larval’ Subjects in Uwe Timm’s Am Beispiel meines Bruders and Christoph Hein’s Landnahme.” Seminar: A Journal of Germanic Studies 55.1 (2019): 20-36.
  • “Conceiving of a Realfictional Body: Material Feminisms and Jenny Erpenbeck’s Geschichte vom alten Kind” The German Quarterly 91.2 (2018): 123-137. [Received the Max Kade Prize for Best Article in The German Quarterly 2019]
  • “The Poetics of the Surface as a Critical Aesthetic in Judith Hermann’s Alice (2009) and Aller Liebe Anfang (2014)” Gegenwartsliteratur, ein germanistisches Jahrbuch 14 (2015): 265-289.
  • “Judith Hermann’s ‘Sommerhaus, später’: Gender Ambiguity and Smooth versus Striated Spaces.” German Women Authors and the Spatial Turn: New Perspectives. Ed. Carola Daffner and Beth Ann Muellner. Berlin and Boston: DeGruyter, 2015. 149-165.
  • “Language-Bodies: Interpellation and Gender Transition in Judith Hermann’s ‘Sonja’ and Antje Rávic Strubel’s Kältere Schichten der Luft.” Germen Women’s Writing in the 21st Century. Ed. Hester Baer and Alexandra Merley Hill. Rochester: Camden House, 2015. 18-36.
  • “Domestic Disputes: Envisioning the Gender of Home in the Era of Re-privatization in Eastern Germany.” Heimat Goes Mobile – Hybrid Forms of Home in Literature and Film. Ed. Gabriele Eichmanns and Yvonne Franke. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2013. 146-169.
  • “‘I Am Dismantling Everything Down to the Very Skeleton’: Rupture, Multiplicity, and the ‘Queer Encounter’ in Angela Krauß’s Die Überfliegerin (1995).” Women in German Yearbook 28 (Winter 2012): 42-64.

Special Issues

  • Juli Zeh. Forum section of The German Quarterly. 96.4 (Winter 2023/24), co-edited with Sonja E. Klocke and Lars Richter, single-authored introduction
  • Neoliberalism and the Undoing of Time. Spec. issue of Studies in Twentieth and Twenty-First Century Literature. 40.2 (Summer 2016), co-edited with Lutz Koepnick, co-authored introduction

Essays

  • “The Enduring Impermanence of Jenny Erpenbeck.” World Literature Today July 2018: 48-51.
  • “Narrating the Fault Lines: German Literature since the Fall of the Wall.” World Literature Today Nov 2014: no pag, Online exclusive.

Book Reviews

  • Juli Zeh. New Year, trans Alta L. Price, for World Literature Today (Summer 2022)
  • Ilit Ferber. Language Pangs: On Pain and the Origin of Language for German Studies Review 44.1 (2021).
  • Jenny Erpenbeck. Not a Novel: A Memoir in Pieces, trans. Kurt Beals, for World Literature Today (Autumn 2020).
  • Monika Shafi. Housebound: Selfhood and Domestic Space in Contemporary German Fiction for Gegenwartsliteratur: A German Studies Yearbook 13 (2014).
  • Alexandra Merley Hill. Playing House: Motherhood, Intimacy, and Domestic Spaces in Julia Franck’s Fiction for the German Quarterly 87.2 (Spring 2014).
  • Stuart Taberner and Paul Cook, eds., German Culture, Politics, and Literature into the Twenty-First Century for Gegenwartsliteratur: A German Studies Yearbook. 12 (2013).

Translation

  • (with Tracy Graves). Chaouli, Michel. “What Does It Mean to Read Online? On the Possibility of the Archive in Cyberspace” [“Was bedeutet: Online lesen? Über die Möglichkeit des Archivs im Cyberspace”]. After the Digital Divide: German Aesthetic Theory in the Age of New Media. Ed. Lutz Koepnick & Erin McGlothlin. Rochester: Camden House, 2009. 88-100.
Presentations
  • “The Television of Unification: Belonging and Omissions” at the 47th Annual Conference of the German Studies Association, Montréal Oct 2023
  • Invited classroom lecture at the Ege Üniversitesi Izmir, Turkey (virtual), May 2023
  • “What Do We Do with Juli Zeh?” panel response paper at the 46th Annual Conference of the German Studies Association, Houston, Sept 2022
  • “Fatih Akin’s Head-On” Southern Utah University International Film Festival (invited film intro and discussion), Feb 2022
  • “Reading as a Trans-corporeal Act” at the 45th Annual Conference of the German Studies Association, Indianapolis and virtual, Oct 2021
  • “What Happened to Heimat?: Home and Property in the Former East Germany” invited lecture at the University of Oklahoma, Zoom, Nov 2020
  • “The Liberation of House and Home: Sonja Blattner’s drüben Series,” poster presentation at the Coalition of Women in German Annual Conference, Zoom, Oct 2020
  • “Re-Considering Toxicity, the Body, and Fiction” at the 44th Annual Conference of the German Studies Association, Zoom, Oct 2020
  • “Dualities of Time in Jenny Erpenbeck’s Heimsuchung and Kathrin Gerlof’s Das ist eine Geschichte” at the 61st Annual Convention of the Midwest Modern Language Association, Chicago, Nov 2019
  • “Fremdkörper: Western Bodies in Eastern Germany in Karen Duve’s Regenroman” at the 43rd Annual Conference of the German Studies Association, Portland, Oct 2019
  • “Doing Things Differently: Property and Brotherhood in Detlef Buck’s Wir können auch anders” at the 42nd Annual Conference of the German Studies Association, Sept 2018
  • “The Enduring Impermanence of Jenny Erpenbeck” at the 2018 Puterbaugh Festival, The University of Oklahoma, March 8, 2018
  • “The Economics of Clean Energy: Monika Maron’s Bitterfelder Bogen and Juli Zeh’s Unterleuten” at the 59th Annual Convention of the Midwest Modern Languages Association, Cincinnati, November 10, 2017.
  • “Examining the Material Basis of Social Practice through the Apparatus of Fiction” Seminar Session at the 40th Annual Conference of the German Studies Association, Sept/Oct 2016
  • “Hello from the Other Side: Research After the Dissertation” Invited Lecture at Washington University in St. Louis, February 2016
  • “Conceiving of a Realfictional Body” Seminar Session at the 39th Annual Conference of the German Studies Association, October 2015
  • “Judith Hermann’s Alice: Death in the Era of Advanced Capitalism” at the 38th Annual Conference of the German Studies Association, Sept 2014
  • “The Moon Screen: Reading the Cinematic Apparatus as Mise-en-Scène in Fritz Lang’s Frau im Mond (1929)” at the 37th Annual Conference of the German Studies Association, October 2013
  • “Domestic Disputes: Envisioning the Gender of Home in the Era of Re-privatization in Eastern Germany” at the 128th Annual Modern Languages Association Convention, January 2013
  • “Angel of the House? More like Apparition! - Alienation and the Renovation of Domestic Space in Ulrich Köhler’s Montag kommen die Fenster” at the 37th Annual Women in German
  • Conference, October 2012
  • “Multifarious Motherhood in the Films of Fatih Akin” at the 36th Annual Conference of the German Studies Association, October 2012
  • “Non-Places in Christian Kracht’s 1979” at the 65th Annual Kentucky Foreign Language Conference, April 2012
  • “‘I’ll do it International for You’
Teaching

Graduate Seminars

  • MLANG 720 Literary Theory and Methodologies
  • MLANG 779: Teaching Literature in the L2

Advanced Seminars (Undergraduate and Graduate)

  • GRMN 705 “Outside-In”: Exophonic Writers
  • GRMN 729 Re-writing Faust
  • GRMN 705 The 90s
  • GRMN 705 Home and Heimat in Contemporary German Culture
  • GRMN 705 Graphic Novels and Postmemory
  • GRMN 705 Turkish Germany
  • GRMN 704 The Familienroman in the 21st Century
  • GRMN 729 History of German Cinema
  • GRMN 729 German Visions of America

Intermediate-Level Surveys and Skills Courses

  • GRMN 530 German Cultural History
  • GRMN 527 Advanced Conversation: Topics in the German Media
  • GRMN 522 Reading the Turbulent 20th Century
  • GRMN 510 Contemporary German Cinema (taught in English)

Language Courses

  • GRMN 101 (German 1) Beginning German I
  • GRMN 102 (German 2) Beginning German II
  • GRMN 201/300 (German 3) Intermediate German I: Speaking, Reading, and Review
  • GRMN 301 (German 4) Intermediate German II

Special Studies

  • UHP 189 Mad Math and Strange Science in Fiction (Honors University Program)
  • GRMN 500 KSU in Berlin (faculty led program in Berlin and Leipzig)
  • MLANG 280 War and Memory (First Year Seminar)
Professional Affiliations

Modern Language Association (MLA), German Studies Association (GSA), Women in German (WiG), American Association of the Teachers of German (AATG) and its Kansas Chapter (KATG), American Friends of Marbach (AFM)