Birgit Maier-Katkin holds a Ph.D. from the Pennsylvania State University. Her research centers on 20th and 21st-century German literature and culture with a special focus Exile, Transnationalism, Memory and Border Studies as well as Human Rights. She serves as Editor of the International Feuchtwanger Society, teaches German language, culture and literature courses, and advises students who minor and major in German at FSU. Maier-Katkin has been recognized with a FSU Undergraduate Teaching Award.

Research Interests

Exile Studies

Transnational and Ethnic Writers

Memory Studies

Human Rights

Border Studies

German Jewish Literature and Culture

Courses Taught

Dr. Maier-Katkin teaches courses on contemporary German culture and literature, this includes German Exile Writers, Memory Studies, Legacy and Aftermath of Nazi Crimes Against Humanity, Transnational Literature, Border Studies, German Humor as well as German language courses.

Selected Publications

Book

• Dr. Maier-Katkin’s book Silence and Acts of Memory focuses on Anna Seghers’ exile work and examines literature’s contribution to the representation of historical memory as well as its impact on cultural identity.

Edited Book

• Nathan Stoltzfus and Birgit Maier-Katkin, eds. Protest in Hitler´s “National Community”: Popular Unrest and the Nazi Response. New York, NY: Berghahn Books, 2016.

Articles

• Maier-Katkin, Birgit. “Documentaries about Jewish Exiles in Shanghai: Witness Testimony and Cross-Cultural Public Memory Formation.” In: East Asian-German Cinema: The Transnational Screen, 1919 to the present. Ed. Joanne Miyang Cho. New York: Routledge, 2022: 100-120.
• The Seventh Cross: Dignité humaine and Human Rights, in: Anna Seghers: The Challenge of History. Eds. Helen Fehervary, Christiane Zehl Romero, Amy Kepple Strawser. Boston: Brill, 2020. 62-77.
• Anna Seghers and Judaism, in: Feuchtwanger and Judaism: History, Imagination, Exile. Eds. Paul Lerner and Frank Stern. Feuchtwanger Studies vol. 6. Bern, Switzerland: Peter Lang, 2019. 265-283.
• Carl and Alice Zuckmayer in Vermont: A Gendered Perspective, in: Exile and Gender I: Literature and Press. Eds. Charmian Brinson and Andrea Hammel. Exile Yearbook 17. Leiden, Boston: Brill Rodopi, 2016. 60-75.
• Dem verbotenen Geist ein Zentrum schaffen: Anna Seghers and her Networks in Exile, in: Networks of Refugees from Nazi Germany: Continuities, Reorientations, and Collaborations in Exile. Ed. Helga Schreckenberger. Leiden, Boston: Brill Rodopi, 2016. 199-213.
• with Lee M. Roberts. Transnational Communicability: German-Japanese Literature by Yoko Tawada, in: Transnational Encounters between Germany and Japan: Perceptions of Partnership in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries. Eds. Joanne Miyang Cho, Lee M. Roberts, and Christian W. Spang. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016. 247-266.
• “Ruth Klüger: Reflections on Auschwitz,” Historical Reflections/Reflexions Historiques 39.2 (Summer 2013): 57-70.
• “Kahl und wild wie ein Mondgebirge.“ Exile and Mind Travel in The Excursion of the Dead Girls by Anna Seghers, in: Exiles Traveling: Exploring Displacement, Crossing Boundaries in German Exile Arts and Writings. Ed. Johannes F. Evelein. Amsterdamer Beiträge zur neueren Germanistik. Eds. Gerd Labroisse, Gerhard P. Knapp, Rolf Jucker, Norbert Eke. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2009. 297-311.
• “Debris and Remembrance: Anna Seghers’s Ausflug and Walter Benjamin’s Engel der Geschichte” German Quarterly (79.1 Winter 2006): 90-108.
• “Anna Seghers, Irmgard Keun: Literary Images on Emancipation and Social Circumstance." Practicing Modernity: Female Creativity in the Weimar Republic. Ed. Christiane Schönfeld. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2006. 242-261.