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Jennifer Bjornstad, Ph.D.
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U. of Wisconsin-Madison
Associate
Professor of German
Professor
Bjornstad joined the Department in 2001.
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EDUCATION
Dissertation: "Functions of Humor in German Holocaust Literature:
Edgar Hilsenrath, Günter Grass, and Jurek Becker."
Ph.D. in German Literature with minors in German
Philology and Second Language Acquisition
M.A. in German Literature, University of Wisconsin
in Madison, Wisconsin
B.A. in German
and English Education, St. Olaf College in Northfield,
Minnesota
WEBSITE: DieHilfsquelle
- This is a growing
site of original resources for learners of German
language and literature:
• German Etymologies
A tutorial designed to teach students of German
how to use etymologies to enhance vocabulary acquisition
and retention.
• Brecht Psalms
A website which introduces learners to a few of
the poems Brecht called "psalms."
• Turkish-German Poems
A companion website to my 2002 IFLTA conference
presentation entitled "'Multikulti': Turkish-German
Poems for the Beginning and Intermediate Classrooms."
RESEARCH INTERESTS
Professor Bjornstad's
research interests focus on narrative aspects of 20th-century
German prose fiction and the teaching of German language. She is currently working on two articles: one is a rehabilitation
of the figure of Tulla Pokriefke in the Danzig Trilogy
by Günter Grass; the other is an exploration
of first-year students as displaced persons and some
suggestions for what foreign language instructors
can do to help students feel at home in their new
surroundings. Future scholarly projects include articles or papers on
the concept of refunctioning in a set of poems by
Bertolt Brecht that are based on the form of psalms,
the cinematographic aspects of the prose fiction of
Jurek Becker, the literary figure of the dangerous
barber, and the learning of vocabulary through etymologies.
RECENT PRESENTATIONS, PUBLICATIONS,
AND PROFESSIONAL ACTIVITIES
- • "Theaterfest:
A Cooperative Venture between the High School and
the University," co-presentation with Timothy
Malchow, Indiana Foreign Language Teachers Assocation
Conference, Indianapolis, IN, November 2005.
• "The Figure of God in the Psalms of Bertolt
Brecht" -- German Studies Association Conference,
Milwaukee, WI, September 2005.
• "'Damit
der liebe Gott weiter schankeln Kann': The Psalms
of Bertolt Brecht" was accepted for publication
in Brecht Jahrbuch and will appear in the
2006 volume.
• "Leaving
the Path: German and American Illustrated Versions
of Little Red Riding Hood" Midwest Modern Language
Association, St. Louis, Missouri, November 2004
• "A
First-Day Realia Activity: "Was ist in dem
Umschlag?'" was published in die Unterrichtspraxis,
Spring 2004.
• "Making
the Transition from Grad School to the Profession"
-- panel presentation at the University of Wisconsin-Madison,
October 2005.
• "Jurek
Becker's Jakob der Lügner: from DEFA to Hollywood" -- Kentucky
Foreign Language Conference, 2004
• "Humor
and the Holocaust: Jurek Becker's Jacob the Liar"
-- John Carrell University, Ohio, March 2004
• In March
2004, Professor Bjornstad accompanied the VU Chorale
on their tour to Germany.
• "Using
Images in the German Classroom: Inspiring Your Students
to Talk" -- IFLTA, 2003
• "Turkish-German
Poems" -- IFTLA, 2002
• "Fighting
Words: The Linguistic Aggression of Edgar Hilsenrath's The Nazi and the Barber" -- Kentucky Foreign
Language Conference, 2003
• A
book review of Kathrin Bower's book Ethics and
Remembrance in the Poetry of Nelly Sachs and Rose
Ausländer will be published in an up-coming
issue of Monatshefte.
• "Using
Group Role-Play to Test Speaking: Setting Up a Wohngemeinschaft"
was published in Die Unterrichtspraxis, Spring
2001
• "Humor
and the Holocaust: Jurek Becker's Jakob der Lügner"
-- Graduate Student Colloquium, Madison, Wisconsin,
October 1999
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