{"id":131,"date":"2017-08-24T14:59:56","date_gmt":"2017-08-24T18:59:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/krieger.jhu.edu\/grll\/?page_id=131"},"modified":"2025-08-22T15:44:28","modified_gmt":"2025-08-22T19:44:28","slug":"graduate-students","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/krieger.jhu.edu\/modern-languages-literatures\/german\/graduate-students\/","title":{"rendered":"German Graduate Students"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"Luke<\/figure>
\n

Luke Beller <\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Luke Beller <\/strong>received his BA in Classics and MA in German Studies at California State University, Long Beach. He began his PhD in German at Johns Hopkins in Fall 2020. As a recipient of the 2020-2021 Fulbright Research Award, he conducted a study of the figure of Socrates and the philosophical concept of cosmopolitism in Bertolt Brecht\u2019s Geschichten vom Herrn Keuner <\/em>at the Bertolt Brecht Archiv in Berlin. His broader research interests include the 18th and early 19th century drama and aesthetic theory, the intersections between German Enlightenment philosophy and Ancient Greek thought\u2014specifically the evolution of the concept of happiness, philosophy and literature of rebellion and revolution from Friedrich Schiller to Bertolt Brecht, and the traditions of global justice and international human rights as they developed from the political histories of Germany and the United States.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

\"Gargi<\/figure>
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Gargi Dargan <\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Gargi Dargan<\/strong> has completed her BA Hons. German and has been the Gold medalist in MA in German Studies from the University of Delhi in 2021. She has attended multiple summer courses offered by ISU Fulda, Heidelberg Universit\u00e4t. Her Master\u2019s thesis centers around the notion of anthropocentrism and the way it has been challenged through the depiction of nonhuman figures in the texts of Franz Kafka. Her research interests include post-war literature, decolonial, transnational studies, alongside psychoanalysis, particularly the concept of intergenerational trauma. She is interested in the works of an Austrian author, Ingeborg Bachmann, and an Indian author, Amrita Pritam. Before joining Johns Hopkins, she worked as a Guest Lecturer at the University of Delhi in 2021. <\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

\"Herve<\/figure>
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Herv\u00e9 Djapo<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Herv\u00e9 Djapo<\/strong> is a Germanist whose episteme has been acquired in various French, English and German-speaking universities in Africa and Europe. He began his studies at the Universit\u00e9 F\u00e9lix Houphouet-Boigny of Abidjan (UFHB) where he obtained his Bachelor’s degree in Germanic Studies with one of the highest marks. Following this brilliant performance, he obtained several DAAD scholarships in Stuttgart, Berlin, Oldenburg, and also in Nairobi (University of Nairobi) where he earned his Master’s degree in Germanic Studies in 2020, as an exchange student at the Universit\u00e4t Paderborn (Germany), with the best possible grade “Grade A”. His field of research includes a comparative study between Old and New German literature which he conducted during the BA, modern German language literature dealing with German colonialism and the various aesthetic literary techniques that accompany it, such as Christian Kracht\u2019s controversial novel IMPERIUM<\/em> that he discussed in MA as a discourse contribution. His current doctoral dissertation focuses on Ich-Literatur<\/em>, New Subjectivity, Pop-Literature and the Constructions of the Self in contemporary German-language literature.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

\"Glen<\/figure>
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Glen Gray<\/strong> <\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Glen Gray<\/strong> received an M.A. in German Studies in 2020 and a B.A. in German Studies and a B.M. in Music Composition from California State University, Long Beach (CSULB) in 2017. In 2017, he received a Fulbright Austria English Teaching Assistant position to teach in Vienna. Glen was awarded a DAAD research grant in 2019 to fund a research stay at the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universit\u00e4t Bonn, where completed his thesis on nineteenth century operatic adaptations of Kleist\u2019s Das K\u00e4thchen von Heilbronn. He will continue his study of literary reception through operatic adaptation at Johns Hopkins. Glen is also a composer of electronic music and co-founder of the Los Angeles Electroacoustic Ensemble. Glen has premiered compositions at the 2019 \u201cOh My Ears\u201d music festival, and in the 2019 production 13 Fruitcakes at LaMaMa Experimental Theater Club in New York. This summer, the LAEE has been presenting virtual concerts via ZOOM.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

\"headshot<\/figure>
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Brad Harmon<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Brad Harmon<\/strong> came to Johns Hopkins in 2020 after earned an MA in Scandinavian literature from the University of Washington and a BA in German, Scandinavian & Dutch from the University of Minnesota. His research is often comparative and interdisciplinarily grounded in environmental humanities, body studies, existentialism\/phenomenology, queer theory, and translation studies. His dissertation project traces the ecopoetics of \u201cflesh\u201d in German and Nordic modernism in dialogue with phenomenology and contemporary ecocriticism. He has published articles on queer theory\u2019s challenge to the \u201cAnthropocene\u201d; on extinction in science fiction film; on Faroese cinema as a translational nation-building project; and on the phenomenology of translation. His research has been funded by Fulbright Germany (2024-2025), the American-Scandinavian Foundation (2023-2024), the German Literature Archive (2022, 2024), and the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) (2019). Brad is also active as a literary translator from primarily Swedish and German. <\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

\"quilt<\/figure>
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Gabriella Higgins<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Gabriella Higgins<\/strong> holds an M.A. in Komparatistik from the Universit\u00e4t zu K\u00f6ln and two bachelors degrees, a B.A. in Comparative Literature from the University of Rochester and a B.M. in Vocal Performance from the Eastman School of Music. She joined the Johns Hopkins German Department as a PhD student in the Fall of 2025. She has done work on urban space in 20th century Jewish American literature, the theory of World Literature, and theoretical and applied problems of translation. In these contexts she is especially interested in the theoretical writings of Walter Benjamin. In her doctoral research she focuses on German-Jewish writers of the Weimar period, with a special focus on the journalistic and novelistic works of Gabriele Tergit, and seeks to connect her historical and applied knowledge of 19th and 20th century classical music with broader questions of cultural studies.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

\"Jiantong<\/figure>
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Jiantong Liao<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Jiantong Liao<\/strong> joined the program in German Literature and Thought in 2023 after studying at Humboldt University in Berlin and earning a BA in Comparative Literature and German at the University of California, Irvine. His current research focus areas include the criticism of capitalism, the concept of alienation, capitalism in relation to the development of infrastructure and everyday life. He is particularly interested in Martin Heidegger, Karl Marx, and the Frankfurt School. During his undergraduate years, he conducted research on East German identity and Kafka’s Metamorphosis in relation to Heidegger’s concept of animality. For his honors thesis, Jiantong wrote about the affinities between Heidegger’s and Marx’s views on modern technology in relation to the living experience of human beings.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

\"Demi<\/figure>
\n

Danmin (Demi) Liu<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Demi Liu<\/strong> received her BA degrees in German, Romance Languages (with specialization in French and Italian), Cognitive Science, and a minor in philosophy from Johns Hopkins University in 2023.  Her BA honors thesis \u201cSauver l\u2019humanit\u00e9 une analyse de Der Besuch der alten Dame<\/em> et Rhinoc\u00e9ros<\/em> comme tragicomedies\u201d studies post-WWII social dynamics, especially the conflicts between the individual and the collective through tragicomic theater in both French and German.  Her backgrounds in language acquisition and computational linguistics have contributed to her research interests in post-modernist and experimental literature, narrative transmediality and intermediality, as well as literary multilingualism.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

\"Lisa<\/figure>
\n

Lisa Schmitz<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Lisa Schmitz<\/strong> is a PhD student in the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures. Her fields of interest include modernist to contemporary literature and film as well as literary theory and the intersections of philosophy and literature. In addition to her academic work, she is also interested in innovative strategies to communicate literature and art to a broader audience. Since 2019, she has been working as an assistant for the Literaturhaus Augsburg. Prior to coming to Johns Hopkins, she earned a BA in Philosophy and German Studies from the University of Duisburg-Essen and an MA in German Studies from the University of Connecticut where she also completed a Certificate in Human Rights. <\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

\"Almut<\/figure>
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Almut Slizyk<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

As a PhD Candidate in the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures, Almut Slizyk<\/strong> has concentrated on theories of reading and writing, German modernism, German Jewish literature and culture (with a particular interest in Margarete Susman) as well as theories of authorship and aesthetics. Her dissertation, \u201cLese-Zeichen: Scenes and Signs of Obstructed Reading in Austrian German Fiction around 1900,\u201dfocuses on material and processual aspects of discontinuous reading in Arthur Schnitzler, Rainer Maria Rilke, and Stefan Zweig\u2019s prose with particular attention to how these texts reflect on reading as an artform itself and a delicate cultural practice. She has taught German as a foreign language from the beginning to the advanced levels and has been a visiting scholar at the Universities of Bonn, Marburg, and Cologne. With the support of the American Friends of Marbach, she pursued archival research at the German Literature Archive (DLA) Marbach. Previously, she held a position as Visiting DAAD Language Assistant at the University of Washington and completed a two-year teacher certification for the subjects German, Italian, and English at the middle and high school levels in Bavaria. Almutholds an M.A. in Italian, English, and German Language and Literature from the University of W\u00fcrzburg, Germany. During her master\u2019s program she also studied with a Bilateral Education Agreement Scholarship at the University of Padova, Italy. Her master\u2019s thesis entitled \u201cCupiditas, Timor, Laetitia, Tristitia, and Ira. On the Formation and Representation of Emotions in Dante\u2019s Vita Nova\u201d was devoted to the connections between encoded emotions and forms of modern subjectivity in the late Middle Ages.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

\"Shengshuang<\/figure>
\n

Shengshuang Wang<\/strong> <\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Shengshuang Wang<\/strong> holds a bachelor\u2019s degree in Chinese Language and Literature from Nanjing University, and she received her master\u2019s degree in Comparative Literature from Renmin University of China. In 2020 she was accepted into the Interdisciplinary Humanistic Studies Program to combine her interests in German studies and Sinology. Her research focuses on the influences of German literature and philosophy on Chinese modernity, especially on Chinese intellectual and political movements in the 20th<\/sup>\u202fcentury. Shengshuang also continues her investigations on the contemporary German writer W. G. Sebald, especially the theme of repetition in his works.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

\"Photo<\/figure>
\n

Anna Wollenschl\u00e4ger<\/strong> <\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Anna Wollenschl\u00e4ger<\/strong> received her MA in German Literature and Philosophy from the University of Hamburg on the concept of Non-Identity in Nietzsche and Adorno. Her interests are situated at the intersection of philosophy and literature and include psychoanalytic approaches as well as gender and sexuality studies with a particular emphasis on the political and social-political dimensions of experimental writing and its significant part in generating alternative formations of knowledge. Further research interests are the notion of “Nature” in German Literature and Philosophy from 17th century on, contemporary theater studies and early Romantic’s Philosophy. For her dissertation project, Anna envisions exploring the figure of “multi-dimensionality” in thinking and writing, with regard for philosophical as well as cognitive sciences considerations. <\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

\"Kunning<\/figure>
\n

Kunning Zhang<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Kunning Zhang<\/strong> joined the German program at Johns Hopkins University in the Fall of 2025. She received her B.A. at Chongqing University (2022) with a thesis on Theodor Storm and her M.A. in German Literature at Sun Yat-sen University (2025) on the constitution and crises of subjectivity in Ludwig Tieck\u2019s work. From November 2024 to May 2025, she was a visiting student in the German Department at Yale University. Her recent research interests include the relationship between literature and moral-philosophical discourses from the late 18th to the 19th century. She is also pursuing an interest in German-language exile literature.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Luke Beller Luke Beller received his BA in Classics and MA in German Studies at California State University, Long Beach. He began his PhD in German at Johns Hopkins in Fall 2020. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":64,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_tec_requires_first_save":true,"_EventAllDay":false,"_EventTimezone":"","_EventStartDate":"","_EventEndDate":"","_EventStartDateUTC":"","_EventEndDateUTC":"","_EventShowMap":false,"_EventShowMapLink":false,"_EventURL":"","_EventCost":"","_EventCostDescription":"","_EventCurrencySymbol":"","_EventCurrencyCode":"","_EventCurrencyPosition":"","_EventDateTimeSeparator":"","_EventTimeRangeSeparator":"","_EventOrganizerID":[],"_EventVenueID":[],"_OrganizerEmail":"","_OrganizerPhone":"","_OrganizerWebsite":"","_VenueAddress":"","_VenueCity":"","_VenueCountry":"","_VenueProvince":"","_VenueState":"","_VenueZip":"","_VenuePhone":"","_VenueURL":"","_VenueStateProvince":"","_VenueLat":"","_VenueLng":"","_VenueShowMap":false,"_VenueShowMapLink":false,"_tribe_blocks_recurrence_rules":"","_tribe_blocks_recurrence_description":"","_tribe_blocks_recurrence_exclusions":"","footnotes":""},"program":[10445],"class_list":["post-131","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry","program-german"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/krieger.jhu.edu\/modern-languages-literatures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/131","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/krieger.jhu.edu\/modern-languages-literatures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/krieger.jhu.edu\/modern-languages-literatures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/krieger.jhu.edu\/modern-languages-literatures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/krieger.jhu.edu\/modern-languages-literatures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=131"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/krieger.jhu.edu\/modern-languages-literatures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/131\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10492,"href":"https:\/\/krieger.jhu.edu\/modern-languages-literatures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/131\/revisions\/10492"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/krieger.jhu.edu\/modern-languages-literatures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/64"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/krieger.jhu.edu\/modern-languages-literatures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=131"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"program","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/krieger.jhu.edu\/modern-languages-literatures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/program?post=131"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}