Butler University - German Language, Literature, and Culture: Getting Started

Over the weekend, while looking up a former colleague from my graduate student days at the University of Virginia, I stumbled upon this page of links (and even media), curated by subject librarian Franny Gaede. I found her collection to be such an excellent resource for students of German language, literature, and culture at all levels that I tweeted her out of the blue. Someone finally did all the hard work and collected (and organized) the best resources on the web. And today, I told my students about the site. Brava!

Jan 2016 CV Martin P. Sheehan

Mahlzeit! A German Brown Bag series - “Der Tatortreiniger” (Crime Scene Cleaner)

Please join Tech's German Club tomorrow for another installment of Mahlzeit! A German Brown Bag series. We’ll watch an episode of the very popular German comedy series “Der Tatortreiniger” (Crime Scene Cleaner)—see the flyer for more details. Some light snacks will be provided, and you are encouraged to bring your lunch to eat while you watch.

We hope to see you Tues, Oct 27, between 11:10 and 11:45am in OKLY 212. More installments of Mahlzeit! will take place throughout the semester (each featuring different TV shows), so if you can’t attend next week, you will have more opportunities in November and December. 

Progress Report "Deutsch interaktiv - Einführung" iBook Part 1

It's been over two years now that "Deutsch interaktiv," the interactive textbook I planned, produced, and co-authored for the American market, has been available on iTunes. The "Deutsch interaktiv" iBook series was initially a side-project, a pedagogic experiment in a new medium--more a hobby than anything else. Back in 2011, I assumed that so many textbook publishers would be rushing to the new format, but, as things stand now in 2015, no major foreign language textbook publisher that I know of has made the leap. I assume it is because of Apple's price cap and an unwillingness to develop intellectual property for a medium that has no secondary market. (More on that gap in the market in Part 2 of this post.)

Anyway, part of my morning routine includes checking how many German language learners across the world have downloaded the iBook, and I am continually surprised and humbled to learn that at least a few people find the book each day.

You can find the free extended introduction to the "Deutsch interaktiv" series by following this link 

The daily download record of Deutsch interaktiv-Einführung (July '14-Oct '15)

I have noticed of late how more learners in Germany are downloading the iBook and its later chapters. Although I have no way of knowing, I hope that the iBooks are helping the many migrants who are undertaking the difficult journey from the Middle East to Germany. I've been talking with some publishers and other pedagogues about crafting a curriculum designed especially for migrant students. Some options already exist, and from what I have seen, they are effective enough, so I hope they support Germany's many new citizens.

Karoline von Günderrode's English #wiki WiG

A reason to host wikipedia hackathons! Will run the idea by Tenn Tech's German club at next meeting https://t.co/Y4zW92C91F

— Martin P. Sheehan (@HerrSheehan) October 24, 2015

from Twitter https://twitter.com/HerrSheehan

October 24, 2015 at 06:31PM
via Arzillo Official Site

Grammar in culture - Classroom Assessment

After participating in a number of ACTFL webinars last semester, I now focus regularly on providing a communicative, culturally rich frame for my classroom assessments. Here, my 3020 students are using Futur to indicate what will happen during next year's Karneval events. Beyond mere mechanical manipulation, students first learned about how the Kölner celebrate each Karneval event from a short description. Next, they wrote about next year, and then I asked them which separate event did they want to learn more about. It was no surprise to me that Weiberfastnacht was the most popular...it is the most challenging to discuss, given the tradition of women cutting off men's ties. The students found the dwtv video I played very entertaining and informative, their laughter seemed to suggest!

CFP: Aura Today: Explorations of Corporeality and Materiality on the Modern Stage

  CFP: Aura Today: Explorations of Corporeality and Materiality on the Modern Stage

German Studies Association Annual Meeting (GSA)
Kansas City, Missouri, September 18-21, 2014
Deadline: February 7 (Panel Submissions Due February 17)

Panel organizers:
Martin P. Sheehan (Assistant Professor of German, Tennessee Technological University; msheehan@tntech.edu)
Gerrit Roessler (Program Director, German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD);  roessler@daad.org)

Walter Benjamin describes the dramatic stage as one of the few remaining spaces in which audiences can experience the aura of the work of art. While the means of reproduction eradicate this sense of presence and immediacy in most other forms of art, aura remains an integral part of theatrical performance, because “the artistic performance of a stage actor is directly presented to the public by the actor in person” as Benjamin observes in his famous essay The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (1936).

However, we might argue that the modern stage challenges the very notion of presence and corporeality, opting instead for dramatic figures like Goethe’s Homunculus or Büchner’s Valerio who seem designed to displace the immediacy of the object on stage and frame it in terms of the audience’s imaginary. The dramatic stage is populated by objects and bodies that have no immediate material presence. We could say that they lack precisely what Benjamin calls “the here and now of the work of art.”

Given the tension that these and other figures create between performance, stage, and audience, this panel seeks to explore how dramas frame corporeality and its intersection with the alleged opposition of real and imagined bodies. How do dramatic texts portray objects that are sensually experienced, but not necessarily haptic, and vice versa? Particular attention will be paid to how bodies, products, or corporeal realities are culturally constructed, performed, or razed in the process of listening, viewing – and reading, during the course of performance.

In addition to the interplay of corporeality and identity, we want to explore how “real” and “imagined” corporeality comes into being. We are particularly interested in the close examination of how different texts and textualities employ the notion of what is abstract and concrete, seen and not seen, or heard and not heard in their construction and deconstruction of corporeality. Furthermore, the interplay of presence and absence, distance and closeness, immediacy and mediation, is of special interest.

Possible topics may include but are not limited to:
o Appearance and Disappearance
o Aura and Authenticity
o Seeing Is Believing
o The Aural and the Actual
o Sacred and Profane
o Imagined Communities
o Prosthetic Memories
o Icon(ic), Indexical constructions
o Benjaminian Aura as asset: its construction or destruction
o The Significance of Photographs as real or theoretical objects
o (Un)Real Places or properties and their qualities

Please send proposals (200-300 words) and a brief CV via email to both Martin Sheehan (msheehan@tntech.edu) and Gerrit Roessler (roessler@daad.org ) by February 7th. Final approval lies with the GSA Programming Committee.