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Birgit Maier-Katkin received her Ph.D. from the Pennsylvania
State University and is an Associate Professor of German at the
Florida State University. Her interests in contemporary German
literature and cultural studies include Weimar, Nazi Germany,
and the politics of postwar memory formation. Her research focuses
on the literary representation of historical memory and its impact
on the cultural identity of a people whose collective past incorporates
both the indelible mark of human rights violations and the great
tradition of human dignity in Western thought. Maier-Katkin has
published several articles and book chapters on the work and thought
of Anna Seghers, Irmgard Keun, Fred Zinnemann, Joseph Conrad,
Hannah Arendt and Walter Benjamin. Her work combines German literature
and language, critical social thought, women’s studies and
the politics of memory.
Maier-Katkin is the author of Silence and Acts of Memory. This book explores silence and memory in Germanys ongoing discourse about the Nazi past. It examines the ways in which exile literature
and critical thought by Anna Seghers complements postwar discourse
and current historical research to formulate an acceptable memory
of private life during the Third Reich. Seghers’ work is
particularly relevant in light of a postwar rift between private
and public memory discourse. Her texts The Seventh Cross, “The Excursion of the Dead Girls,” and especially
her depictions of female figures offer a rare in-depth examination
of ordinary life under Hitler. From exile, Seghers reveals hidden
voices and personal experience with the Nazi regime that linger
in the silenced voids of history. Silence and Acts of Memory reconnects private and public discourse about traumatic events
of the Nazi past; the book contributes valuable insights to the
current discourse about the continuing formative process of German
national identity.
Maier-Katkin’s teaching includes courses on contemporary
German culture, the memory of the Nazi past in film and literature,
German exile writers, women in German literature and culture,
the metropolis of Berlin in film and literature, as well as German
language courses.
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