BACKGROUND

B.A. German and History, Kent State University
M.A. German Literature, Kent State University
Ph.D. German Literature, U. Wisconsin-Madison

AREAS OF INTEREST

20th & 21st c. German literature and cultural studies
Literature of the GDR and reunified Germany

Prof. Twark comes from Ohio and has lived and studied in Germany for many years. She wrote her dissertation with Prof. Marc Silberman on humorous and satirical literary modes in the prose texts of eight Eastern German authors coming to terms with their GDR experiences and the fall of the Berlin Wall. She also has interests in literary criticism and feminist theory. She is currently working on a pedagogy article that strategizes ways to bring her research on popular literature and culture into the classroom. Her next project will examine several recent and highly popular German science fiction novels like Frank Schätzing's Der Schwarm (2004) and Andreas Eschbach's Ausgebrannt (2007), looking at the ways they envision a not-so-distant future environmental apocalypse.

STUDY ABROAD

2005 Fulbright Summer Seminar in Berlin on Current Trends in Contemporary German Literature
1999-2000 Universität Bonn, Germany
1992-94, 1998-99 Universität Leipzig, Germany
Fall 1990 Leicester University, England
Summer 1989 Universität Innsbruck, Austria
Spring 1988 Kent State Semester in Florence

PUBLICATIONS

Forthcoming October 2007. Humor, Satire, and Identity: Eastern German Literature in the 1990s. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

2006. Review of Theater der Wende-Wendetheater (Film-Medium-Diskurs, 11) by Birgit Haas. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2004. German Studies Review 29.3: 642-643.

2005. Review of Volker Braun in Perspective. German Monitor 58 edited by Rolf Jucker. Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, 2004. German Quarterly 78.3:397-98.

Fall 2004. "Landscape, Seascape, Cyberscape: Narrative Strategies to Dredge up the Past in Günter Grass's Novella Im Krebsgang," Gegenwartsliteratur 3:143-68

Spring 2003. Kristie Foell and Jill Twark, "Bekenntnisse des Stasi-Hochstaplers Klaus Uhlzscht: Thomas Brussig's Comical and Controversial Helden wie wir," eds. Paul Cooke and Andrew Plowman, The Politics of Culture: Writers and the East German Secret Police (Houndmills, Basingstoke, England: Palgrave Macmillan)

2002. "Hurra, Humor ist nicht mehr eingeplant! Eastern German Cabarettists Speak Out." Legacies and Identity: East and West German Literary Responses to Unification. British and Irish Studies in German Language and Literature, Volume 31. Ed. Martin Kane (Oxford, England et al.: Peter Lang)

Summer 2001. "Ko...Ko...Konolialismus," said the giraffe: Humorous and Satirical Responses to German Unification," in Textual Responses to German Unification, eds. Kristie Foell, Rachel J. Halverson, and Carol Anne Costabile-Heming, New York and Berlin: de Gruyter, 151-169.

Fall 2000. Book Review, Volker Braun, Tumulus (Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 1999), in Focus on Literatur 7(2000), 135-140.

February 2000. "Mathias Wedel and Matthias Biskupek: Two Satirists 'im Wandel der Wende'" Online, glossen 10.

December 1999. "So larmoyant sind sie im Osten gar nicht: Gespräch mit Bernd Schirmer," GDR Bulletin 26.

December 1999. "Satireschreiben vor und nach der Wende: Interview mit Matthias Biskupek," GDR Bulletin 26.