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. Her recent monograph, Humor, Satire, and Identity: Eastern German Literature in the 1990s, examines the humorous and satirical literary modes in the prose texts of ten Eastern German authors coming to terms with their GDR experiences and the fall of the Berlin Wall. Her edited volume, Strategies of Humor in Post-Unification German Literature, Film, and Other Media (2011), features analyses of literary texts, films, political cartoons, cabaret, and other types of performance that enrich four prominent postwall German cultural trends: post-unification identity reconstruction, Vergangenheitsbewältigung, New German Popular Literature, and immigrant perspectives. The artworks display a wide spectrum of humor modes, such as irony, satire, the grotesque, Jewish humor, and slapstick, as responses to unification with the accompanying euphoria, but also alienation and dislocation.

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

I. Books

2011. Strategies of Humor in Post-Unification German Literature and Film. Edited volume. Newcastle upon Tyne, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

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

II. Articles and Book Chapters

"Negotiating the Politics and Aesthetics of Satire: Satirical Novels in the GDR and Beyond." Re-Reading East Germany: The Literature and Film of the GDR. Ed. Karen Leeder. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming 2012.

Co-authored with Birgit Jensen and Susanne Lenné Jones. "Erfolgsstrategien zur Wiederbelebung eines universitären Germanistikstudienganges in den Vereinigten Staaten [Successful Strategies for Revitalizing a University German Program in the United States]." Forthcoming in Aussiger Beiträge 5 (2011).

"New Eastern German Satire: Ingo Schulze's Neue Leben as 'Novel of Complexity.'" Gegenwartsliteratur 8 (2009): 67-89.

"Landscape, Seascape, Cyberscape: Narrative Strategies to Dredge up the Past in Günter Grass's Novella Im Krebsgang," Gegenwartsliteratur 3 (2004): 143-168.

Co-authored with Kristie Foell. "Bekenntnisse des Stasi-Hochstaplers Klaus Uhlzscht: Thomas Brussig's Comical and Controversial Helden wie wir." German Writers and the Politics of Culture: Dealing with the Stasi. Eds. Paul Cooke and Andrew Plowman. Houndmills, Basingstoke, England: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003. 173-194.

"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, November 2002. 127-147.

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

"Mathias Wedel and Matthias Biskupek: Two Satirists 'im Wandel der Wende'," Glossen 10 (2000).

III. Reviews and Encyclopedia Entries

Review of Gender and Laughter: Affirmation and Subversion in Traditional and Modern Media. Ed. Gaby Pailer, Andreas Böhn, Stefan Horlacher, and Ulrich Scheck. Amsterdam: Rodopi 2009. In Monatshefte 103. 3 (Fall 2011).

"Simple Storys: Ein Roman aus der ostdeutschen Provinz." ["Simple Stories: A Novel from the East German Provinces"]. The Literary Encyclopedia. Online. 19 July 2010.

"Neue Leben: Die Jugend Enrico Türmers in Briefen und Prosa. Herausgegeben, kommentiert und mit einem Vorwort versehen von Ingo Schulze." ["New Lives: The Youth of Enrico Türmer in Letters and Prose. Edited and with Commentary and Introduction by Ingo Schulze"]. The Literary Encyclopedia. Online. 2 August 2010.

Review of Constructing Authorship in the Work of Günter Grass by Rebecca Braun. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2008. German Quarterly, 83.3 (2010).

Review of Schreiben nach der Wende-Wende im Schreiben? Literarische Reflexionen nach 1989/90. by Kerstin E. Reimann. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2008. Monatshefte 102.1 (2010).

"Kerstin Hensel." The Literary Encyclopedia. Online. 26 January 2009.

"Helden wie wir (Heroes like us)." The Literary Encyclopedia. Online. 26 January 2009.

Review of Geschichte(n) - Erzählen. Konstruktionen von Vergangenheit in literarischen Werken deutschsprachiger Autorinnen seit dem 18. Jahrhundert ed. Marianne Henn, Irmela von der Lühe, and Anita Runge. Göttingen: Wallstein, 2005, German Studies Review 31.1 (February 2008): 209-210.

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

Review of Volker Braun in Perspective. German Monitor 58 ed. Rolf Jucker. Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, 2004. German Quarterly 78.3 (Summer 2005): 397-398.

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

"So larmoyant sind sie im Osten gar nicht: Gespräch mit Bernd Schirmer." GDR Bulletin 26 (1999): 39-44.

"Satireschreiben vor und nach der Wende: Interview mit Matthias Biskupek." GDR Bulletin 26 (1999): 45-53.