May-Chu, Karolina
Assistant Professor, Coordinator
AMLLC - German - General
Education
- PhD, University of Wisconsin – Madison, German Studies
- MA, University of Potsdam, Germany
Teaching
Teaching Interests
- Film and media
- Migration and borders
- Contemporary German-language literature
- All levels of German language instruction
Courses Taught (selection)
- Migration in German Film
- History and Memory in Germany Today
- Staging Politics: German Theater in the 20th and 21st Century
- Current Issues in German-Language Media
- Intermediate German courses: Texts and Contexts (Ger 333), Composition and Presentation (Ger 332), German Grammar in Practice (Ger 331)
- First and second year German language courses
Research
Research Interests
- 20th and 21st century German literature and culture
- German-Polish literary relations
- Border Studies
- Migration
- Cosmopolitanism
- World literature
Publications
May-Chu, K. (2020) Reading Germany, Europe, and the World in Abbas Khider’s Novel Ohrfeige.Colloquia Germanica, 51(3-4), 363-381.
Abel, B. , Berroth, E. , Djavadghazaryans, A. , Gallagher, M. , King, A. , May-Chu, K. , Pfleger, S. , Stewart, F. , & Young, A. (2020) Grenzenlos Deutsch: Co-creating Open Educational Resources through Feminist Collaboration.Feminist German Studies, 36(1), 1-23.
May-Chu, K. (2016) Measuring the Borderland in Sabrina Janesch’s Katzenberge (2010).Mani, B. , & Potter, P. (Eds). Monatshefte (Special Issue), 108(3), 350-361.
May-Chu, K. (2016) Von Grenzlandliteratur zur Poetik der Grenze: Deutsch-polnische Transiträume und die kosmopolitische Imagination.Bonner, W. , & Egger, S. (Eds). Zeitschrift für interkulturelle Germanistik, 7.2, 85-99.
May-Chu, K. (2012) The Concept of the East in Hans Christian Schmid’s Film Lichter (2003).Baumbach, S. , Michaelis, B. , & Nünning, A. (Eds). Travelling Concepts, Metaphors, and Narratives: Literary and Cultural Studies in an Age of Interdisciplinary Research, 221-232. Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier.
Work in Progress
I am currently working on a monograph, titled Border Poetics in German and Polish Literature: Cosmopolitan Imaginations since 1989, which is scheduled to be published in 2024. Taking the German-Polish borderland as a case-study, my project examines how past or present political borders intersect with more figurative border experiences such as ethnicity, gender, or class, and how these entanglements are represented in contemporary fiction.
For further information about my research, please visit https://wisconsin.academia.edu/KarolinaMayChu
Service
- German Program Coordinator
- Member of the Board (2022-2025) and Co-convenor (2022/23) of the Polish Studies Association (PSA, https://polishstudiesassociation.org/)
- Co-coordinator, GSA Teaching Network, an interdisciplinary network of the German Studies Association (2022-2024) (GSA, https://www.thegsa.org/)
- Member of the Editorial Board, Grenzenlos Deutsch: An Inclusive Curriculum for the German Classroom (https://grenzenlos-deutsch.com) (Co-directors: Brigetta Abel and Amy Young)
- Contributed to “Milwaukee: Past, Present, Future!” (a free online course offered by UWM, Summer 2020) (https://uwm.edu/news/uwm-offers-free-online-summer-class-about-city-of-milwaukee-2)
- Co-convener at the Workshop for Wisconsin Educators: Eastern Europe 30 Years after the Fall of the Berlin Wall, UW-Madison, Spring 2019 (https://creeca.wisc.edu/2019/04/the_end_of_democracy/)