May-Chu, Karolina
maychu@uwm.eduCurtin Hall 894

May-Chu, Karolina

Associate Professor, Coordinator
AMLLC - German - General

Education

  • PhD in German Studies, University of Wisconsin–Madison, 2017
  • MA in American Studies, University of Potsdam, Germany, 2006

Courses Taught

Dr. May-Chu teaches a variety of courses in the German Program, from first semester German language courses through seminars at the advanced level. Past courses have included:

  • Borders and Border Crossers in German Film
  • Seminar on 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
  • Views of Germany: Beer, Bread, and Brats (taught in English)

Teaching Interests

  • Film and media
  • Migration and borders
  • Contemporary German-language literature
  • All levels of German language instruction

Research Interests

  • 20th and 21st century German literature and culture
  • German-Polish literary relations
  • Border Studies
  • Migration
  • Cosmopolitanism
  • World literature
  • East German literature
  • The Baltic Sea

Karolina May-Chu's first monograph, Border Poetics in German and Polish Literature: Cosmopolitan Imaginations since 1989 was published with Camden House in 2024. Taking the German-Polish borderland as a case-study, the book 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 more information about the book, please visit https://boydellandbrewer.com/9781640141698/border-poetics-in-german-and-polish-literature

In her new research project, Karolina May-Chu examines how escapes across the Baltic Sea during the Cold War are represented in German and Polish literature and film (1952-present).

Publications

May-Chu, K. (2024) Border Poetics in German and Polish Literature: Cosmopolitan Imaginations since 1989. Camden House.
May-Chu, K. (2024) "Reimagining the German-Polish Borderlands in Nowa Amerika and Słubfurt." TRANSIT: A Journal of Travel, Migration, and Multiculturalism in the German-speaking World (Special Cluster: German-Polish Borderlands in Contemporary Literature and Culture, eds. Karolina May-Chu and Paula Wojcik) 14 no.1 (2024): 54-73. 
Hicke, K. and K. May-Chu. Translated from Polish into English. "Excerpts from Inga Iwasiów’s novel Bambino (2008)." TRANSIT (Special Cluster: German-Polish Borderlands in Contemporary Literature and Culture, eds. May-Chu and Wojcik), 14 no.1 (2024): 140-48. 
Court, J., K. May-Chu, J. Williamson, and J. Wipplinger (2023). “Expanding Access through Online Asynchronous Language Courses,” Language Program Vitality in the United States: From Surviving to Thriving in Higher Education. eds. Emily Heidrich Uebel, Felix A. Kronenberg, and Scott Sterling. Educational Linguistics (63), Springer.
May-Chu, K. (2020) "Reading Germany, Europe, and the World in Abbas Khider’s Novel Ohrfeige." Colloquia Germanica, (Special Issue: Europe in Contemporary German-Language Literature, eds. Anke Biendarra and Friederike Eigler) 51 no 3-4 (2020): 363-81.
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.

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