May-Chu, Karolina
Assistant Professor
FLL - 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, September). 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, July (3rd Quarter/Summer)). 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, tentatively titled Entangled Imaginations: The Poetics of Borders, Belonging, and Mobility in Contemporary German and Polish Literature and Culture.
Taking the German-Polish borderland as a case-study, this 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
- Member of the Editorial Board, Grenzenlos Deutsch: An Inclusive Curriculum for the German Classroom (https://grenzenlos-deutsch.com) (Co-directors: Brigetta Abel, Macalaster College, St. Paul, MN and Amy Young, Central College, Pella, Iowa; supported by an NEH grant)
- 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/)
- Co-organizer Deutschlandjahr 2019 (Workshop for Instructors of German; Campus Visit for High-School students)
- Co-organizer Campus Weeks 2018
- UWM German Program “Book of the Year” Initiative 2018
- Organizer, annual UWM German Program student exhibit (https://uwm.edu/german/undergraduate/annual-events/#exhibit)