Jenny Strakovsky is a Ph.D. student in German Studies, specializing in the literature, visual culture, music, and philosophy of the long 19th century in Germany. She holds a Bachelor's Degree in German Studies from Dartmouth College and was the 2009-2010 recipient of a Fulbright Research Grant to attend the Humboldt University in Berlin.
Her current work explores the depiction of psychological development and adolescent education in Realism and High Modernism. She is particularly interested in understanding how literature depicts individual autonomy, emotional education, and moral responsibility through character development and portrayals of personal decision-making.
Her research interests also include: questions of agency, portrayals of artistic genius, legacies of the German Bildungsideal, Jena Romanticism, portrayals of women and gender, ethics and literature, 19th century Visual Culture, Translation studies, Digital Humanities, Humanities Education and Public Policy in post-secondary education.
Conference Presentations
"Matters of the Law: Staging Kafka's The Trial in 1946" Presentation: "From Page to Stage" Graduate Conference, Vanderbilt University, March 2013.
"Revolution as Apocalypse, Poetry as Redemption: Osip Mandelstam’s Cultural Mythology." Modernism, Christianity, and Apocalypse. Conference, Department of Foreign Languages, University of Bergen, Bergen, Norway, July 2012.
"Vocation as a Marker of Moral Agency in 19th Century Modernity." ZfL Sommerakademie, “Erste Kulturwissenschaft und ihre Potential für die Gegenwart”* Zentrum für Literatur- und Kulturforschung, Berlin. July 2011.
"Christa Wolf's Was Bleibt and self-censorship in East Germany." Guest Lecture in "Beyond Good and Evil" Undergraduate Seminar, Dartmouth German Studies Department. Taught By Professor Klaus Mladek. Spring 2009
Teaching at Stanford
Currently: "Old Stories, New Media: Great German Tales and their Adaptations" Undergraduate Seminar.
Course Development Assistant, Art, Chemistry, and Madness. Course in Chemical Engineering in coordination with Cantor Arts Center Museum. Worked closely with Susan Roberts-Manganelli, Director of Conservation.
Instructor, First-Year Program in Writing and Rhetoric, "The German Tradition of Bildung." In coordination with seminar by Professor Kathryn Starkey(same title), part of "Education as Self-Fashioning" Course Series within "Thinking Matters" Program (first-year critical thinking GED). Sept-Dec 2013.
Instructor, GERLANG 5C: Intensive German - 3rd course in first-year sequence. July 29-August 14, 2013.
Instructor/Teaching Assistant. German Language First-Year Sequence* and German Language Second-Year Sequence
Stanford Language Center*
Taught in German. Meets MTWThF. Concentration on Oral Proficiency.
Responsibilities include bringing novice and intermediate speakers to the intermediate-mid level in German; designing pedagogic activities that enable authentic conversational exchange and cultural understanding.
Materials: Textbook Deutsch: Na Klar!, Multimedia (including films, online videos, poetry, journalism, native speaker interviews, web content).
Assessment: computerized oral and written exams. Oral Proficiency Interview (based on National Standards on Foreign Language Learning*).
Professional Activities
Co-Founder and Coordinator, DLCL Graduate Working Group on Translation Studies, Stanford University. Spring 2012
Steering Committee, DLCL Graduate Student Conference: Urban Jungles, Stanford University. Spring 2012
Graduate Assistant, Humanities Education Focal Group* Chaired by Russell Berman, Stanford University. 2011-2012.
Editorial Assistant, Professor Adrian Daub, Tristan's Shadow - Sexuality and the Total Work of Art. Fall 2011.
Seminar Assistant, Visiting Assistant Professor Falko Schmieder of the Berlin ZfL. Seminar: "Surviving and the Biopolitics of Bare Life." Spring 2011.
* indicates link to source.
