Nicole G. Burgoyne

As an assistant instructional professor, I teach intermediate and advanced courses in German. The topics of these courses reflect my research interests including oral tradition and mythology, as well as the politics of German society from the 1930s to the present. My courses and extracurricular engagement prepare my students to live and work abroad. Most recently I developed a new advanced course which addresses the 2021 election in Germany and prepares students for writing resumes and cover letters according to German examples. 

I received the 2021 Don York Faculty Initiative Award from the Neighborhood Schools Program in the Office of Civic Engagement at the University of Chicago. This honor recognized my work as director of our university’s chapter of SPARK for German connecting undergraduate and graduate students with local public-school students in an after-school tutoring program. 

I regularly present my work at annual meetings of the German Studies Association and pedagogy conferences. As a long-term member of the BTWH research network devoted to the Inter-War Years in Germany and Austria, I recently collaborated on the publication of The Red Vienna Sourcebook. 

My deepest dive into archival sources pertains to the cultural Cold War with emphasis on divided Germany and its place in the East Bloc. In addition to my focus on prose and film, I also work with news media, feuilleton, and political commentary from throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Other areas of expertise include oral tradition, folklore and mythology. 

Currently, I am addressing peer reviews concerning my article on Georg Lukács’ literary criticism of Thomas Mann and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, which examines the breadth of Lukács aesthetics of Socialist Realism. I am also completing a pedagogically motivated research survey examining the use of German and English in workplaces in Germanophone Europe. This project involves interviewing graduates of our German program, as well as a questionnaire for potential employers. 

Under my supervision, University of Chicago students who participate in SPARK for German develop and then execute interactive lessons for students in local public schools. I also happily advise bachelor theses related to the late twentieth century to present and support my students in applications for study and work abroad. 

• The Svetlana Boym Reader edited by Cristina Vatulescu, Tamar Abramov, Nicole G. Burgoyne, Julia Chadaga, Jacob Emery, and Julia Vaingurt, New York: Bloomsbury Publishers, 2018. Please see here for the UChicago library record.
• “What Is and to What End Does One Study GDR Literature?” by Wolfgang Emmerich, translated and with an introduction by Nicole Burgoyne and Andrew Hamilton. PMLA May 2018. Available [online] here.
• “Archival Sources for the Study of Samizdat in the GDR,” The Handbook of Cultural Opposition and its Heritage in Eastern Europe, edited by Balázs Apor (Budapest: Akadémiai kiadó): 429-433. Available [online] here.
• The Red Vienna Sourcebook, 2020. Chapters on “Antisemitism,” “Jewish Life and Culture,” and “Freudo-Marxism” co-edited and translated by Nicole Burgoyne. Please see here for the English edition and here for the German. Please see here for the English edition and here for the German.
•  “Orality and Social Memory in Nabokov’s Lolita,” Oral Tradition, 34 (2020):105-20. Available [online] here.
• "Low Art and the Nuclear Threat: Mabuse After the Second World War" accepted to an edited volume organized under the auspices of the BTWH research network.

GRMN 21803 Arbeitskulturen: Trends in the German Speaking Working World

GRMN 20100 Märchen
GRMN 21503 Film: Alltag und Verbrechen in Ostdeutschland

GRMN 22320 Das magische Wort: Knights and Nuns in the Middle Ages

GRMN 33333 German for Reading and Research

GRMN 21603 Drama: Brecht, Müller, und das Individuum im Klassenkampf

GRMN 21103 Erzaehlen vom Zweiten Weltkrieg: Vier Autorinnen aus Österreich und Deutschland

GRMN 20300 Kurzprosa aus dem 20. Jahrhundert: Sozialistischer Aufbau und Dissens in der DDR

GRMN 20300: Massenkultur der 1920er und 1930er Jahre: Feuilleton aus Österreich und Deutschland

GRMN 20200: Grünes Deutschland