As an associate instructional professor, I teach all levels of courses in the German language program. The topics of these courses reflect my research interests including the politics of German and Austrian society from the 1930s to the present more generally and the Cold War in particular. My courses and extracurricular engagement opportunities prepare my students to live, study, and work abroad.
Intellectual Profile
My deepest dives into archival sources pertain to the cultural Cold War with emphasis on divided Germany and its place in the East Bloc. For example, I work with the censorship documentation at the German Bundesarchiv to explore the political and aesthetic criteria utilized by the Communist dictatorship of East Germany. 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. This expertise informs the courses I teach, as well as my efforts to develop research-backed language assessments under the purview of the Chicago Language Center.
Currently, I am drafting an article with my colleagues in the German language program that describes the process of reverse design we have undertaken to update our curriculum across three levels of instruction. I am also completing peer review of a chapter on Germany’s answer to the success of the James Bond films, a re-boot of the Mabuse franchise in 1960s West Germany. This latter article will be part of an edited volume organized under the auspices of the BTWH research network, of which I have been a member for over a decade. I am also currently working with NFP Media on a set of interviews exploring the importance of the Protestant Church to dissidents in East Germany.
I am particularly proud of having 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 program. I am currently drafting grant proposals to expand the work of the SPARK program at UChicago and beyond.
Work with Students
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. Every year I also supervise an undergraduate student teaching assistant in the German language program. I also happily advise bachelor theses related to the twentieth century to present and support my students in applications for study and work abroad.
Selected Publications
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] with institutional login 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, forthcoming in 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.
“Orality and Social Memory in Nabokov’s Lolita,” Oral Tradition, 34 (2020):105-20. Available [online] here.
“Georg Lukács and the World Literature of Socialist Realism: A Case Study of Cold War Cultural Conflict,” JNT: Journal of Narrative Theory, 52.3 (Fall 2022): 305–33. Available [online] with institutional login here.
“Community Engagement and Teacher Training in Four American “SPARK for German” Teaching Labs. Coauthored with Pascale LaFountain, Stefanie Ohnesorg, Susanne Wagner, and Bianca Isabella Zárate Gonzalez. KONTEXTE Internationales Journal zur Professionalisierung in Deutsch als Fremdsprache 2.1 (Spring 2024):149-163. Available [online] here.
Teaching
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 21103 Erzählen vom Zweiten Weltkrieg: Vier Autorinnen aus Österreich und Deutschland
GRMN 21503 Film: Alltag und Verbrechen in Ostdeutschland
GRMN 21603 Drama: Brecht, Müller, und das Individuum im Klassenkampf
GRMN 21803 Arbeitskulturen: Trends in the German Speaking Working World
GRMN 22320 Das magische Wort: Knights and Nuns in the Middle Ages
GRMN 25121 Intimacy and Desire in German Cinema
