Faculty

Silke von der Emde
Associate Professor and Chair of German Studies and Director of the Self-Instructional Language Program
Silke von der Emde

Silke von der Emde received her PhD from Indiana University, Bloomington, in 1994. She is the author of Entering History: Feminist Dialogues in Irmtraud Morgner’s Prose (2004) as well as articles on Memory, Holocaust Studies, GDR literature, feminist theory, disability studies, and German film. She is currently writing a book with the working title An Archive of Trauma: Displacement, Disability and the Politics of Remembering Nazi Persecution. In addition to her scholarship on memory and contemporary German literature, film, and culture, she is also interested in foreign language teaching and co-published articles on foreign language pedagogy together with her colleague Jeffrey Schneider. Her work has appeared in edited volumes as well as in a variety of journals, including New German Critique, Seminar, German Quarterly, Women in German Yearbook, and the Modern Language Journal. She has taught classes at all levels in German Studies and in Women, Feminist and Queer Studies.

BA, Universität Tubingen; MA, PhD, Indiana University-Bloomington
At Vassar since 1994

Contact

vonderemde@vassar.edu
845-437-5618
Chicago Hall
Box 426
Hours
Mondays & Thursdays 2:45-3:30pm and by appointment.

Research and Academic Interests

  • Memory and Archive Studies
  • Holocaust Studies
  • Literature and Culture from the former German Democratic Republic
  • Disability Studies
  • Language Learning and Cultural Studies

Courses

Selected Recent Courses

  • GERM 105-106 — Beginning German: Stories of Childhood
  • GERM 230 — Contemporary Culture and Media
  • WFQS 375 — Feminist Disability Studies
  • GERM/FILM 265 — German Cinema Behind the Wall
  • GERM/INTL 374 — Senior Colloquium: Archives, Memory and Social Justice
  • GERM 355 — Senior Seminar: Dislocated Lives: Displaced Persons after 1945

Selected Publications

Books:

An Archive of Trauma: Displacement, Disability and the Politics of Remembering Nazi Persecution (in progress).

Entering History: Feminist Dialogues in Irmtraud Morgner’s Prose. (German Life and Civilization Series. Ed. Jost Hermand) Bern & New York: Peter Lang Verlag, 2004.

Select Articles:

  • “Dis/abling Affect: Building Community out of Trauma at the International Tracing Service.” Survivors of Nazi Persecution: Beyond Camps and Forced Labour. Eds. Suzanne Bardgett, Christine Schmidt and Dan Stone. Springer, 2024. 207-22.
  • “‘Faraway So Close’: Transcultural Memory as Christa Wolf’s ‘Last Word.’” What Remains: Responses on the Legacy of Christa Wolf. Eds. Patricia Herminghouse and Gerald A. Fetz. New York: Berghahn Books, 2022: 21-33.
  • “Caring for the Dead and the Living: DPs and the Arolsen Archives of Feelings.” Tracing and Documenting Nazi Victims Past and Present. Eds. Henning Borggräfe, Christian Höschler, Isabel Panek. Oldenburg: De Gruyter, 2020: 15572.
  • “Recovering a Displaced Archive: DP Employees of the ITS in Bad Arolsen.” Fundstücke V: Two Kinds of Searches: Findings on Displaced Persons in Arolsen After 1945. Eds. Christian Höschler and Isabel Panek. Göttingen: Wallstein Verlag, 2019: 45-60. Translated as “Die Verortung eines verborgenen Archivs: DP-Mitarbeiter*innen des ITS in Arolsen.” Read online.
  • “Women in the Archive: Locating the International Tracing Service in German Memory Work” Seminar 53.3 (September 2017).
  • “Dialogue, Conflict, and Intercultural Learning in Online Collaborations between Language Learners and Native Speakers” (with Jeffrey Schneider). Internet-mediated Intercultural Foreign Language Education. Eds. Julie Belz and Steven Thorne. Boston: Heinle & Heinle, 2006.

In the Media