HOLLY YANACEK PHD

Herzlich willkommen! I am an Associate Professor of German at James Madison University. Before coming to JMU, I taught at the University of Pittsburgh, where I completed my Ph.D. in German studies and a doctoral-level certificate in cultural studies. At JMU I teach German literature, history, and translation courses, as well as comparative literature courses for JMU’s General Education program.

 

My scholarly training and research and teaching interests span German literary and cultural history from the Enlightenment to the present. Currently, my research focuses on emotion, narration, care ethics, gender, and posthumanism in 19th- to 21st-century German literature and culture. I am completing a monograph on the representation of emotion in fin-de-siècle German novels. Animals, Machines, and AI: On Human and Non-Human Emotions in Modern German Cultural History, a volume that I co-edited with Erika Quinn, was published by DeGruyter in November 2021. 

 

Grants from Fulbright, the German Historical Institute (GHI), and the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) supported my previous research abroad. I spent two year-long research/study trips in Germany at Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg and at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development (MPIB) and Freie Universität Berlin. 

 

Since 2013 I have been a member of the Keywords Project, a collaborative research initiative sponsored by the University of Pittsburgh and Jesus College, University of Cambridge. Our book, Keywords for Today: A 21st Century Vocabulary, was published by Oxford University Press in October 2018.