Arne Koch

Education

2001 Ph.D., German Literature - The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
1997 M.A., German Literature - The Pennsylvania State University
1995 B.A., German Area Studies - Kenyon College, OH

Areas of Expertise

• Modern German literature and culture

• Nineteenth-century German culture

• German popular culture and film

• Language pedagogy

• Soccer

• Human-Animal Relations

Personal Information

President, Maine-AATG Chapter

Current Research

I am presently completing a number of different projects: An article on neocolonialism and safaris in Austrian film; another on popular German music as a response to the COVID pandemic; and one on racism in German soccer. The latter is part of a larger focus on German soccer, questions of identity, and Ultra groups at all levels of German soccer. Another ongoing project focuses on literary and visual representations of cats in German culture. As part of this project, I consider a number of questions on alterity and sameness as well as the relationship between humans and animals. One of my key arguments is informed by ecocritical approaches to cats as an animal other that subverts longstanding humanist traditions of constructing the human. Through analyses of crises moments in German cultural history, in which the cultural engagement with felines seemingly where at peak moments, this study intends to shed light on the different relationship between humans and cats as this process appears to be tied to humans' exposure to a threatening and revolutionizing (Um)Welt. In 2008, together with my research collaborator Birgit Tautz (Bowdoin College), I began to connect key questions about the representation of animals to broader concerns of identity and community in a Mellon Foundation Grant-sponsored project entitled Thinking Beyond Nation. This project was the foundation for my 2011 article on transnational zoographies in Forum Vormarz Forschung.

Another extensive project began in 2009 with work on "Narrative Sequencing in the Liberal Art Curriculum." It not only resulted in two presentations at the annual ACTFL convention in Boston (2010) as well as a co-written article with James Violette '11 in the journal Neues Curriculum, but also formed the foundation of another Mellon Foundation Grant with the late Craig Decker (Bates College), entitled Cultivating Reading Skills: The Colby-Bates Database for Reading Resources in German which ran from April 2010 through May 2011. The Colby-Bates German Virtual Library would not have been possible without contributions by several Colby undergraduate Research Assistants who can be found on the VILLY site .

In my time between teaching, family, and these two bigger projects, I continue to pursue my interests in popular German culture. Examples include presentations and article publications on Turkish-German filmmaker Fatih Akin (see my 2007 article in Glossen) and Michael Haneke (Kulturpoetik 2010). Another article on the German Krautrock group Faust and on questions of national identity, written with Harris Sei '10, was published in 2009 in the journal Popular Music and Society). And in fall 2009, a new edition of Reinhold Solger's 1862 novel Anton in Amerika came out with Wehrhahn Verlag. It was completed with the research assistance of Meredith Fast '11. Note the AWESOME cover with a Whistler image from the Colby Museum of Art. The Feuilleton section of one of Germany's leading national newspapers, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung,gave it two thumbs up in a July 2010 review. (NB: My affinity for the protagonist must have led the editors to rename me "Anton Koch" in this review. :)

Publications

Between National Fantasies and Regional Realities: The Paradox of Identity in Nineteenth-Century German Literature. (NASNCG 39. Series Editor: Jeffrey Sammons) Oxford: Peter Lang, 2006.
[Reviewed: Modern Language Review, 103.2 (April 2008): 587-88; Jahrbuch der Raabe Gesellschaft 49 (2008): 177-82; Monatshefte 101.1 (Spring 2009): 119-21.]

Ernst Moritz Arndt (1769-1860). Deutscher Nationalismus - Europa - Transatlantische Perspektiven. Ed. Walter Erhart Bielefeld.

(Studien u. Texte zur Sozialgeschichte der Literatur 112.) Tübingen: Niemeyer, 2007.
[Reviewed: Das Historisch-Politische Buch 56 (2008).]

Reinhold Solger. Anton in Amerika. Novelle aus dem deutsch-amerikanischen Leben.

Herausgegeben und mit einem Nachwort versehen von Arne Koch. Unter Mitarbeit von Meredith T. Fast. [Colby Student, Class of 2011] (Bibliothek des 19. Jahrhunderts Bd. 4.) Hannover: Wehrhahn Verlag, 2009.
[Reviewed: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Feuilleton (21. July, 2010).]

For info on article publications, see my CV.