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

• Soccer (ultras, identities, political ethos)

• Human-Animal Relations (safaris and hunting)

• Language pedagogy (AI, task based inquiry, digital storytelling)

• German popular culture and film

• Modern German literature and culture

• International Education

Current Research

I am presently working on a book project on multiculturalism, questions of identity, and Ultra groups at all levels of German soccer. Some of my recent articles and presentations are directly tied to this project (solo and with students): German soccer as evidence that claims of multiculturalism’s failure are incorrect and that it is in fact an irrevocable, albeit constantly challenged reality (Soccer and Society 2023), how an ethical self-understanding informs both political dissent and action among German ultras (with John Hanson ’25, Studia Territorialia), Germany’s raison d’être as central to ultras’ responses to the wars in Ukraine and Israel/Gaza (with Brendan Althoff ’26, The Football Collective Conference 20204), globalization and stadium experiences in Germany (with Jinseo Hong ‘ 27, Conference on Sport and Society 2025), the centrality of sticker bombing in fan behavior (with Daniel Kim ’28), the power of institutional racism in Austrian soccer (Struggling for Belonging in Austria, forthcoming).

My research on soccer and society has curiously evolved out of a previous research trajectory that concentrated on literary and visual representations of animals in German culture. As part of this project, I considered a number of questions on alterity and sameness as well as the relationship between humans and animals. One of my key arguments in that work was 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, I focused on the process as tied to humans’ exposure to a threatening and revolutionizing (Um)Welt. In 2008, together with my research collaborator Birgit Tautz (Bowdoin College), I first began to connect key questions about the representation of animals to broader concerns of identity and community in the Mellon Foundation Grant-sponsored project entitled Thinking Beyond Nation. This project was also the foundation for my 2011 article on transnational zoographies in Forum Vormärz Forschung, as well as my analysis of contemporary safaris in the 2024 article “Neocolonial Echoes in the Heart of Darkness: Peter Kubelka, Ulrich Seidl, and the Distrust of Sound” in the Journal of Austrian Studies (2024). The latter has informed my current planning for a Colby Center for the Arts and Humanities sponsored Humanities Lab course and article on the relationship between hunting (safaris) and claims of sustainability.

Another long-term 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 (now defunct), 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, short VILLY (no longer supported by Colby ITS) would not have been possible without contributions by several Colby undergraduate Research Assistants listed on the site.

Additionally, I continue to pursue different interests in popular German culture. Examples include presentations and article publications on Turkish-German filmmaker Fatih Akin ( Glossen 2007) and Michael Haneke (Kulturpoetik 2010). Another article on the German Krautrock group Faust and on questions of national identity, co-authored with Harris Sei ’10, was published in 2009 in Popular Music and Society). Also in 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. Noteworthy is the AWESOME cover featuring 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, however, must have led the editors to misidentify me as “Anton Koch.” 😉

Recent Articles

“There is Hardly Any Racism: Tolerated Discrimination in Austrian Soccer.” Struggling for Belonging in Austria. New Directions in German Studies. Ed. Vance L. Byrd and Joseph Moser. London: Bloomsbury. (under review)

“The Political Ethics of German Soccer Fans.” (with John Hanson ’25.) Special Issue on Sports and Politics. Acta Universitatis Carolinae Studia Territorialia 24.2 (2024): 47-70. https://stuter.fsv.cuni.cz/stuter/article/view/925/749

“Neocolonial Echoes in the Heart of Darkness: Peter Kubelka, Ulrich Seidl, and the Distrust of Sound.” Journal of Austrian Studies 57.1 (2024): 45-69. https://doi.org/10.1353/oas.2024.a921899

“The Paradoxical Reality of Racism: German Soccer and the Irreversibility of Multiculturalism.” Soccer and Society 24.2 (2023): 139-57. Open Access. https://doi.org/10.1080/14660970.2022.204226610.1080/14660970.2022.2042266

Book 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).]