Robin Ellis roellis@davidson.edu 408.892.9917 926 N. Main St. E Davidson, NC 28036 EDUCATION University of California, Berkeley PhD, German Studies, August 2016 Designated Emphasis in Film Studies Dissertation: Making Translation Visible: Interpreters in European Literature and Film Committee: Profs. Deniz Göktürk (chair), Mark Sandberg, Winfried Kudszus Oberlin College BA, German Literature, Highest Honors, 2004 Other Study Humboldt Universität, Berlin, 2011 2012 PhD-Net Das Wissen der Literatur Humboldt Universität, Berlin, 2004 2005 Fulbright Student Research Grant Technische Universität, Berlin, 2002 2003 Federation of German-American Clubs Scholarship Exchange PROFESSIONAL APPOINTMENTS Visiting Assistant Professor,, 2016 present Visiting Instructor, Oberlin College, 2014 2015 Department of German Language and Literatures COURSES TAUGHT, 2016 2018 Theory and Practice of Literary Translation, co-taught with Kyra Kietrys (Spring 2018) Austria, 1900 Now (in German, Spring 2017) Borderland Europe: Cultural Productions on the Move (in English, Fall 2016) Introduction to German Cultural Studies (in German, Fall 2017) Introduction to German Literary Studies (in German, Spring 2017, Spring 2018) German Language, Semester 1 (Fall 2016, Fall 2017) Oberlin College, 2014 2015 Introduction to German Literature I: Lessing, Schiller, Goethe (in German, Spring 2015) Introduction to German Literature II: From Büchner to Brecht (in German, Fall 2014) German Language, Semester 3 (Fall 2014) German Language, Semester 4 (Spring 2015)
Universität Konstanz, Winter 2012 Translation Theory in Practice, week-long compact seminar in European Culture MA Program, co-taught with Kristin Dickinson (in German and English) University of California, Berkeley, 2008 2014 Multicultural Germany (in English, Spring 2014) German Pop Culture (in German, Fall 2013) Foreign Language Pedagogy, Teaching Assistant (in German and English, Spring 2013) Reading and Composition: Performance Culture in Weimar Germany (in English, Summer 2011) Reading and Composition: European Border Crossings (in English, Fall 2010) German Language, Semesters 1 4 (Fall 2008, Spring 2009, Fall 2009, Spring 2010, Spring 2011, Fall 2012) RESEARCH INTERESTS 20th and 21st-century German and Austrian culture Multilingual film and literature Translation theory and practice Transnational circulation Gendered labor Embodied communication European border zones PUBLICATIONS The State We re In : Narratives of Migration and Translation. Co-authored with Roman Utkin and Scott Denham. German Quarterly 90.2 (Spring 2017). People-Watching: Völkerschau Viewing Practices and The Indian Tomb (1921). In Es ist seit Rahel uns erlaubt, Gedanken zu haben : Essays in Honor of Heidi Thomann Tewarson, edited by Steve Huff and Dorothea Kauffmann. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2013. Linguistic Rebellion in Feridun Zaimoğlu s Koppstoff. Co-authored with Kristin Dickinson and Priscilla Layne. In Contemporary German Culture: Feridun Zaimoğlu, edited by Tom Cheesman and Karin Yeşilada. Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2012. Confessional Fictions, Fictional Confessions. Co-authored with Kurt Beals. Das Geständnis und seine Instanzen, edited by Anders Engberg-Pedersen, Michael Huffmaster, Eric Nordhausen, and Vrääth Öhner. Vienna: Turia + Kant, 2011. Translating Communities: Rethinking the Collective in Feridun Zaimoğlu's Koppstoff. Coauthored with Kristin Dickinson and Priscilla Layne. TRANSIT (Nov. 2008). http://transit.berkeley.edu/2008/dickinson-ellis-layne-2/ INVITED TALKS Staging Translation: Refugee Voices in German-Speaking Europe. North Carolina German Studies Seminar Series, UNC Chapel Hill, November 2017. Breaking Out and Breaking Through? Situating Head-On in Turkish German Film History. SUNY Binghamton, October 2015. CONFERENCE PRESENTATIONS Performing Multiplicity through Translation: Speaking with, back to, and beyond Elfriede Jelinek s Die Schutzbefohlenen. Performance Studies International, Hamburg, June 2017 Ellis 2
A Place on the Stage? Translation in Collaborative Performance Projects with Refugees, American Literary Translators Association, Oakland, October 2016. Familiar Foreigners: Global Women in Austrian Film. German Studies Association, San Diego, October 2016. Riding the Wave of Translation in Matthias van Baaren s The Folds of the King. American Comparative Literature Association, Harvard University, March 2016. Staging Visibility: Interpreters in Kathrin Röggla s The Unavoidables. Modern Language Association, Austin, January 2016. Dancing from Screen to Hand: Bodily Mediation in Yoko Tawada s Das nackte Auge. German Studies Association, Washington, D.C., October 2015. Intimate Exchanges: Translation, Prostitution, and Transnational Commerce. German Studies Association, Transnationalism Seminar, Denver, October 2013. Unnatural Reproduction: Speculation and Sex in Der Marktplatz der Kettenhändler and Die Koffer des Herrn O.F. With Paul Dobryden. Annual Conference of BTWH Working Group on German Modernity, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, May 2013. Etwas Wunderliches in mir : Confession as Attempted Individuation in Müsil s Törleß and Dürrenmatt s Panne. Annual Conference of BTWH Working Group on German Modernity, Internationales Forschungszentrum Kulturwissenschaften, Vienna, June 2009. Translating Multilingual Wordplay in Feridun Zaimoğlu s Koppstoff: Kanaka Sprak vom Rande der Gesellschaft. With Kristin Dickinson and Priscilla Layne. Semiotic Circle of California, UC Berkeley, January 2009. TRANSLATIONS They Misoverestimate Us by Marianna Salzmann. TRANSIT (Jan. 2012). http://transit.berkeley.edu/2012/ellis/ Black Virgins by Feridun Zaimoğlu and Günter Senkel. Co-translated with Kristin Dickinson and Priscilla Layne. Surtitles for Ballhaus Naunynstraße, 2010. Summer Camp by Ozan Aksu et al. Co-translated with Kristin Dickinson. Surtitles for Ballhaus Naunynstraße, 2010. The Knowledge-Holder Doesn t Choke on Cleverness. From Koppstoff by Feridun Zaimoğlu. Co-translated with Kristin Dickinson and Priscilla Layne. Words Without Borders (Nov. 2009). http://wordswithoutborders.org/article/the-knowledge-holderdoesnt-choke-on-cleverness/ Selections from Koppstoff by Feridun Zaimoğlu. Co-translated with Kristin Dickinson and Priscilla Layne. TRANSIT (Nov. 2008). http://transit.berkeley.edu/2008/dickinsonellis-layne/ FURTHER EXPERIENCE Co-organizer, interdisciplinary 10-day study trip to Vienna in May 2017, with Besir Ceka. Funded by Dean Rusk Travel Grant, Davidson Research Initiative Group Investigation Grant, and Bacca Foundation Humanities Grant. Ellis 3
Mentor to Apprentice Teachers (undergraduate German language teaching assistants),, Fall 2016 present Organizer, German Film Night,, Spring 2017 present Goethe-Institut German language examiner training A1 B1, Summer 2017 (certification exam results expected February 2018) Diversity, Decolonization, and the German Curriculum, 3-day workshop at University of North Carolina, Asheville, March 2017 Seminar co-organizer, Performing Translation, American Comparative Literature Association, Harvard University, March 2016, with Kristin Dickinson Multicultural Germany Project, Researcher and Mentor to Undergraduate Research Apprentices, UC Berkeley, 2007 2014 Berkeley-Tübingen-Wien-Harvard (BTWH) Working Group on German Modernity, 2007 present; UC Berkeley Group Coordinator, 2013 2014 NEH Summer Institute on the Centrality of Translation for the Humanities, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2013 Undergraduate Research Mentor, Summer Research Opportunity Program, UC Berkeley, 2013 Assistant to German Language Program Director, UC Berkeley, Spring 2013 Assistant Editor, TRANSIT: A Journal of Travel, Migration and Multiculturalism in the German-Speaking World, UC Berkeley, 2007 2010 German Department Research Assistant, Oberlin College, 2003 2004 HONORS & AWARDS UC Berkeley Outstanding Graduate Student Instructor Award, 2010 American Research Institute in Turkey Summer Fellowship to attend Boğaziçi University Turkish Language and Culture Program, 2010 Foreign Language Area Studies Summer Fellowship to attend Boğaziçi University Turkish Language and Culture Program, 2008 Susan Sontag Prize for Translation, with Kristin Dickinson and Priscilla Layne for translation of Feridun Zaimoğlu s Koppstoff: Kanaka Sprak vom Rande der Gesellschaft, 2008 UC Berkeley Institute for European Studies Fellowship, 2007 2009 Phi Beta Kappa, 2004 PROFESSIONAL MEMBERSHIPS German Studies Association American Association of Teachers of German Women in German Modern Language Association Ellis 4
LANGUAGES German, near native French, reading knowledge Turkish, reading knowledge REFERENCES Deniz Göktürk Associate Professor of German and Chair Department of German University of California, Berkeley dgokturk@berkeley.edu Elizabeth Hamilton Associate Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, Associate Professor of German Department of German Language and Literatures Oberlin College elizabeth.hamilton@oberlin.edu Maggie McCarthy Professor of German and Chair mamccarthy@davidson.edu Scott Denham Charles A. Dana Professor of German Studies, E. Craig Wall, Jr. Distinguished Teaching Professor in the Humanities scdenham@davidson.edu Burkhard Henke Professor of German buhenke@davidson.edu Ellis 5