Melissa Etzler

Melissa Etzler received her Ph.D. in German with a Designated Emphasis in Film from the University of California, Berkeley in 2014 and her M.A. in German from California State University, Long Beach. Her dissertation, Writing from the Periphery: W. G. Sebald and Outsider Art, explores intersections of pathology, marginalization, creative production and politics. While her areas of specialization include contemporary German Film and visual culture as well as crime and psychology in 18th – 21st century literature; Melissa is equally passionate about foreign language pedagogy. In addition to her courses in German language and culture, Melissa also teaches in the Core Curriculum (FYS) on Breaking Bad, focusing on crime, madness and surveillance in German and American texts and Stranger Things, which analyzes the Weird Fiction genre and 1980s culture.

Awards:

2018-2019 Outstanding Professor of the Year Award for Teaching

2018 College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Outstanding Faculty Award for Excellence in Teaching

2018 AATG Indiana Post-Secondary Teacher of the Year

Publications:

Edited Volume

With Gabriele Maier. Outreach Strategies and Innovative Teaching Approaches for German Programs, Routledge, 2021.

With Priscilla Layne. Rebellion and Revolution: Defiance in German Language, History and Art, Cambridge Scholars, 2010.

Refereed Article

“Pernicious Plants: Imitation and Uncanny Ecocritical Thought in Gustav Meyrink’s ‘Die Pflanzen des Dr. Cinderella.’” German Quarterly, vol. 90, no. 4, Fall 2017, pp. 459-475.

Book Chapters

“Zombies in the Age of Digital Reproduction – Marvin Kren’s Rammbock: Berlin Undead,” edited by Carrie Collenberg-Gonzalez and Martin Sheehan, Berghahn Books (forthcoming)

“‘Mothered by the Arid Sand’: Hanns Heinz Ewers’ Alraune with an Ecofeminist Twist.” Ecofeminist Science Fiction:International Perspectives on Gender, Ecology, and Literature, edited by D.A. Vakoch, Routledge, 2021.

With Michelle Stigter-Hayden. “Branching Out with STEM inthe German Classroom.” Outreach Strategies and Innovative Teaching Approaches for German Programs, ed. by Melissa Etzler and Gabriele Maier, Routledge, 2021, pp. 172-88. 

“Peripheral Writing: Psychosis and Prose from Ernst Herbeck to W. G. Sebald.” Literature and Psychology: Writing, Trauma and the Self, edited by Önder Çakırtaş, Cambridge Scholars, 2019, pp. 18-48.

“So ein langes Leben. Rebellious Writing and Philosophical Meanderings in Sebald’s Juvenilia.” Über W. G. Sebald. Beiträge zu einem anderen Bild des Autors [On W. G. Sebald: The Author from a Different Point of View], edited by Uwe Schütte, de Gruyter, 2016, pp. 29-50.