Birgit Tautz Ramsey is an assistant professor of German whose related interests in media and gender issues are evident in the titles of some of her recent courses: German Literature as Film, Growing Up Female: Girlhood in German Literature, and Women Filmmakers in the German-Speaking Countries. She also teaches all levels of language courses and a host of other literature courses, as well as German for Special Purposes, an offering in "business German."
A graduate of the University of Leipzig with a master's degree in German from the University of WisconsinMadison, she received a Ph.D. in German and comparative literature from the University of Minnesota, where her doctoral dissertation was titled "Texture and Color. Ethnic Difference in the Enlightenment."
Currently, she is completing the editing of an anthology, Colors: Signs of Ethnic Difference 1800/1900/2000, for which she wrote the introduction and an essay, "Farblose Raume [Colorless Spaces]."
She joined the Lawrence faculty in 1998, having taught previously at St. Olaf and Macalester Colleges. In 2000-2001 she served on the organizing committee for an Associated Colleges of the Midwest workshop, "Redefining the 18th Century," at which she moderated a panel on the teaching of literature. She also presented a paper titled "Feminizing (Literary) History: A Reconsideration of Female Characters in Die Verschwörung des Fiesko zu Genua and Iphigenie auf Tauris" at a German Studies Association conference in Houston.
As part of a redesigned German department curriculum, she is helping to create new required courses, such as Introduction to German Studies, and is reworking all the German film courses to reflect the emphasis on competence in speaking that is integral to Lawrence's new general-education requirements. Also in the works is a new course on Nazi Cinema, planned for the 2002-03 academic year.