Thyra Knapp
- Department Chair, Associate Professor of German Studies, Teaching & Leadership
Contact Info
- Email: thyra.knapp@UND.edu
- Office: 701.777.4657
- Dept: 701.777.3813
Office Address
Education Building, Room 240
276 Centennial Drive Stop 7189
Grand Forks ND 58202-7189
Biography
Since coming to UND in 2011, I have enjoyed teaching German language, literature, and culture on all levels of instruction. In the German Studies Program, I find that my research informs my teaching every day, and sharing this passion with my students invariably sparks their interest as well.
My research focuses on the interrelation of image and text in German literature of the twentieth century; more specifically, the ways in which visual art is perceived and interpreted in both prose and poetry. Questions of aesthetics and representation at the intersection of these media are explored in my dissertation ("Ja, Ihr seid gemalt": Ekphrasis and the Outsider in Three Postmodern German Novels, 2008), portions of which have been published as articles in Seminar, Monatshefte, and German Quarterly.
“Spiraling Toward Happiness: City and the Self in Christa Wolf’s Unter den Linden,” Feminist German Studies 34 (2018) 101-124.
“Shadowland: Swiss Identity and Urs Faes’s Ombra,” German Studies Review 38:3 (2015) 617-633.
“Gerhard Richter and the Ambiguous Aesthetics of Morality,” Colloquia Germanica 45:1 (2012) 95-112 [published spring 2015]
Walking the Tightrope, Riding the Ring: Movement and Meaning in German Circus Imagery," Germanic Notes and Reviews 44:2 (Fall 2013) 18-27.
"Picturing German: Teaching Language and Literature through Visual Art." Die Unterrichtspraxis 45:1 (Spring 2012) 20-27.
"Taboo and Tragedy in Frank Wedekind's Frühlings Erwachen." Upstage online journal (February 2012) http://www.oscholars.com/Upstage/issue3/taboo3.html
"'Beim Straucheln und beim Stürzen und beim Schreien': Representation and Identification in Gert Hofmann's Der Blindensturz." The German Quarterly 84:3 (Summer 2011) 328-343.
"'Trennung, Teilung, Spaltung': Ekphrasis as the Unifying Fissure in Anne Duden's Das Judasschaf." Monatshefte 102:3 (Fall 2010) 360- 383.
"Mediating Marginality: Ekphrasis and the Outsider in Christoph Geiser's Das geheime Fieber." Seminar: A Journal of Germanic Studies 46:4 (November 2010) 419- 436.