Education

Ph.D. Vanderbilt University in German Studies (2018)

• Certificate in College Teaching (2016)

M.A. (Magistra Artium) in German Philology, Books Studies, and Political Science, Johannes-Gutenberg-University, Mainz (2012)

• University of Leiden, Erasmus Scholar in Book and Digital Media Studies (2009/2010)

Professional Appointments

Washington University in St. Louis

• Assistant Professor of German, July 2023-present

College of Charleston

• Assistant Professor of German, Aug. 2019-July 2023

• Visiting Assistant Professor of German, Aug. 2018-2019

Research Interests

• 20th- and 21st-century German Literature and Culture

• Literary, Filmic, Theatrical, and Artistic Engagements with Surveillance and Privacy

• Migration Narratives and Cultural (Post)Memory in Literature, Film, and the Arts.

• The German Book Market, Literary Prizes, and the Cultural Industry.

• (Social) Media in Contemporary German-speaking Culture

Publications (Published)

Peer-Reviewed Articles

• Koellner, Sarah. “The All-Seeing Community: “Charleston’s Eastside, Video Surveillance, and the Listening Task.” Surveillance & Society 21.1 (2022): 47-63.

• Koellner, Sarah. “Metaphors of Surveillance: The ‘All-Seer’ and its Legacy in Hasan M. Elahi’s Tracking Transience and Angela Richter’s Supernerds,“ in press with Variations. Literaturzeitschrift der Universität Zürich.

• Balint, Lilla and Sarah Koellner. “The Contemporary as Multilingual: Tomer Gardi’s broken german.” Gegenwartsliteratur: Ein germanistisches Jahrbuch 20 (2021): 233–255.

• Koellner, Sarah. “Data, Love, and Bodies: The Value of Privacy in Juli Zeh’s Corpus Delicti.” Seminar. A Journal of Germanic Studies 52.4 (2016): 407–425.

Book Chapters in Anthologies

• Koellner, Sarah. “Weltliteratur.” In WSD:* Die Bibliothek Wendelin Schmidt-Dengler und ihre Lesespuren. Edited by Roland Innerhofer and Thomas Kohlwein. Klagenfurt/Celovec: Wieser Verlag, 2022. No. 3434.

• Koellner, Sarah. “Tabula rasa, im Namen des Volkes. Selbstzensur als ein Muster der literarischen Provokation in Birgit Kempkers Mike und Jane.” In Skandalautoren. Zu repräsentativen Mustern literarischer Provokation und Aufsehen erregender Autorinszenierungen. Edited by Andrea Bartl and Martin Kraus. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2014. 337–354.

Conference Proceedings

• Koellner, Sarah. “Ich. Aléa Torik. Identität als literarisches Experiment im Schreiben Claus Hecks.” In Experimentelle Gegenwartsliteratur. Akten des XII. Internationalen Germanistenkongress Shanghai 2015. Vol. 10. Edited by Thorsten Hoffmann, Christoph Kleinschmidt und Lehel Sata. Frankfurt a. M.: Peter Lang, 2018. 73–79.

• Koellner, Sarah. “The End of Art? A Comparative Study of Birgit Kempker’s Als ich das erste Mal mit einem Jungen im Bett lag, Alban Nikolai Herbst’s Meere and Maxim Biller’s Esra.” In Direito e Literature na Virado do Milênio. Edited by Sonja Arnold and Michael Korfmann. Porto Alegre, BR: Dublinense, 2014. 149–176.

Forum Essays

• Koellner, Sarah. “The Art of Negative Stereotyping: Reframing Blackness in Katrina Andry’s The Unfit Mommy and Her Spawn Will Wreck Your Comfortable Suburban Existence (2010) and It’s About Hard Work, Not Crippling Handouts for the Poor (2017).” Surveillance & Society 20.2 (2022): 221-226.

• Koellner, Sarah. “Staging Juli Zeh’s Corpus Delicti in the aftermath of a pandemic.”German Quarterly, 96.4 (2023): 1-7.

Book Review

• Koellner, Sarah review of Transkulturelle Dynamiken. Aktanten–Prozesse–Theorien. Ed. by Jutta Ernst and Florian Freitag. Bielefeld: Transcript, 2015, New German Review: A Journal of Germanic Studies 27 (2016): 77–79.

Selected Conference Presentations

“Endstage Surveillance Capitalism: Retrotopian Readings of Sybille Berg’s GRM Brainfuck,” presentation in the working group “Global Surveillance Cultures: The Arts, Surveillance, and Disruptions,” Modern Language Association Conference, San Francisco, CA, Jan. 5-8th, 2023.

“Retrotopia and the (lost) future of Privacy in Juli Zeh’s Corpus Delicti,” presentation in the panel “Juli Zeh in the Age of the Pandemic,” German Studies Association Conference, Houston, TX, Sept. 15-18, 2022.

“Lives on Halt: On Borders, Waiting, and Asylum in Ai Weiwei’s Human Flow and Karim Aïnouz’ Central Airport THF” together with Lea Neufeld in the Panel “Arrested Mobility,” 30th Berkeley Annual Interdisciplinary German Studies Conference: Arrested Mobilities: Stillness, Power and Modernity, Virtual, February 25-26, 2022.

“’Jetzt bin ich im Elfenbeinturm’: On Stefanie Sargnagel’s Underground Literature, Media Hate Campaigns, and the Ingeborg-Bachmann-Preis” in the Panel “The Literature Industry, the Industry of Literature III: Literary Portrayals of the Literaturbetrieb,” German Studies Association, Indianapolis, ID, September 30-October 3, 2021.

Traversing Water, Air, and Land: On Border Representations from Human Flow to The Crossing” in the Panel, “Representations of Crossing, Movement, and Migration in Contemporary European Art,” European Culture Research Network Conference, Virtual, June 21nd-24th, 2021.

“‘#Babykatzengate: On Stefanie Sargnagel and the Dramaturgy of a Media Scandal,” in the Panel “Skandal! Artistic Scandals around the Turn of the Century,” NeMLA, Boston, MA, March 5th-8th, 2020.

“‘Alles Klar, Herr Kommissar?’ Counter-Surveillance as a Performative Practice in Ulrich Peltzer’s Teil der Lösung” in the Panel “Cities under Siege (3): Surveillance, Survival, and Emergency,” German Studies Association, Portland, Oregon, October 3rd-6th, 2019.

“The Gaze, Love, and Data: Reloading Romanticist Love in E.T.A. Hoffmann’s The Sandman & Replika,” presentation in the Panel “Teaching German Romanticism for Today’s Undergraduates,” Northeast Modern Language Association, Washington D.C., March 21th-24th, 2019.

“On the Dual Nature of Autofiction: Revisiting Birgit Kempker, Alban Nikolai Herbst, and Maxim Biller” presentation in the seminar “On the very Concept of Autofiction: Theory and History,” German Studies Association, Pittsburgh, PA, September 27th–30th, 2018.

“Broken German: Aesthetics of the Neither Strange nor Familiar,” presentation with co-author Lilla Balint in the seminar “Stranger Things–Constructing Difference in German Culture,” German Studies Association, Atlanta, GA, October 5th–8th, 2017.

“Revelations, Concealment, and the Self. Understanding the Self under Surveillance through the Lens of Deutschland 83,” presentation in the seminar “Cold War Spy Stories,” GSA, San Diego, CA, Sept. 29th–Oct. 2nd, 2016.

“‘Nehmen Sie. Das bin ich.’ Der Körper als Spielform des Protests in Juli Zehs Corpus Delicti,” presentation in the panel “Body Poetics and Virtual Worlds,” German Studies Association, Washington D.C., October 1st–4th, 2015.

“Ich. Aléa Torik. Identität und Körperhüllen als literarisches Experiment im Schreiben Claus Hecks,” presentation in the panel “Experimentelle Gegenwartsliteratur,” Internationale Germanisten Vereinigung, Shanghai, China, August 23rd–28th, 2015.

“The Room of One’s Own. Staging Privacy in the Work of Kristo Šagor Before and After Snowden,” presentation at the symposium “‘Sind Sie sicher?’ Surveillance, (Post-) Privacy and Security,” Swarthmore College, Swarthmore, PA, November 8th, 2014.

“A Study of Birgit Kempker’s Als ich das erste Mal mit einem Jungen im Bett lag, Alban Nikolai Herbst’s Meere and Maxim Biller’s Esra,” presentation at the conference “Recht und Literatur um die Jahrtausendwende,” sponsored by the DAAD & Goethe-Institut, Porto Alegre, Brazil, November 7th–8th, 2013.

Invited Talks

“Metaphors of Surveillance: The All-Seer and its 21st Century Legacy”, invited talk and workshop in the Gisela Mosig Lecture Series at Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, Nov. 13th, 2020.

“Und die Wörter leben. Aufleben. Beleben.” Transcultural Writing in Tomer Gardi’s broken german. Invited talk at the University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK, Feb. 28th, 2020.

“Towards a Participatory Future of Privacy: A Study of Angela Richter’s Supernerds,” invited presentation at the Aesthetics Workgroup, College of Charleston, March 8th, 2019.

“‘All Persons shall be Equal before the Camera.’ Everyday Surveillance and the Value of Privacy through the German lens.” Public Lecture at the Robert Penn Warren Center for the Humanities, Nashville, TN, April 18th, 2018.

Selected Awards, Grants, Fellowships

American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) Project Development Grant (2021)

Sustainability Literacy Institute Fellow at the College of Charleston (2020-2021)

Various research, teaching, and travel grants from the College of Charleston and Vanderbilt University.

Notre Dame Berlin Seminar, Faculty Fellow in the Seminar “Der Literaturbetrieb: Key Players in Germany’s Literary Institution,” Berlin, Germany (2019)

Robert Penn Warren Center for the Humanities, Dissertation Fellowship Award for innovation and excellence in graduate student research, Vanderbilt University (2017-2018)

Max Kade Summer Dissertation Research Fellow at Washington University in St. Louis (2015)

University Tuition Scholarship & University Graduate Fellowship, Vanderbilt University (2013–2017 )

Hans Joachim Schulz Award for excellence in graduate research awarded by the Department of German, Russian, and East European Studies, Vanderbilt University (2017)

Philipp Rhein Award for excellence in graduate teaching award by the Department of German, Russian, and East European Studies, Vanderbilt University (2016)