Work with Students, Current and Just Completed Projects
Work with Students and within German Studies:
In 2021-22, Brigita Kant wrote an excellent Honors Thesis on Samoa in German Literature and Culture. We are still talking about this projects and are working on bringing our take of the bizarre German novel Der Papalagi into publication.
From 2023 on, Daniel Wang has researched which contemporary German literature makes it into the canon, with an eye on how what people read in German-speaking countries differs from what students of German read in the USA. His Digital Humanities work features in my work on world literature, particularly on how early, eclipsed trends surface in reading preferences for sentimental and fantasy texts in the 21st century.
John Schubert '26 supports my research on the older periods of German literary and cultural history, including "marketing" and promotion of recently published and soon-to-appear work; he also supports the work of SPEKTRUM's editorial board, along with Carolina Weatherall '25. Her work on SPEKTRUM in 2024-25 has been restructured into an internship-like opportunity for an undergraduate student.
Current Research:
In November 2025, Birgit was a fellow at the JGU Mainz, our partner institution in Germany. As part of the residency, she met with prospective Teaching Fellows, colleague-collaborators (Mita Banerjee), and presented on her current research.
Also in 2025 and for three months, Birgit was a fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt-foundation at Humboldt University in Berlin, working with Mark-Georg Dehrmann. Her project explored early world literature, namely before Weltliteratur (the term Goethe coined in the early 19th century). In forthcoming publications, Tautz argues that these early times reverberate today and have many stories to tell about what we love to read and why.
In addition, my work on two books continued, and I worked on a few smaller publication projects. One book wrestles with The Ethics of the Image and is devoted to post 1980s film; the other revolves around Germanophone "archival finds" in Bowdoin's Special Collections and museums - family papers, books, prints - of the long 19th century and the fascinating stories they have to tell for our time and audiences. I am looking forward to finishing the manuscripts soon, after a productive sabbatical.
The Ethics of the Image is closely related to my teaching (Huge advance thanks to all the students in Ger2253/CINE2901 (Spring 2023) who cannot even imagine how much they enriched this project!). Students in Ger2252/CINE2900 helped me in expanding my perspectives as well.
Smaller projects explore "health(y) worlds" in the 18th century, and rural landscapes, gender relations, and Stimmung in contemporary German literature and film. I also spearheaded and sponsor Global Languages, Cultures, and Literatures on the Move, a research-in-progress series that showcases scholarship produced by colleagues across all Foreign Languages and took us out on campus while Sills Hall was renovated (2023-24).
What else?: Professors go back to school — well, this one does! In 2023, I've begun work on a four-course DH Certificate in Data Storytelling; I also participated in a seminar on Hidden Figures: Blackness in East German Cinema. In 2022, I attended a professional development seminar on German Literary Institutions (aka all about the hidden lives of books). My hunch was right: I and my teaching enormously benefit from the new perspectives, and in Fall 2023, I taught a version of The Empowered Other, a seminar on very recent German-language writing from Germany, a class in which students successfully undid the mechanisms of "Othering" and marginalization and showcased their research in podcast episodes. I pursued a small, related research project in which Daniel Wang '26 helps me data mine and represent figures and trends of the German literary market.
Links to Past Projects
Co-editor of the Goethe Yearbook (through early 2023): This project involved a lot of exhilarating collaboration, not just in procuring, evaluating, and finalizing texts for publication, but also in the area of developmental editing beginning with the loaded question "So what?" and helping authors create texts that have an argument, appeal to readers, and are - Yes! - readable. Lily Poppen '22 worked as a research and editorial assistant on the project.
Moving the Image: Women and the Camera, Bowdoin College Museum of Art (co-curated with Diana Tuite), November 2010
Network@1800: a New Directions in German and European Studies Symposium, organized by Professor Birgit Tautz, German and Professor Crystal Hall, Digital and Computational Studies, aimed to present new insights into the historical networks and forms of collaboration that unfolded between German lands, Europe, and across the Atlantic world. This collaboration led to our book/digital exhibit with Oxford Studies in the Enlightenment (2024).
