Interests:
Background:
A native of Germany, Vera Stegmann received her PhD in German Studies from Indiana University with a graduate minor in Comparative Literature. She also studied music, and she earned a BA and MA in Spanish at the University of Missouri. At Lehigh she teaches the full spectrum of German courses: German language, literature, film, theater, and culture. She has led international study abroad programs to Austria and Germany, and she engaged with regional German Studies communities, as a past president of the Central PA chapter of the AATG.
Much of her research focuses on Bertolt Brecht, a 20th-century playwright, poet, and public intellectual whose anti-fascist writings forced him into exile during the Nazi regime. Vera Stegmann has published a book and numerous articles on the aesthetics of German writers and composers who were persecuted during World War Two. Her recent research increasingly concentrates on contemporary 21st-century artists and authors, writing in the postwar and post-wall period from a German and a transnational perspective.
Selected Courses Taught:
GERM 001 and 002: Elementary German I and II
GERM 011 and 012: Intermediate German I and II
GERM 163: German Civilization and Culture
GERM 167: German Conversation and Composition
GERM 169: Business German
GERM/MLL/FILM 231: New German Cinema
GERM 240: Contemporary Germany
MLL/ENGL/WGSS/GERM/FILM 303: Grimms' Fairy Tales: Folklore, Feminism, Film
GERM 320: Berlin: Transformations of a Metropolis
Book:
Das epische Musiktheater bei Strawinsky und Brecht: Studien zur Geschichte und Theorie. New York: Peter Lang, 1991. 202 pp.
Edited Volumes:
The Brecht Yearbook Vol. 45 (376 pp.) and Vol. 46 (297 pp.). Guest Editor, with Micha Braun and Günther Heeg. Managing Editor: Markus Wessendorf. Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2020 and 2021.
Selected Articles:
“Tschick: Transkulturalität und Transmedialität bei Wolfgang Herrndorf und Fatih Akin.” Jahrbuch für Internationale Germanistik: Wege der Germanistik in transkultureller Perspektive. Eds. Laura Auteri, Natascia Barrale, Arianna Di Bella, Sabine Hoffmann. Bern: Lang, 2023. 235-244.
"Kracauer, Brecht und Babylon Berlin: Die Weimarer Republik in der Kriminalliteratur und in Neo-Noir Fernsehserien." The Brecht Yearbook Vol. 46 (2021): 79-95.
"Brecht’s Work with Musical Composers." Bertolt Brecht in Context. Ed. Stephen Brockmann. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021. 191-201.
"Žižek, Wagner, Brecht." ecibs: Comnmunications from the International Brecht Society 2020, Vol. 2.
https://e-cibs.org/issue-20202/#zizekwagnerbrecht
"Remembering Eric Bentley." ecibs: Comnmunications from the International Brecht Society 2020, Vol. 2.
https://e-cibs.org/issue-20202/#bentley
“Deutschsein: Zafer Şenocak’s Poetic and Enlightened Vision of a Cosmopolitan German Identity.” Türkisch-Deutsche Studien: Jahrbuch 2016 (Göttingen: Universitätsverlag, 2017). Vol. 7: 119-137.
https://www.univerlag.uni-goettingen.de/handle/3/isbn-978-3-86395-297-6
“Navid Kermani’s Literary Reflections: On Kafka, Brecht, and the Koran.” The Brecht Yearbook Vol. 40 (2016): 198-215.
“Verfremdung or Verwandlung: A Brechtian Look at Yoko Tawada’s Works.” Communications from the International Brecht Society Vol. 43-44 (2014-15): 58-64.
"Theater as Metaphor in Orhan Pamuk's Novel Snow." Proceedings of the 13th ISSEI Conference at the University of Cyprus. Ed. Marianna Papastefanou, 2014.
https://lekythos.library.ucy.ac.cy/handle/10797/6237
"Musikalische Verfremdungen bei Thomas Bernhard und Bertolt Brecht." Verfremdungen: Ein Phänomen Bertolt Brechts in der Musik. Ed. Jürgen Hillesheim. Freiburg: Rombach Verlag, 2013. 435-54.
“Anna Seghers und Crisanta: Reflexionen aus der DDR zu ihrem mexikanischen Exil.” Ibero-amerikanisches Jahrbuch für Germanistik Vol. 4 (2010): 165-81.
“Perspectives on Hanns Eisler.” The Brecht Yearbook Vol. 33 (2008): 135-50.
“Brechtian Traces in Pina Bausch’s Choreographic and Cinematic Work.” Proceedings of the 11th ISSEI Conference at the University of Helsinki, Finland, July 2008. Eds. Giacomo Bottà and Marja Härmänmaa.
http://helda.helsinki.fi/bitstream/handle/10138/15242/78_Stegmann.pdf?se...
“Frauenschicksale: A DEFA Film Viewed in Light of Brecht’s Critique of the Opera and Eisler/Adorno’s Theory of Film Music.” German Studies Review Vol. 28 No. 3 (October 2005): 481-500.