Morgan M. Koerner, Ph.D.

Associate Professor of German

Address: JC Long 426
Phone: 843.953.1997
E-mail: koernerm@cofc.edu


Dr. Morgan Koerner CV

My research and teaching interests lie at the intersection of German Studies, Performance Studies, Foreign Language Pedagogy, and Performative Teaching, Learning, and Research. Like many of our own majors and minors at CofC, I began learning German, in German 101, as a freshman in college with a sense that I wanted to study in Germany one day. During my junior year, I spent 12 months of total immersion at the University of Mannheim, a transformative experience during which I developed near-native proficiency in German, a love for German Regietheater, and a desire to dedicate my life to teaching German as a Foreign Language and German art, literature, and culture. I later decided to pursue a Ph.D. in Germanics at the University of Washington (Seattle) and during a subsequent research year in Berlin, I formulated my dissertation topic on “Intermediality and Laughter in German Theater after 1990.”

Since completing my dissertation and coming to the College of Charleston in 2007, I have published on Christoph Schlingensief, stagings of Elfriede Jelinek’s theater texts, and on creative writing and theater pedagogy as approaches to foreign language teaching. I teach a wide range of courses in German, from beginning German to performance oriented upper level courses that culminate in live theater performances by course members (see below for a list of publications related to these courses). I also participate regularly in Philosophy professor Jonathan Neufeld’s Aesthetics Work Group, an interdisciplinary group of faculty and students who get together to discuss contemporary work in philosophy and the arts. I try to get back to German speaking Europe whenever possible and am very excited to help our majors and minors facilitate their own immersion experiences in Germany and Austria.

I have been heavily involved in outreach to high school German programs throughout the state as Vice President (2016-18) and President (2018-20) of the South Carolina chapter of the American Association of Teachers of German (AATG) and am serving a three year term as the Southeastern Representative of the Executive Council of the AATG from 2019-2021. As Department Chair of German and Russian Studies, I co-founded the now annual CofC German-American Business Summit, a daylong job fair, conference, and networking event that brings together representatives from German industry from the state and students from the College of Charleston and the region.


Education

University of Washington
Ph.D.

University of Washington
M.A.

University of Alabama
B.A.

 

 


Research Interests

German Theater

Avant-garde performance and postdramatic theater

Theater Pedagogy and Performative Teaching, Learning, and Research

Comedy and Laughter in German Literature and Culture


Courses Taught

Honors Courses
Aesthetic Disobedience: Avant-Garde Performance in Theory and Praxis (co-taught with Dr. Jonathan Neufeld, Associate Professor of Philosophy).

Literature in Translation Courses
Into the Media Age: 20th Century German Theater
Comedy in Contemporary German Culture

Project- and Performance-Oriented 400 Level German Literature and Culture Courses
German 490: Laughing Matters in German Literature and Culture
German 490: Love Matters: Melodrama in German Literature and Culture
German 490: Freedom Matters: Revolution in German Culture and Literature
German 468: Beyond Drama: German Theater into the 21st Century
German 468: Avant-Garde! German Expressionism and Dadaism
German 468:Deutschland 1968! Protest and Performance in the 60s in Germany
German 468: Faust 2020: Goethe’s Faust in Performance                                                                                German 468: Justice Matters: Gerechtigkeit in German Literature, Theater, and Culture

Upper Level German Literature and Culture Courses
German 390: Exchange Values: Money and Identity in 20th Century German Literature
German 326: German Mediascapes: Contemporary German Media
German 390: Contemporary German Popular Culture

Upper Level Independent Studies and Directed Readings
Elfriede Jelinek’s Theater: Text and Performance
Goethe’s Faust
Novels of 20th Century Germany

First Year Experience Courses
Beginning German I (as part of a First Year Experience learning community with Theatre 176 entitled “Stages of Communication.”

German Language Courses
Beginning German I and II
Intermediate German I
Third year Conversation and Composition (German 313-14)

Student Theater Performances in German

Justice Matters! [if you are listening, then you are the resistance!] December 5, 2022.

2Faust2Furious: Das Unzulängliche / Hier wird's Ereignis Zoom performance, April 22nd, 2020.

Deutschland 1968: Die Revolution kommt und sie ist weiblich!“ (Germany 1968: The revolution is coming and it is feminine!), April 20, 2018

Dada siegt! Dada scheitert! (Dada wins! Dada fails!), College of Charleston, April 19, 2016.

Beyond Drama: 13 Performers try to transform the audience. College of Charleston, April 23, 2013.

Freedom Happening! College of Charleston, April 22, 2011.

Love Matters Revue. College of Charelston, April  22, 2009.

Laughing Matters Cabaret. College of Charleston, Dec. 6, 2007.

Top Dogs by Urs Widmer and German 330. Co-produced with Verena Kuzmany,  University of Washington, June 2005.

Der gestiefelte Kater by Ludwig Tieck, University of Washington, June 2003.


Publications

“Teaching Resistance to Narrative:  Brecht’s Theater Praxis as a Response to Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck’s Das Leben der Anderen.Die Unterrichtspraxis / Teaching German 49.2 (2016), 161-171.

"Beyond Drama: Postdramatic theater in upper level, performance-oriented foreign language, literature and culture courses." Scenario 8.2 (2014). 1-16.

“Beyond Media Critique: Performance and Pop-cultural Pleasures in Elfriede Jelinek and Frank Castorf’s Raststätte oder sie machens alle.” A Different Germany: Pop and the Negotiation of German Culture. Ed. Claude Desmarais. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2014. 121-38.

Literatur liberated from Wissenschaft: Writerly Approaches to Literature Across the German Undergraduate German Curriculum.” Traditions and Transitions. Curricula for German Studies. Eds. John L. Plews and Barbara Schmenk. Waterloo, Canada: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2013. 175-190.

"German Literature and Culture under Revue: Learner Autonomy and Creativity through the Theme-Based Theater Practicum." Die Unterrichtspraxis / Teaching German 45.1 (2012). 28-39.

“Subversions of the Medical Gaze: Disability and Media Parody in Christoph Schlingensief’s Freakstars 3000.” Cinema and Social Change in Germany and Austria. Eds. Gabi Mueller and James M. Skidmore. Waterloo, Canada: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2012. 59-75.

“Media Play: Intermedial Satire and Parodic Exploration in Elfriede Jelinek and Christoph Schlingensief’s Bambiland.” Christoph Schlingensief: Art without Borders. Eds. Tara Forrest and Anna Teresa Scheer. Bristol, UK: intellect, 2010. 153-68.

"Comic Metatheater and Language Learning: Performing Ludwig Tieck's Der gestiefelte Kater." German as a Foreign Language. 1 (2004): 73-83.