Kristine Thorsen
Lecturer Emeritus
kat162@northwestern.edu
Judd A. and Marjorie Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences • Northwestern University
Kristine A. Thorsen (A.M. The Graduate Library School, University of Chicago and M.A., Ph.D. Northwestern University) is currently a lecturer in the Department of German.During her nearly thirty-year association with Northwestern, Dr. Thorsen has coordinated both Beginning and Intermediate German courses, pioneered courses on contemporary German and Austrian literature, and literature by women, taught in the M.A. Literature program in the School of Continuing Studies, and also served as a bibliographer for foreign language literature in the University Library. Currently, Dr. Thorsen teaches Beginning German, a new freshman seminar, “All for Love: German Style,” German literature in translation “Contemporary Historical Novels”, and her course on contemporary Austrian literature.
Among her research interests are foreign language pedagogy, contemporary German and Austrian literature, and poetry. Dr. Thorsen has participated in numerous seminars conducted by the Goethe-Institut and the Austrian Bundesministerium für Unterricht, Kunst und Kultur in Berlin, Leipzig, Weimar, and Vienna. Her reference volume, Poetry by American Women, 1900-1975: A Bibliography is found in research libraries both in the USA and abroad. Each April during National Poetry Month she organizes a display in the department to showcase German-language poetry to celebrate the spellbinding power of the lyric. In addition, she is keenly interesting in the teaching of writing and has been a participant at the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference and several writing workshops at the Ragdale Foundation, Lake Forest, Illinois.
Her current projects are a translation of Ein schnelles Leben by Zoë Jenny and the compilation of an anthology of contemporary Austrian literature suitable for the foreign language classroom.
