Andrew Sternhagen Schwenk was recently selected as this year's winner of the German Quarterly Graduate Student Paper Award. An edited version of his submission is slated to appear in German Quarterly in 2026. This upcoming article "Melusine, Emblem of the Self: The Female Traveler and the Contours of Acceptable Difference," provides the first extensive study of travel in Thüring von Ringoltingen's adaptation of Melusine. Melusine is the tale of a supernatural woman from an unknown land who is suddenly and mysteriously present in France and whose lower half transforms every Saturday into that of a serpentine monster. Sara Ahmed's concept of queer phenomenology provides the framework to argue that Melusine's foreignness, power, and her proto-colonial activity subtly unbalance notions of a western European center and an eastern periphery. This article first appeared as a chapter in his dissertation, "Imagining Other Worlds: Defining the German Volksbuch Through Narratives of Mobility," which explores how narratives of mobility shed new light on how contemporary social changes and relations are conceptualized in the German Volksbuch in the period 1450-1600. By using the lens of fictionalized travel, it positions the genre as an outward-facing form that engages with global discoveries, new market economies, and profound transformations of church and society.