In this book, Carl Niekerk probes the origins of modern anthropology in the European Enlightenment, foregrounding how the knowledge transfer between an international array of natural historians and public intellectuals—including Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon; Voltaire; Denis Diderot;...

Undergraduates and friends of the humanities—you're invited to the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign’s first ever Humanities Open House! Join us on Saturday, October 4, 2025, when we’ll be...

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, ...

Congratulations to Anne Olmstead, Office Manager in the Departments of Germanic Languages & Literatures and French & Italian! Anne is a recipient of this year's Marita Romine Distinguished Service Award in the School of Literatures, Cultures & Linguistics. Anne not only demonstrates the...

We are pleased to present the SLCL Dissertation Completion Fellowship awardees for this year. These fellowships provide advanced doctoral students with an academic year of support to complete their dissertations. Evaluation criteria includes the quality of the proposal;...

Check out this page for more information about GLL's Fall 2025 offerings. Add a German major or minor, fulfill General Education...

Professor Stephanie Hilger is looking at how 18th century European medical doctors shaped perceptions of “hermaphrodites”—people who were deemed to have non-normative sexual genitalia—through case histories. Hilger’s new book, “...

This account of the “laboratory of radical democracy” in the months before East Germany’s absorption in the West challenges memories of Germany’s reunification. For many, 1989 is an iconic date, one we associate with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War. The...

For the Academic Year 2024-2025, GLL MA students Marie Jensen and Jaider De La Hoz have been awarded, respectively, the “Edelweiss Scholarship” and...