Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Biography

Alexandra Pölzlbauer is currently a Ph.D. candidate in Germanic Languages and Literatures at the University of Illinois. In Fall 2011 she is teaching the content-specific course German 104.

After earning an MA at the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in May 2011, Alexandra Pölzlbauer is now working toward the Ph.D. Before coming to the US, she received the "Magister" from the University of Vienna with a thesis entitled “Im Deutschunterricht hamma Deutsch. Subjektive Theorien von DeutschlehrerInnen zur Bedeutung der Erstsprache für den Zweitspracherwerb” where she discussed the role of the first language for second language learning in the Austrian school system. She has studied German studies, specialized in German as a second/foreign language, English studies and history at the University of Vienna.

Among several other institutions Alexandra Pölzlbauer has taught at the Lomonossov University in Moscow, at the University of Burjatia in Ulan-Ude, in the Austria-Illinois Exchange Program, at the University of Business and Economics in Vienna and in the International Summer Program of the University of Vienna in Salzburg.

Her academic interests include migration, multiculturalism, the relationship between time and space, and cultural identities in globalized worlds in Austrian and German literature after 1945, as well as creative writing.

Publications

Courses

• Intermediate German II: Austria, GER 104 (F10 and F11)
• Global Studies: Diversity and Integration in Cosmopolitan Vienna, GLBL 298 (F10)
• Viking Mythology: Discussion Section, SCAN 251 (S11)