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

Biography

Renata completed her BA with a major in German and a minor in ESL at the University of Florida. She received her M.A. from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign with a thesis entitled “The Notion of the Other in the Literature of German-Speaking Writers from Eastern Europe,” where she discussed literary works of four writers: Libuse Moníková from the Czech Republic, Herta Müller from Romania, Terézia Mora from Hungary, and Dariusz Muszer from Poland. As a graduate student at U of I, she spent one academic year in Göttingen where she studied at the Georg-August Universität, and where she also taught a course titled “English for German Majors” as well as advised students about studying in the U.S. At the University of Illinois, she has taught German language courses 102 and 211 as well as advanced composition courses, Grimms’ Fairy Tales in Context and The Holocaust in Context. Her academic interests include 18th to 20th century German and Polish literature, critical theory, culture, Postcommunist studies, memory, literary multilingualism, minority literatures, migration, globalization, and transnational studies.