Faculty
Swaffar, Janet
Professor
Office: EPS 3.166
Office Hours: MW 10-11
Phone:512-232-6376
jswaffar@mail.utexas.edu
Webpage
Education: Ph.D., University of Wisconsin, Madison
Research interests:
Modern German literature post 1945, German media, applications of literary theory to reading and writing in a foreign language, the effects of structured tasks on foreign language acquisition and attitudes of learners at advanced levels
Current research:
A short monograph on the current impact of historical cross-cultural depictions of self in media and institutional promulgations in the German Democratic Republic and the Federal Republic of Germany; revision of a book-length manuscript (Rethinking Literacy) that argues for holistic teaching and testing of native-language reading, an approach reflecting techniques Katherine Arens and I have proposed for foreign language instruction
Courses taught:
Graduate courses:
Political Identities: Germany Post '45; Cultural Methods; Transnational Literatures; Fundamentals of Scholarship; Author Function -- German Literature 1970-1995; Freud and Bourgeois Modernism; Textual Analysis; Naturalism to the Present; Applied Scholarship; East German Literature; Special Problems in Pedagogy: Testing; Reading in the Foreign Language
Undergraduate courses:
German Civilization -- 1900 to the Present; German Literature since 1775; Conversation and Composition (Culture); Film Adaptations of Fiction; Plan II: World Literature: Images of Fascism; Media in Modern Germany; Freudians and Feminisms; Nietzsche, Marx, and Modernism; Freud's Vienna; Opera as Social Statement; Reading the Nazi Past
Awards/Honors:
1994: Outstanding Graduate Teaching Award, Graduate School, U. of Texas/Austin
1990: Secretary of the Navy Fellow (Annapolis)
1980: Paul Pimsleur Award for Significant Contributions to Research in Foreign Language Teaching (with Margaret Woodruff): awarded by ACTFL
1980: American Scandinavian Foundation/PEN Translation Prize Honorable Mention for translation of Lars Gustafsson's Death of a Beekeeper
1977-80: National Endowment for the Humanities Program Grant ($135,966)"From Listening to Reading Comprehension: Integrating Comprehension Skills in Foreign Language Learning at the College and Secondary School Levels" (with co-director Betty Nance Weber)
Recent Publications:
BOOKS(selection):
Remapping the Foreign Language Curriculum. A Multiple Literacies Approach (with Katherine Arens, New York: Modern Language Association, 2005.
Reading for Meaning: An Integrated Approach to Language Learning (with Katherine Arens and Heidi Byrnes). Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall,1991
Articles:
Recent articles include reassessment of communicative competence, effects of rhetorical conventions on reading recall, Lacanian analysis of recent Russian films, and the problems currently facing foreign languages as post-secondary disciplines.