Michigan State University

Arts and Letters College Directory

Sonja Fritzsche

  • (she/her, sie/ihr)
  • Director of Teaching and Learning and Professor of German Studies (currently on research leave)
  • Dean's Office
Biography

Ph.D., University of Minnesota – Germanic Studies
M.A., University of California, Los Angeles – Modern European History
B.A., Indiana University

Sonja Fritzsche is Director of Teaching and Learning in MSU’s College of Arts & Letters and Professor of German Studies in the Department of Linguistics, Languages, and Cultures.  She is dedicated to values-enacted, principled leadership that empowers all faculty, staff, and students to engage fully in the academic mission and bring about the transformative change they yearn for most as intellectual leaders.

Fritzsche came to Michigan State University in August 2015. She has more than twenty years of academic leadership experience as Department Chair of two departments, most recently Linguistics, Languages, and Cultures. She then served for eight years both in faculty and academic affairs in the roles of Senior Associate Dean of Undergraduate Studies and Administration and Associate Dean for Academic Personnel and Administration in the College of Arts and Letters at Michigan State University. She identifies trust, respect, integrity, collaboration, and accountability as core values that guide her academic leadership and scholarly trajectory.

In her administrative positions, she has been instrumental in developing and implementing both the Culture of Care and the Charting Pathways for Intellectual Leadership (CPIL) framework (CPIL Toolbox cpil.hcommons.org), a cornerstone initiative that has helped faculty, staff, and now students across the College articulate, document, and advance the full range of their scholarly and creative, educational, and administrative contributions. She has played a central role in advancing tenure system and non-tenure system and academic specialist career pathways in the College and at MSU.  As a result of her latter efforts, the College received the 2024 Delphi Award from the Pullias Center of Higher Education at the University of Southern California.  She also created and documented key college policies to ensure clarity and consistency and has co-led the development of the new interdisciplinary Arts & Humanities Health and Well-being (AHHW) major program. She has led mutiple faculty and leadership development initiatives, furthered innovative, evidence-based teaching and experiential learning initiatives across the arts and humanities, and spearheaded community college transfer articulation agreements. Guided by her practice of “transformative listening” (ADFL Bulletin 2022), she models data-informed practices and initiatives that are inclusive, foster open and respectful dialogue, and a sense of belonging so that all faculty, staff, and students at MSU may flourish. 

Fritzsche’s scholarly life is dedicated to a critical engagement with the way that the future dreams of others around the globe shape their actions in the everyday. This approach recognizes that a mindful and intentional values-enacted everyday practice is a meaningful compass and pathway forward to transforming the future. She is a literary and film historian of twentieth and twenty-first century Europe with special expertise in Germany, the Cold War, and popular culture especially utopian studies and science fiction. She has published widely in six languages, including also on topics in autism studies, fairy tales, Indigenous language revitalization, inclusive pedagogies, GenAI and futurisms, and leadership in higher education.  A goal of her scholarly career has been to foster greater awareness of science fiction and futurisms beyond Anglo-American contexts and to support young scholars doing work on the SF/Futurisms in languages other than English. She is founder and co-editor of the book series World Science Fiction Studies with Peter Lang Oxford. See below for her selected publications and CV on her website for full list.

A highlight of her career has been the work done on the the Mellon funded Less Commonly Taught and Indigenous Languages Partnership with the Big Ten Academic Alliance (BTAA), a participatory research initiative and teaching framework developed in reciprocal and restorative partnership with Anishinaabe and Bodéwadmi communities and institutions across the Big Ten and Great Lakes region. She is a multiple Fulbright and German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) grant recipient. Fritzsche served as 2015 President of the Modern Language Association affiliated Association of Language Departments (ALD/ADFL), Vice President of the Science Fiction Research Association (2019-2021), and Steering Committee member of the Coalition of Women in German (2022-2025).

Fritzsche finds inspiration in the “everyday utopia” (Davina Cooper 2013) and goes through life with the radical humility (R-N Brown 2021), kindness, generosity (Fitzpatrick 2019, 2023), and grace (Kyodo Williams 2016) that one gets from a life spent tandem cycling many, many miles. May the road rise to meet you and the wind be always at your back.

Works

Books

  • The Routledge Companion to Gender and Science Fiction. Lisa Yaszek, Sonja Fritzsche, Keren Omry, and Wendy Gay Pearson, eds. Routledge, 2023. https://org/10.4324/9781003082934
  • Science Fiction Circuits of the South and East. Co-edited collection and Introduction with Anindita Banerjee. World Science Fiction Series. Peter Lang Oxford, 2018. https://www.peterlang.com/document/1055585
  • The Liverpool Companion to World Science Fiction Film. Editor and Introduction, Liverpool Science Fiction Texts and Studies 47. Liverpool UP, 2014. Paperback and E-Book edition 2021.
    https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt18kr755
  • Science Fiction Literature in East Germany. DDR-Studien/East German Studies Series 15. Bern; Oxford: Peter Lang, 2006. Available since 2018 as an OER: https://www.peterlang.com/view/title/9841

Awards
2024 Delphi Award; Pullias Center for Higher Education; Univ. of Southern California
Awarded for my work as lead to the College of Arts & Letters at Michigan State University: “The Charting Pathways of Intellectual Leadership (CPIL) Initiative: Non-Tenure Track Faculty as Full Academic Partners in the College of Arts & Letters at Michigan State University.”
https://pullias.usc.edu/download/charting-pathways-of-intellectual-leadership-for-vital-faculty-at-michigan-state-universitys-college-of-arts-letters/

Digital Projects
“Charting Pathways of Intellectual Leadership Toolbox.” Co-creator and co-author. Humanities/Knowledge Commons. 2024. https://cpil.hcommons.org/

“College of Arts & Letters Inclusive Pedagogy Fellows Program: An Open Education Resource Toolkit.” Creator and co-author. College of Arts & Letters, Michigan State University. 2024. https://calipfprogram.hcommons.org/.

Selected Grants
Lead co-PI:Big Ten Academic Alliance Indigenous and Less Commonly Taught Languages Partnership–Phase II (2019-2025)

Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Higher Education Program ($2.5 Million). PI Christopher P. Long; Co-PIs Sonja Fritzsche, Gordon Henry/Kristin Arola, Felix Kronenberg, Co-I/Project Manager Emily Uebel, Co-I Koenraad van Gorp, Luca Giupponi, Ellie Mitchell, John-Paul Chalykoff. Foster sustainable collaboration across the Big Ten in the area of less commonly taught languages including an emphasis on Anishinaabemowin language and culture projects. https://lctlpartnership.celta.msu.edu. The grant’s Wewaawindamojig Indigenous Advisory Board granted subawards to over 16 Indigenous community language project subawards across 4 US States and Canada. The grant has supported curricular and network development for Less Commonly Taught, but Commonly Spoken Languages across the country.

Peer Reviewed Articles, Book Chapters, and Other Publications
Forthcoming 2025. Sonja Fritzsche. “Experiential Learning and Utopia: Imagining the Future in Russia and Germany.” Science Fiction in the Literature Classroom. ed. Gerry Canavan. Modern Language Association, 2025, pp. 136-41

Forthcoming 2025. Sonja Fritzsche, Hardy Kettlitz, Erik Simon, Karlheinz Steinmüller, Elisabeth Schaber, Evan Torner. “Das Erbe der DDR Science Fiction.” Roundtable held at the SFRA 2023 Conference in Dresden, Germany. Transcription Sonja Fritzsche, Nolan Rachocki, and Jared Maul. Zeitschrift für Fantastikforschung. https://doi.org/16995/zff.24091

Kristin Arola, John-Paul Chalykoff, Sonja Fritzsche, Ellie Mitchell, and Emily Uebel. “Navigating Change in Indigenous Language Revitalization Grant Work at a Land Grant Institution.” Collaborations: A Journal of Community-Based Research and Practice. vol. 8, issue 1, 2025, DOI: 10.33596/coll.146 (co-authors listed alphabetically)

Fritzsche, Sonja. “Techno-utopians like Musk are treading old ground: The futurism of early 20th century Europe.” The Conversation. Section on Science & Technology. 9 September 2025. https://doi.org/10.64628/AAI.eksamd499 
Impact: 5522 reads in 10 countries. On September 26, 2025, 3rd most read article from MSU that month on The Conversation.

Sonja Fritzsche. “Eolomea and Signals.” Invited Introductory Essay. Strange New Worlds: Science Fiction at DEFA. DVD. Eureka Entertainment. United Kingdom. 2025. p. 1-5. https://eurekavideo.co.uk/movie/strange-new-worlds-science-fiction-at-defa/

Fritzsche, Sonja. “’Ableist Fragility’ and Chronic Stress in a Non-Autistic Parent Memoir from Germany.” German Quarterly vol. 98, no. 2, 2025, pp. 1-18. https://doi.org/10.1111/gequ.70011

Melissa Elliot and Sonja Fritzsche. “The East German Disco Film: An Intermedial Approach to the GDR’s Imagined (Musical) Futures.” German Studies Review vol. 46, no. 2, May 2023, pp. 189-206. https://doi.org/10.1353/gsr.2023.0037

Sonja Fritzsche. “Transformative Listening For Chairs: Navigating Difficult Conversations To Bring About Change.” ADFL Bulletin vol. 47, no. 1, December 2022, pp. 96-106. https://www.maps.mla.org/bulletin/article/XJUK7769/

Sonja Fritzsche, Bill Hart-Davidson and Christopher P. Long. “Charting Pathways of Intellectual Leadership. An Initiative for Transformational Institutional Change.” Change. The Magazine of Higher Learning May/June 2022. 19-27.
https://doi.org/10.1080/00091383.2022.2054175

Sonja Fritzsche, Luca Giupponi, Emily Heidrich Uebel, Felix Kronenberg, Christopher P. Long, and Koen Van Gorp. “Languages as Drivers of Institutional Diversity: The Case of Less Commonly Taught Languages.” The Language Educator Special Issue “Anti-Racism in the World Language Classroom.” vol 17, no. 1,Winter 2022, pp. 45-47.
https://www.thelanguageeducator.org/actfl/winter_2022/MobilePagedArticle.action?articleId=1760118#articleId1760118

Sonja Fritzsche. “Fascist Drag: Race, Laibach, and Playing Nazi in the Iron Sky Universe.” Science Fiction Film and Television vol. 15, no. 1, 2022, pp. 21-39. Project MUSE muse.jhu.edu/article/847956.

Invited Introduction. Sonja Fritzsche. “German SF in Translation.” for Out of this World: Speculative Fiction in Translation from the Cold War to the New Millennium. By Rachel S. Cordasco. U of Illinois Press, 2021. 81-85.

Cara Cilano, Sonja Fritzsche, Bill Hart-Davidson, and Christopher P. Long. “Staying with the Trouble – Designing a Values-enacted Academy.” London School of Economics Social Impact Blog, April 23, 2020.https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2020/04/23/staying-with-the-trouble-designing-a-values-enacted-academy/

(Invited) March-Russell, Paul, Sonja Fritzsche, Paul Kincaid, Adam Roberts. “Whose History is it Anyway?” Roundtable on The Cambridge History of Science Fiction (2019). Foundation. The International Review of Science Fiction. 137, vol. 49, no. 3, Winter 2020, pp. 85-100.

Invited essay. “Science-Fiction Fandom in United Berlin.” World Literature Today. The University of Oklahoma, November 2014. Web. 1 November 2014. https://www.worldliteraturetoday.org/2014/november/science-fiction-fandom-united-berlin-sonja-fritzsche

See above Portfolio for Book publications. See CV for full list of publications.

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