Michigan State University

Arts and Letters College Directory

Lynn Wolff

  • Associate Professor and Director of Graduate Studies, German Program
  • Linguistics, Languages, and Cultures
Biography

Ph.D. and M.A., German, University of Wisconsin-Madison B.A., German and Women’s Studies, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Lynn L. Wolff’s teaching and research interests encompass modern German literature and culture, in particular the relationship between literature and historiography, the representation of the Holocaust, theories of translation, and practices of intermediality. These interests are reflected in her first monograph W.G. Sebald’s Hybrid Poetics: Literature as Historiography (Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter 2014), which explores the emergence of a new hybrid discourse of literature as historiography while illuminating the interplay of aesthetics, epistemology, and ethics in twentieth-century literature in German. It is the first monograph to examine Sebald’s œuvre in its entirety, including unpublished archival material held at the Archive of German Literature in Marbach and the Harvard Houghton Library.

Her current book project explores the visual dimension of Holocaust testimony through an investigation of works that exhibit complex text-image relationships. Broadly defined as “graphic narratives,” these works offer new ways to consider how memory and trauma – experiences that challenge discursive modes of representation – are captured in visual forms and made (il)legible. The project further investigates how experience is ‘translated’ into word and image, how subjectivity and narrative voice are visualized, and how such visual texts reach a wider readership.

To foster exchange among colleagues in German, English, French and Francophone, Spanish, and Japanese Studies, Lynn Wolff, Liz Mittman, and Matthew Handelman initiated the Graphic Narratives Network, a research collaborative focused on writing history and visualizing trauma in a variety of text-image forms that highlights works in the MSU Libraries’ Comic Art Collection.

Prior to joining the department, Lynn was an Alexander von Humboldt research fellow and taught in the Department of Modern German Literature at the Universität Stuttgart. She has also taught German language, literature, and culture at Middlebury College’s Summer German School, where she also co-hosted the German School’s weekly radio program. At MSU, Lynn is also affiliate faculty in the Serling Institute for Jewish Studies and Modern Israel.

Works

Books

 

Journal Articles and Book Chapters (Selection)

  • “Autobiographical Graphic Narratives: Writing the Self and Drawing History in Nora Krug.” Comics Studies x Gender Studies, ed. Marina Rauchenbacher, Katharina Serles, and Naomi Sarah Lobnig. Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter, 2025. 179-196. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110775754-023
  • “Self-Translation in Nora Krug’s Transcultural Graphic Memoir Belonging / Heimat.” Comparative Aspects in Comics Studies: Translation, Localisation, Imitation, and Adaptation. Eds. Juliane Blank, Stephan Packard, and Christian A. Bachmann. Berlin: Christian A. Bachmann Verlag, 2025. 25-44.
  • “Intersektionalität durch Intermedialität: Das Ausloten von Subjektivität in autobiografischen Comics.” Comics und Intersektionalität. Eds. Anna Beckmann, Kalina Kupczyńska, Marie Martine Schröer, and Véronique Sina. De Gruyter, 2024. 271-294.  https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110799385-022
  • “The Power of Language: The ‘Wörterverzeichnis’ of H.G. Adler’s Theresienstadt 1941–1945.” Zeithistorische Forschungen/Studies in Contemporary History 20 (2023): 313-330. Special Issue: Jewish Critique of Language after the Holocaust. Eds. Nicolas Berg, Elisabeth Gallas, and Aurélia Kalisky. https://zeithistorische-forschungen.de/2-2023/6140
  • “The Book as Archive: Metaphors of Memory in Contemporary Graphic Memoirs by Birgit Weyhe, Nora Krug, and Bianca Schaalburg.” Gegenwartsliteratur: Ein germanistisches Jahrbuch/A German Studies Yearbook; Schwerpunkt: Erinnerung – Autofiktion – Archiv, 2023. 133-163.
  • “History.” W.G. Sebald in Context. Ed. Uwe Schütte. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023. 202-209. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009052313.024
  • “Sebald Scholarship.” W.G. Sebald in Context. Ed. Uwe Schütte. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023. 277-286. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009052313.032
  • “Literatur als Historiografie nach W.G. Sebald.” Romanhaftes Erzählen von Geschichte: Vergegenwärtigte Vergangenheiten im beginnenden 21. Jahrhundert. Eds. Elena Agazzi, Daniel Fulda, and Stephan Jaeger. Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter, 2019. 279-302. (Studien und Texte zur Sozialgeschichte der Literatur)
  • “‘Die Grenzen des Sagbaren’: Towards a Political Philology in H.G. Adler’s Reflections on Language.” H.G. Adler: Life, Literature, Legacy. Eds. Julia Creet, Sara R. Horowitz, and Amira Bojadzija-Dan. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2016. 273-301.
  • “The ‘Solitary Mallard’: On Sebald and Translation.” Journal of European Studies, Special Issue: W.G. Sebald. Ed. Richard Sheppard. 41.3-4 (2011): 323-340.
  • “H.G. Adler and W.G. Sebald: From History and Literature to Literary Historiography.” Monatshefte, Special Issue: H.G. Adler. Eds. Rüdiger Görner; Klaus L. Berghahn. 103.2 (2011): 257-275.
  • “‘The Mare of Majdanek’: Intersections of History and Fiction in Bernhard Schlink’s Der Vorleser.” Internationales Archiv für Sozialgeschichte der Literatur (IASL) 29.1 (2004): 84-117.

 

Awards

 

College of Arts & Letters News
Notice of Nondiscrimination | Privacy Statement | Site Accessibility
SPARTANS WILL | © Michigan State University