Petra Watzke (she, her, sie)


The face and torso of a youngish woman with dark, burly hair and round glasses. She is wearing a blue and white striped shirt and smiles into the camera.
Phone
920-832-7186
Campus Address
Main Hall
Room 206
German Studies
Title
Assistant Professor of German Studies
About
Petra Watzke enjoys teaching classes at all levels of the curriculum, always with a focus on equity and social justice. Her research interests are twofold. She examines the representation of industrialization in 19th-century German language literature written by women, as well as in early German film, with an emphasis on the narrative function of mechanical objects. In a second research interest, she employs disability studies to examine the persistence of academic ableism in higher education and its consequences for disabled students, faculty, and the community in general. She is especially interested in pedagogical ways to create access to learning for all students, especially in language teaching. She combines her two research interests by exploring literature and early German film, where the blurring of boundaries between humans and machines suggests a prosthetic function, which she explores from the perspective of Disability Studies.
Education
PhD Washington University in St. Louis (German Studies and Certificate in Film and Media Studies)
M.A. University of Colorado at Boulder (German Studies and Certificate in Women and Gender Studies)
B.A. Universität Regensburg (Germanistik, Anglistik)
Years at Lawrence
2023-