Hello!
I'm Jake van der Kolk. I'm a Teaching Associate Professor of German at East Carolina University. My academic interests include aesthetic theory, narratology, the early avant-garde, Digital Humanities, and foreign language pedagogy. My research examines how exile literature creates new forms of "stateless" community, and has worked extensively with the stream-of-consciousness novel Der Tod des Vergil (The Death of Virgil, 1945) by Austrian author Hermann Broch.
I first studied the German language as an undergraduate, and was hooked instantly. Two years after taking my first language course, I had studied in Germany, added German as a second degree, and started my first graduate course on the topic.
I continued my studies at Penn State, carrying on my passion for German literature and culture alongside my other passion, philosophy. I have also spent a lot of time in Germany, including stints at Philipps-Universität Marburg and Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg.
I greatly enjoy teaching the German language, history, and culture in both online and classroom settings, and have worked at a diverse variety of institutions including Penn State, Susquehanna University, Kalamazoo College, Western Michigan University, and Wabash College. I also taught English language, culture, and academic practices at the Language Center at Philipps-Universität Marburg, and have translated academic works for presentation and publication.
In my free time, I dabble in open source computing, Linux, and some coding and markup programming.
Thanks for stopping by,
Jake