Gregor Thuswaldner

Gregor Thuswaldner is Associate Professor of German and Linguistics and a Fellow in Gordon’s Center for Christian Studies. He is also co-director of the Salzburg Institute of Gordon College. From 2006 until 2012 he chaired the Department of Languages and Linguistics. A native of Salzburg, Austria, he studied German and English at the University of Salzburg, Bowling Green State University, the University of Vienna (Mag. phil.) and received his Ph.D. in Germanic Languages from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

For six summers he (co)organized and co-directed the "German Summer in Sewanee" language immersion seminar at the University of the South, Sewanee, TN. In 2005 he was a visiting scholar for the "Rutgers University in Berlin" summer program and in the summers of 2008 and 2010 he was a visiting professor at Salzburg College in Salzburg, Austria. At Gordon College, he heads the German program and co-directs the Linguistics major and minor program. In 2006, Dr. Thuswaldner received Gordon's Distinguished Junior Faculty Award.

Dr. Thuswaldner has organized many academic panels and has presented numerous papers at national and international conferences in the US and in Europe and has published articles on Christoph Martin Wieland, Thomas Bernhard, Michael Haneke, Michael Scharang, Stanley Hauerwas, literary theory, linguistics, German and Austrian literature, culture, politics, and religion. His articles and book reviews have also appeared in German, Austrian, and American newspapers, such as Salzburger Nachrichten, Die Furche, Die Zeit, and The Salem News. In 2006 he co-organized an international cultural studies conference at Gordon College partially funded by the Lily Endowment Inc. featuring Dr. Cornel West as keynote speaker. With Dr. Armin Eidherr (University of Salzburg) and Nicholas Brooks (Salzburg Institute of Gordon College) he has been organizing the symposia of the Salzburg Institute of Gordon College at the University of Salzburg and at Gordon College. Dr. Thuswaldner's reasearch has been supported by Gordon College, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Washington University in St. Louis, the University of Salzburg, the Modern Language Association, the American Academy of Religion, and the Austrian Federal Ministry of Science and Research.

He is the co-editor of the essay collection, Der untote Gott: Religion und Ästhetik in deutscher und österreichischer Literatur des 20. Jahrhunderts (The Undead God: Aesthetics and Religion in Twentieth-Century German and Austrian Culture) (Cologne: Böhlau, 2007). In 2008 he published the essay collection Derrida und danach? Literaturtheoretische Diskurse der Gegenwart (Derrida and Thereafter? Essays on Contemporary Literary Theory) (Wiesbaden: Deutscher Universitätsverlag/VS Research, 2008). Dr. Thuswaldner's latest monograph is entitled "Morbus Austriacus" - Thomas Bernhards Österreichkritik ("Morbus Austriacus:" Thomas Bernhard's Critique of Austria) (Vienna: Braumüller, 2011; 2nd edition 2012). With Nicholas Brooks (Salzburg Institute of Gordon College) he is general editor of Symphilologus, the Salzburg Institute of Gordon College's yearbook, which features essays based on the Institute's symposia.  The first volume entitled Making Sacrifices: Visions of Sacrifice in European and American Cultures is scheduled to appear in fall 2013 with New Academic Press in Vienna.

Dr. Thuswaldner is an active member of several European and American academic organizations (including the Modern Language Association, German Studies Association, Linguistic Society of America, Austrian Studies Association, American Association of Teachers of German, Society of Germanic Linguistics). He serves on the Linguistics in Higher Education Committee (LiHEC) of the Linguistic Society of America and in addition, Dr. Thuswaldner holds two elected positions: he serves as a member of the board and regional director of the Northeast for the Conference on Christianity and Literature and he heads the Boston branch of the Gesellschaft für deutsche Sprache (GfdS).

e: gregor.thuswaldnergordon.edu