معرفی
Joela M Jacobs is an Assistant Professor of German Studies and Director of Graduate Studies for the MA/PhD programs in Transcultural German Studies at the University of Arizona. She holds affiliations with the Arizona Institutes for Resilience, Gender and Women's Studies, Arizona Center for Judaic Studies, and the Social, Cultural and Critical Theory program. Her research bridges German literature/film with Plant Studies, Animal Studies, Environmental Humanities, and Jewish Studies. She has authored/co-edited monographs on grotesque literature, plant poetics, and microbial matter, and edited special journal issues on plants, animal narratology, and memory literature. Dr. Jacobs emphasizes interdisciplinary pedagogy, receiving top teaching awards in 2019 and 2020. She co-founded the Literary and Cultural Plant Studies Network (2016).
Education: PhD in Germanic Studies (University of Chicago), postdoc at same institution, M.A. in German/English Philology from Universities of Bonn, St. Andrews, and Freie Universität Berlin.
Research focuses on intersections of German literary history with environmental and cultural studies, including vegetal eroticism, animal epistemology, biopolitical critiques, and environmental education for refugees. Current projects include an analysis of pre-WWII grotesque literature as resistance against rising nationalism, and studies of plant exhibits, pollen symbolism, and German-Jewish graphic novels.
Awards include College of Humanities Distinguished Teaching Award (2019) and Sherrill Creative Teaching Award (2020). Active in adult education and innovative classroom technologies as a certified Teaching Consultant.
Labs/Initiatives: Arizona Institutes for Resilience collaborations on environmental integration programs for asylum seekers, Literary and Cultural Plant Studies Network coordination, and interdisciplinary research clusters on transatlantic cultural memory.
