Ann Marie Rasmussen

Professor and Diefenbaker Memorial Chair in German Literary Studies
Ann Marie Rasmussen headshot

Contact information

Literary & cultural studies. German medieval, gender, and literary studies

Education

  • PhD (Yale University)
  • MA (Yale University) 
  • BA (University of Oregon)

Biography

Right Honourable John G. Diefenbaker Memorial Chair of German Literary Studies since 2015.

Born in Redmond, Oregon.

Professor of Germanic Languages and Literature at Duke University, North Carolina, 1988-2014.

Co-Founder, with Clayton Koelb (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill), of the Carolina-Duke Graduate Program in German Studies (2008).

Visiting Guest Professor at University of California, Irvine (2009) and Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon (2011).

2014 Duke University Graduate School Dean’s Award for Excellence in Mentoring.

2019-2020 Stanley Keller, Jr, Visiting Professor for Distinguished Teaching, Princeton University, Teaching Department.

Teaching icon

Teaching interests

German literature and culture, Medieval Studies, Material Culture and Art History, Gender Studies

Recent courses:

  • GER 130 Norse Mythology (online)

  • GER 230 Vikings! (online)

  • GER 330 Infamous Lovers (online)

  • GER 291 Storyworlds

  • GER 620/720 Introduction to Medieval German Language and Culture

  • Ger 620/720  Adaptation Studies: Theory and Practice

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Research interests

Literary and cultural studies (medieval studies, gender studies, critical philology and translation, historically based approaches to material culture and art history)

Selected research:

with Christine Neufeld, ”Arthurian Cosmopoiesis: Wolfram’s Parzival,” in Arthuriana 32.4 (2023):85–102.

Medieval Badges: Their Wearers and their Worlds. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2021. Awarded Honorable Mention by the GSA/DAAD Book Prize Committee, 2022.

with Jason Qu, “Re-Conceptualizing Transgressive Love in Gottfried’s Tristan und Isolde for Online University Teaching,” Mediävistische Perspektiven im 21. Jahrhundert. Festschrift für Ingrid Bennewitz zum 65. Geburtstag. Edited by A. Schindler Wiesbaden: Reichert Verlag 2021, pp. 343–353.

Rivalrous Masculinities: New Directions in Medieval Gender Studies, ed. Ann Marie Rasmussen. University of Notre Dame Press, 2019.

Selected publications

Books

Medieval Badges: Their Wearers and Their Worlds. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2021. Awarded Honorable Mention by the GSA/DAAD Book Prize Committee, 2022.

Ed., Rivalrous Masculinities: New Directions in Medieval Gender Studies. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2019.

Ed. with Jutta Eming and Kathryn Starkey, Visuality and Materiality in the Story of Tristan and Isolde. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2012.

Ed. and trans. with Sarah Westphal-Wihl, Ladies, Whores, and Holy Women: A Sourcebook in Courtly, Religious, and Urban Cultures of Late Medieval Germany, with Introductory Essays. Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, 2010.

Ed. with Anne L. Klinck, Medieval Woman's Song: Cross-Cultural Approaches. Philadelphia: Univ. of Pennsylvania Press, 2002.

Mothers and Daughters in Medieval German Literature. Syracuse: Syracuse Univ. Press, 1997.

Selected articles

Introduction to Wolfram von Eschenbach; Introduction and translation of anonymous German carnival play„ The Crown,“ in Broadview Anthology of Medieval Arthurian Literature, eds. E. Edwards and K. Cawsey, 2023.

with Christine Neufeld, ”Arthurian Cosmopoiesis: Wolfram’s Parzival,” in  Arthuriana 32.4 (2023):85–102.

with Jason Qu, “Re-Conceptualizing Transgressive Love in Gottfried’s Tristan und Isolde for Online University Teaching,” Mediävistische Perspektiven im 21. Jahrhundert. Festschrift für Ingrid Bennewitz zum 65. Geburtstag. Edited by A. Schindler with D. Goller und S. Hufnagel. Wiesbaden: Reichert Verlag 2021, 343–353.

"Medieval Symbols of Virtue and Mutual Devotion: Noble Dogs in Images, Badges and in Konrad of Würzburg's Partonopier and Meliur" in Animals in Text and Textile: Storytelling in the Medieval World, eds. Kathryn Starkey and Evelin Wetter. Riggisberg: Abegg Stiftung, 2019, pp. 227-244.

Co-editor, with Hanneke van Asperen, "Medieval Badges", Special Issue of The Mediaeval Journal 8.1 (2018).

"Badges: Abzeichen als sprechende Objekte" in Stimme und Performanz in der mittelalterlichen Literatur, ed. Monika Unzeitig, Angela Schrott, Nine Miedema. Berlin: deGruyter 2017, pp. 469-491. 

“Materiality and Meaning: What a Medieval Badge Can Tell Us about Translation,” in Un/Translatables. New Maps for German Literatures, eds. Catriona McLoed and Bethany Wiggin. Chicago: Northwestern University Press, 2016, pp. 215 -228.

 Co-editor, with Markus Stock, Special Issue on Medieval Media, Seminar 52.2 (2016).

 “Babies and Books: The Holy Kinship as a Way of Thinking about Women’s Power in Late Medieval Northern Europe,” in Founding Feminisms in Medieval Studies. Essays in Honor of E. Jane Burns, eds. Laine E. Doggett and Daniel E. O’Sullivan. Woodbridge: D.S.Brewer, 2016, pp. 205-218.

 with Heidi Madden, “Embedded Librarianship: Einbindung von Wissenschafts- und Informationskompetenz in Schreibkurse / Ein US-Amerikanisches Konzept,” BuB (Forum Bibliothek und Information) 68.04 (2016): 202-205.

 “Problematizing Medieval Misogyny: Aristotle and Phyllis in the German Tradition,” in Verstellung und Betrug im Mittelalter und in der mittelalterlichen Literatur, eds. Mathias Meyer and Alexander Sager. Göttingen: V & R unipress, 2015, pp. 195-220.

“Moving beyond Sexuality in Medieval Sexual Badges,” in From Beasts to Souls: Gender and Embodiment in Medieval Europe, eds. E. Jane Burns and Peggy McCracken. Notre Dame, IN: Univ. of Notre Dame Press. 201., 296-335.  Reprinted in Nahrung, Notdurft, Obszönität, ed. Andrea Grafetstätter. Bamberg: Bamberg University Press.

 “Hiding in Plain Sight: Print Literary Histories in the Digital Age”, with Heidi Madden, in College and Research Library News March 2013. 140-143. http://crln.acrl.org/content/current

“Reading in Nuremberg’s Fifteenth-Century Carnival Plays,” in Literary Studies and the Question of Reading, eds. Richard Benson, Eric Downing, and Jonathan Hess. Columbia, S.C.: Camden House, 2013. 106-129.

 “Wanderlust: Gift Exchange, Sex, and the Meanings of Mobility,” in Liebesgaben: Kommu­nikative, performative und poetologische Dimensionen in der Literatur des Mittelalters und der Frühen Neuzeit, eds. Margreth Egidi, Ludger Lieb and Marielle Schnyder. Berlin: Erich Schmidt Verlag, 2012. 219-229.

“Siegfried the Dragonslayer Meets the Web: Using Digital Media for Developing Historical Awareness and Advanced Language and Critical Thinking Skills,” Die Unterrichtspraxis 44.1 (2011). 105-114.

Wandering Genitalia: Sexuality and the Body in German Culture between the Late Middle Ages and Early Modernity, King's College London Medieval Studies, Occasional Series 2 (London: Centre for Late Antique & Medieval Studies, King's College London, 2009). 30 pp.

“The Winsbecke Father-Son and Mother-Daughter Poems (Der Winsbecke and Die Winsbeckin), with a Medieval Parody,” ed. trans. and intro. by Ann Marie Rasmussen and Olga V. Trokhimenko, in Medieval Conduct Literature: An Anthology of Vernacular Guides to Behaviour for Youths, with English Translations, ed. Mark D. Johnston. Toronto: University of Toronto Press and the Medieval Academy of America, 2009. 61-125.

"Masculinity and the Minnerede in Berlin mgo 186," in Triviale Minne? Konventionalität und Trivialisierung in spätmittelalterlichen Minnereden, eds. Ludger  Lieb and Otto Neudeck. Berlin: de Gruyter, 2006. 1189-38.

 “Subjektivität und Gender in der Märe Die zwei beichten (A und B),” in Inszenierungen  von Subjektivität in der Literatur des Mittelalters, eds. Martin Baisch, Jutta Eming, Hendrikje Haufe, and Andrea Sieber. Berlin: Ulrike Helmer Verlag, 2005. 271-88.

“The Female Figures in Gottfried’s Tristan and Isolde,” in A Companion to Gottfried’s Tristan and Isolde, ed. Will Hasty. Columbia, S.C.: Camden House, 2003. 143-63.

“Gendered Knowledge and Eavesdropping in the Late Medieval German Minnerede,” Speculum 77.4 (2002): 1168-94.

“Thinking through Gender in Late Medieval German Literature,” in Gender in Debate  from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance, eds. T. Fenster and C. A. Lees. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2002. 97-111.

"Fathers to Think Back Through: The Medieval German Mother-Daughter and Father-Son Conduct Poems Known as Die Winsbeckin and Der Winsbecke," in Medieval Conduct, eds. Kathleen Ashley and Robert L. A. Clark. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2001. 106-34.

“Introduction, Special Issue on Gender and Secrecy,” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 30.1 (2000): 1-4.

Teaching

Undergraduate Courses Developed and Taught

Medieval Studies

Norse Mythology. Online. First offering Winter 2023.

Module 2, Literary Studies, and Module 12, Visual Culture, for Introduction to Interdisciplinary Medieval Studies (MDVL 252), online.

Vikings! Online; face-to-face seminar. 

German Studies

Infamous Lovers. Tristan and Isolde Across Time. Online.

Storyworlds. Cross-listed as Cultural Identities seminar.

History of the German Language.

German Women Writers.

Graduate Courses Developed and Taught

Theories of Orality and Literacy.

Medieval German Literature and Culture.

Sex, Gender, and Love in Medieval German Literature.

Legend of King Arthur.

Adaptation: Theory and Practice.

Gender Studies and German Studies.

Grants

  • 2019: Co-applicant, Social Science and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) Partnership Grant “ENVIRONMENTS OF CHANGE,” 2019-2026.

  • 2017: Social Science and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) Insight Grant “VISUAL Communication and Community Formation in the Middle Ages: Medieval Badges,” 2017-2022.

  • 2017: University of Waterloo, International Research Partnership Grant-European Union, “Storyworlds: An International Research Partnership,”.