Caroline Kita

Caroline Kita

Associate Professor of German
Director of Graduate Studies, German and Comparative Literature
Performing Arts Department, Program in Film and Media Studies (Affiliate)
PhD, Duke University
research interests:
  • 19th- and 20th-Century German and Austrian Literature and Culture
  • German-Jewish Studies
  • Aesthetic Philosophy and Religion
  • Music and Narrative
  • The Radio Play (Hörspiel) in German Culture
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    • Department of Comparative Literature & Thought
      MSC 1104-146-319
      Washington University
      1 Brookings Drive
      St. Louis, MO 63130-4899
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    Caroline Kita's research examines German and Austrian culture in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, focusing on German-Jewish literature, music, theater, and radio drama

    Kita’s scholarship has examined religious and cultural identity in the works of Jewish writers and composers in fin-de-siècle Vienna, critiques of the total work of art, theories of listening and democracy, and sound, space, and time in German-language audiofiction. She is the author of Jewish Difference and the Arts in Vienna: Composing Compassion in Music and Biblical Theater (2019) and co-editor with Jennifer Kapczynski of The Arts of Democratization: Styling Political Sensibilities in Postwar Germany (2022). Her current book project, Border Territories: The Emancipatory Soundscapes of Postwar German Radio, traces the soundscapes of radio drama as spaces of cultural critique and political commentary in German culture in the aftermath of the Second World War. Her articles have appeared in The German Quarterly, The Journal of Austrian Studies, Monatshefte, and Unterrichtspraxis/Teaching German. In 2018, she co-edited a special issue of The German Quarterly on Music and German Culture.

    Kita teaches German language courses on all levels, as well as undergraduate and graduate seminars on music, drama, visual art, and literature in German and European cultures. She also teaches the seminar, “Introduction to Comparative Arts,” in the Comparative Literature & Thought.

    Kita earned her bachelor’s degree in History from Boston College and her doctorate from Duke University. She has studied at the University of Vienna, the University of Potsdam, and the University of Duisburg-Essen. She received a Fulbright Grant to Austria (2004-05), as well as funding for advanced research from the Austrian Exchange Service (Ernst Mach Grant, 2012; Franz Werfel Fellowship, 2015, 2017), and Washington University’s Center for the Humanities (Faculty Fellowship, 2018). Her current book project is being supported by a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities (2022).

    Recent Courses

    Advanced Grammar and Style Lab (German 402)

    Take your German skills to the next level! This 1-unit lab is designed for advanced students seeking to master the finer points of German grammar and style through targeted exercises and discussion. Students will learn to construct sophisticated, elegant, and accurate sentences, with the goal of improving their effectiveness as writers and speakers of German. A rotating weekly focus will cover such topics as: complex sentence structures; advanced passive and subjunctive forms; idiomatic prepositional and verb phrases; and infinitive constructions. Prerequisite: German 302 or the equivalent.

    Introduction to Comparative Arts (CompLitTht 313E)

    Introduction to Comparative Arts is an interdisciplinary, multimedia course that explores the relationship among the arts in a given period. This semester we will address connections between literature, painting, music, and theater as well as radio and film from the mid-18th century to the present, examining how different aesthetic forms and media illuminate each other through transposition, adaptation, and media combination. As we consider theories of representation and expression, we will also learn about the rise of cultural institutions such as the library, the museum, and the concert hall and the discourses that have shaped their development. Students will have the opportunity to visit art exhibits and performances in the St. Louis area and will produce a creative project at the end of the semester.

    Seminar in the 20th Century: Radio Drama (German 527)

    This seminar will explore radio drama as a unique literary genre, performance art form, and media artifact. Although often viewed today as a primitive forerunner of today's podcasts and audio-fiction, radio drama has had a long and storied tradition. The first half of the semester will explore flashpoints in the history of dramatic storytelling on the radio, beginning with early experiments with the genre in the 1920s and moving on through the twentieth century to the resurgence of audio storytelling in the present day. Themes will include the intersections of radio drama with politics (populism and fascism, democratization and decolonialization, civil rights movements throughout the world) and the impacts of new developments in sound technology (electronic music and stereophony). In the second half of the semester, students will have the opportunity to delve further into research on radio drama in the cultural context of their choosing, while we read and discuss different approaches to analyzing the genre, including perspectives from audio narratology, translation and adaptation studies, soundscape studies, archival histories, and theories of listening. Examples will be drawn from a variety of languages; students will have the opportunity to practice close listening and soundscape analysis even when the text of the radio drama is in a language with which they are unfamiliar.

    Selected Publications

    “Constructing Symphonic Worlds: Gustav Mahler, Weltliteratur, and the Musical Program.” German Literature as a Transnational Field of Production 1848-1919, edited by Lynne Tatlock and Kurt Beals, Camden House, 2023, pp. 228-2.

    "Musical Speech-Score as Soundscape: Elfriede Jelinek’s Die Schutzbefohlenen on the Radio.” Word, Sound, and Music in Radio Drama, edited by Jarmila Mildorf and Pim Verhulst, Brill, 2023, pp. 310-325.

    “Revisiting the Soundscapes of Postwar West German Radio Drama." A Companion to Sound Studies in German-Speaking Cultures, edited by Rolf Goebel, Camden House, 2023, pp. 151-164.