SwissStudies.org > Who We Are

The idea for SwissStudies.org was born over breakfast at the NEMLA conference in Boston (2005). Margrit Zinggeler and Karin Baumgartner commiserated about the few resources available for Swiss Studies in the United States. We noticed that unlike German Studies or Austrian Studies, Swiss Studies neither had an annual conference nor a journal dedicated to its issues. This website serves as institutional memory, a repository for teaching resources, an information platform for students, teachers, and researchers, and as a discussion forum for all things Swiss.

Dr. Karin Baumgartner was born in Romanshorn, Switzerland, where she spent a traditional Swiss girlhood. She got started on her academic career when she realized that girls, who enrolled in the academic track, did not have to take home economics or cooking. Even then, Karin realized that no Latin declination could be as bad as the cooking skills of twelve-year old girls. After studying Anglistik, Skandinavistik, and Germanistik at Zurich university, Karin came to the United States first in 1986, then again in 1989. With the encouragement of Margrit Zinggeler, she enrolled at the University of Minnesota from where she received a BA and an MA degree. In 1999, Karin received a Ph.D. from Washington University in St. Louis with a dissertation on Caroline de la Motte Fouque. From 1999-2006, Karin was an Assistant Professor of German at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, where she received tenure. Since 2006, Karin is working for the University of Utah in Salt Lake City as an Assistant Professor of German. Karin was chosen for the TrainDaF program (2004-05) and for a Fulbright Junior Research Award (2005-06). Karin's research focus is on the conservative women of the 18th and 19th centuries, in particular those who used the rhetoric of conservatism to create opportunities to speak for themselves. See Karin's webpage for her professional life, read Milena Moser (Putzfraueninsel, Schlampenbuch) for Karin's guilty pleasures, and Evelin Hasler's Tells Tochter (also Anna Göldin, and Wachsflügelfrau) for why feminism makes sense. Karin used to have hobbies, but she can't quite remember what they were.
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Dr. Margrit V. Zinggeler is an associate professor of German and section head of German in the Department of Foreign Languages and Bilingual Studies at Eastern Michigan University, Ypsilanti, Michigan, USA. She is a native of German speaking Switzerland and studied English, American Studies, History, and Pedagogy at Zürich University, Switzerland. She earned her Ph.D. in German Literature at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, with a dissertation on Literary Freedom and Social Constraints in the Works of Swiss Writer Gertrud Leutenegger (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1994). Besides teaching German language courses, German, Austrian, and Swiss Literature courses and Cultural Studies, she specializes in Business German. She published articles on literary theory, second language acquisition, multiculturalism, German literature, and business languages. Currently she is working on a book project on German grammar based on the Brothers Grimm Fairy Tales. She was elected for president of the Michigan World Language Association for the year 2006 and serves on the Faculty Council and the Executive Board of the Faculty Council at Eastern Michigan University as well as several other university and departmental committees, and on a variety of professional organizations and community projects. See Margrit's website.
Email Dr. Margrit V. Zinggeler with this link (one-time free forum registration required).