Birgit Tautz, the George Taylor Files Professor of Modern Languages at Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine, is being honored for her most recent book by the South Atlantic Modern Language Association. The book – Translating the World: Toward a New History of German Literature Around 1800 (Pennsylvania State University Press, 2017) offers a new perspective on late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century German literary history.
James Ross MacDonald, chair of the prize-giving committee, stated that “Birgit Tautz’s Translating the World invites a reconsideration of German literary history by tracing the local contexts in which ‘the global’ was received and imagined. Rather than focusing on the nation-state, her lively, theoretically engaged argument offers an expansive account of translation, the city, and networks as organizing principles for language and culture.”
In accepting the honor, Professor Tautz stated that “I am pleased and humbled by this recognition. I take this as a sign that German studies is alive and well and has much to contribute to intercultural exchange, transatlantic work, and a broader discussion of literature and humanistic inquiry.â€
Professor Tautz is a graduate of the University of Leipzig in Germany. She holds a master’s degree in German from the University of Wisconsin and a Ph.D. in German and comparative literature from the University of Minnesota.