Christina Svendsen

Dr. Christina Svendsen teaches all levels of German including elementary, business, and translation studies, as well as courses in literature and philosophy. Before coming to Baldwin Wallace, she taught at Centre College in Kentucky, where she was a professor of French and German; the University of Pennsylvania, where she was a Mellon Junior Fellow in the Humanities, Urbanism, and Design Initiative; Tufts University, where she taught in the Experimental College; and Harvard University, where she was a lecturer of Comparative Literature. Svendsen was awarded dissertation funding from the École Normale Supérieure, the Sheldon Fellowship, and the Lurcy Trust, and was a Fulbright Fellow in Berlin.

Dr. Svendsen worked as a researcher-writer for the best-selling travel guide, “Let's Go: Europe,” and edited their Austria-Switzerland and Rome guides. She has published well-reviewed translations of neglected modernist authors, particularly Unica Zürn and Paul Scheerbart, and has a new translation, “Munchhausen and Clarissa: A Berlin Novel,” forthcoming from Wakefield Press in the fall of 2020.

Her research interests center on the intersection of literary and visual culture, particularly architecture, in modernism. In the past she has written on Josephine Baker as an unwilling architectural muse; the material culture of building and ruination in writings by Walter Benjamin, W. G. Sebald, Virginia Woolf, Rose Macaulay and others; and ecological theories of cities. Her current research project is a conceptual history of transparency. Svendsen's research inspires her teaching. She enjoys learning from her students and helping them connect classroom learning to personal learning and professional goals in other areas of their lives.

Dr. Svendsen is initiating a pilot program in service learning for the German program, utilizing connections to local business firms and museums. She sponsors the BW German Club, which organizes an annual Oktoberfest with community partners, a German-American Kulturabend, films and field trips. She also maintains Baldwin Wallace University’s successful exchange program with Universität Osnabrück, which brings German students to the BW campus and sends BW students to Germany.