Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Contact Information:

• Address: 3107 Foreign Languages Building
• Telephone: (217) 333-6330
• Email: yy47@illinois.edu
• Visit Website

Biography

Yasemin Yildiz received her M.A. in German Literature from the Universität Hamburg and her Ph.D. in German Studies from Cornell University. She also undertook graduate course work in Comparative Literature at the City University of New York on a Fulbright scholarship and attended the School for Criticism and Theory in Ithaca, NY. Her research focuses on twentieth- and twenty-first century German literature and culture. Prof. Yildiz is currently working on two larger projects. She is completing a book titled The Postmonolingual Condition: Writing Beyond the Mother Tongue. There, she argues that the twentieth century should be understood as “postmonolingual,” that is, as marked by the tension between re-emergent multilingual practices and the still dominant monolingual framework for apprehending linguistic configurations inherited from the eighteenth century. The book illuminates the postmonolingual condition through the writings of German-language writers—from Franz Kafka and Theodor W. Adorno to Feridun Zaimoglu—who bring German into contact with other languages and intensively reflect on the concept of the mother tongue. Through these writers, The Postmonolingual Condition suggests that the dimensions of gender, kinship, and affect encoded in the “mother tongue” are crucial to the persistence of monolingualism and the challenge of multilingualism. Her second book project is entitled Governing European Subjects: The Discourse of “Muslim” Women and the Production of Europeanness in Contemporary Germany. Observing the increased circulation of life stories of women cast as Muslim in contemporary Europe, this project asks what discursive work these depictions perform. Focusing on German literature, film, and media, Governing European Subjects suggests that the figure of the “Muslim woman” is mobilized particularly in contemporary discourses redefining multiculturalism, Holocaust memory, and the welfare state not just for minorities but for all Europeans. Prof. Yildiz holds additional appointments in the Program in Comparative and World Literature, the Program in Jewish Culture and Society, and in Gender and Women’s Studies. She is also a member of the European Union Center and the Center for South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies.

Publications

Courses Taught

• GER 211 Conversation and Writing I GER 212 Conversation and Writing II GER 331 Introduction to German Literature I GER 332 Introduction to German Literature II GER 401 Current Issues in German Media GER 420 German Cultural History: Modern Questions—German Responses GER 496 Reimagining Germany: Minority Literature