Petra Watzke

Petra Watzke is a Visiting Lecturer in German at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. She earned her doctorate in German Studies from Washington University in St. Louis, from where she graduated in 2014. Her dissertation “Women in the Context of Industrialization and Labor in Nineteenth-Century German Literature by Women” demonstrates her strong interest in nineteenth century German-speaking women writers. She continues this research interest in her current work. Watzke also combines her interest in women writers with her interest in German film, as exemplified in her article “East Germany’s Imaginary Indians: Liselotte Welskopf-Henrich’s Harka Cycle (1951-63) and its DEFA Adaptation Die Söhne der Großen Bärin” which was recently published in the edited volume em>Sophie Discovers Amerika: German-Speaking Women Write the New World.