Kathryn Starkey in Berlin

The Edward Clark Crossett Professor of Humanistic Studies, Kathryn Starkey is a professor of German studies and professor, by courtesy, of English, history, and comparative literature. Her research focuses primarily on medieval German literature from the eleventh to the thirteenth century, and her topics encompass visuality and materiality, object/thing studies, manuscript illustration and transmission, language, performativity, and poetics. Professor Starkey has held visiting appointments at the Universities of Palermo and Freiburg im Breisgau. Recent book publications include: Things and Thingness in European Literature and Visual Art, 800-1600, edited with Jutta Eming (Berlin/New York, 2021), Animals in Text and Textile. Storytelling in the Medieval World, edited with Evelin Wetter (Riggisberg, Switzerland, 2019), and A Courtier’s Mirror: Cultivating Elite Identity in Thomasin von Zerclaere’s “Welscher Gast” (Notre Dame, 2013), among others.

Professor Starkey is the director of the Global Medieval Sourcebook, an open access teaching and research tool, for which she received a NEH Digital Humanities Advancement Grant as well as awards from the Roberta Bowman Denning Fund for Humanities and Technologies at Stanford. Additionally, Professor Starkey has been the recipient of fellowships from the National Humanities Center, the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, the UNC Institute for the Arts and the Humanities, and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. At Stanford, she teaches a wide range of courses on Germany, including “The Bauhaus School of Design”, “The German Idea of ‘Bildung’”, and “Fairy Tales”, as well as more specialized topics on medieval literature. During our program, Professor Starkey plans to address themes including “Alexander von Humboldt, the Humboldt University, and the Idea of Liberal Education,” “Museum Island as a World Heritage Site,” “The Roaring Twenties,” and “The Bauhaus School of Design.”