Erin Ritchie
PhD Student
Teaching Assistant
Germanic Studies
Contact
Building & Room:
1526 UH
Address:
601 S. Morgan St.
Email:
About
Erin Ritchie (formerly Gizewski) is a current PhD student and TA in the Germanic Studies department at UIC. Her research interests include queer theory, body studies, fat studies, disability studies, medical humanities, and critical approaches to film and literature that emphasize the connection between the mind and body. Erin’s current research centers “bodies in excess” in German literature and film—i.e. bodies depicted as too fat or too thin—and the impact of these portrayals on our understanding of health culture in Germany and the U.S.
Selected Publications
SZCZEPANIAK, MONIKA. Elfriede Jelinek. Book Review in Jahrbuch Gegenwartsliteratur 22/2023.
“Successfully and Deliciously Fugacious: Re-reading the ‘Failed’ Fat Relationship in Percy Adlon’s Zuckerbaby (1985).” Fat Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Body Weight and Society. Special Issue: Fat Kinship. February 2, 2022. https://doi.org/10.1080/21604851.2022.2031581.
“Breaking the Cycle: Establishing New Feminist Phenomenology within Movement-Image in Maren Ade’s The Forest for the Trees.” Focus on German Studies Vol. 24/25, November 2019.
Selected Presentations
Community Discussion, “Anti-Fat Bias and Weight Stigma”: to be held at the Women in German Studies Conference in Portland, Oregon: November 10th-13th, 2022
“Fattening Queer, Fattening Disability: How Disability and Queer Studies Can Help Reconceptualize Fat”’ presented at the Max Kade Colloquium at University of Illinois at Chicago: November 3-4, 2022
“Successfully and Deliciously Fugacious: Queer Fat Intervention in Percy Adlon’s Zuckerbaby (1985)”; presented at the German Studies Association Conference in Indianapolis: September 30 -October 3, 2021
„‘Wie ein Metronom Fuß vor Fuß:‘ Stepping Towards New Orientations via Musical Language in Elfriede Jelinek’s Die Klavierspielerin” ; presented at the Modern Languages Association Conference, in Toronto: January 7-10, 2021
“Relations and Queer Becomings: Affectual Form and Body without Organs in Elfriede Jelinek’s Die Klavierspielerin”; presented at The Pasts and Futures of Queer German Studies at University of British Columbia, Vancouver: April 24-26, 2020 (Virtual Conference)
“Relations and Queer Becomings: Affectual Form and Body without Organs in Elfriede Jelinek’s Die Klavierspielerin, presented at In/Between Conference at University of Illinois at Chicago: February 20-21, 2020
“Beyond Detective Work: The Necessity of Going Beyond the Psychoanalytical Method in Sigmund Freud’s ‘Der Moses des Michelangelos’”; presented at Kentucky Foreign Language Conference at University of Kentucky: April 19-21, 2018