Brandy stands in front of the Semperoper in Dresden - she is wearing a burgundy patterned dress with a matching shawl over it. Her hair is blowing in the wind and she is smiling with her mouth closed. She wears red glasses, posed with hand on her hip

Welcome

I am a Germanist at Knox College who works somewhere at the intersection of fairy tales, folklore, adaptation, pedagogy, and music. Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions, want access to any materials, or if you just want to discuss your favorite fairytale.

Recent Publications

  • Pregnancy, Purity, and Body Autonomy in “New Originals” of “Rapunzel”

    Winner of the 2023 “Best Article Prize” from the Brothers Grimm Society of North America

    This article looks at adaptations and retellings of the fairy tale “Rapunzel,” beginning with the Grimms' own edits obscuring Rapunzel's sexuality, to expose how adaptations of this tale echo the evolution of societal attitudes toward gender roles and sexuality. Retellings of the tale are analyzed as “new originals” in their own right. Adaptations and remediations from the Grimms' first and second editions, including translations and film adaptations such as Rapunzel oder Der Zauber der Tränen (1988) and Tangled (2010), are used to explore how these new versions build on originals while injecting their own “flavors” and carrying the social values of their times and places. Reading fairy-tale retellings as a continuous process of adaptation from “new originals” provides insight into social norms and values while discerning relevant, recognizable, and universally adaptable aspects of a tale.

    German Quarterly

  • Es war (noch) einmal: Grimm Versions of New Fairytales in the GDR

    With Melissa Sheedy, PhD—Irmtraud Morgner’s fairy tale “Bennos erste Geschichte” introduces her famous Trobadora Beatriz, a reimagined Sleeping Beauty who embarks on a magical flight from the patriarchy. Along with tales by Kerstin Hensel and Stefan Heym, Morgner’s story represents a body of new and retold East German fairy tales. As part of the “fairy tale wave” of the 1970s GDR, the production of new fairy tales along with renewed interest in the Grimms marked a renaissance of the Volksmärchen. Couched within seemingly innocuous children’s literature, fairy tales functioned both as state-sanctioned ideological vehicles and as platforms for political critique. Through psychoanalytic and feminist perspectives, this essay explores retellings of familiar tales as well as new creations for children (and adults) of the GDR. In examining three tales by Morgner, Hensel, and Heym, we investigate the role of the fairy tale at the crux between reality and the fantastic, the didactic and diverting, and between children’s and adults’ literatures.

    Colloquia Germanica

  • Brothers Grimm: From the Oral to the Literary and Beyond

    This contribution explores the work of the Brothers Grimm and their worldwide influence from the nineteenth century to today. Focusing primarily on the Kinder‐ und Hausmärchen (Children's and Household Tales, also referred to as the KHM), this chapter provides biographical information on the Grimms' lives in the context of how their history and political standing influenced their work. Because of their dedication to the Germanic culture and traditions, the KHM was originally meant to record and preserve the cultural goods and oral history of the German‐speaking people. However, in the past 200 years, the tales have grown beyond that initial purpose, influencing research in history, linguistics, anthropology, and psychology while also being repurposed and redistributed through modern translations, Walt Disney Studios, and other film adaptations. These retellings and translations serve as reflections of the cultures into which they have traveled and reemerged as world literature.

    Wiley Blackwell Companion to World Literature

  • Mother Courage Alone at Fermat's Last Theater (Review)

    In these times of political disturbance, war, and massive numbers of displaced peoples searching for a way to live, Brecht’s Mother Courage and Her Children becomes particularly poised to comment on the plight of those who must migrate due to factors they cannot control. Fermat’s Last Theater, a free public theater, aims to thematize issues of social justice in all of their staged works. Their workshop, titled Mother Courage Alone, portrayed the injustice brought upon the “small fry of the world,” echoing the Mother Courage’s comment that “victory and defeat don’t mean the same thing to the big wheels up top as the small fry,” shortly before her younger son is executed. In the game of war, wins and losses mean nothing to the generals who stay at the back of the regiment away from the action. The majority fulfills the whim of the minority, and the deaths of the common soldiers mean little to their superiors. Today, the movement of refugees continues to grow, and with it the amount of “small fry,” those with no power over their situation, those who are moved and housed like livestock and whose deaths seemingly mean just as little to those in charge as the deaths of soldiers meant to the generals in Mother Courage.

    International Brecht Society

FAQs

A woman in a shiny black jumpsuit stands in front of a teal theater marquee. The sign reads “Congratulations Dr. Brandy”

  • I am a first-generation chicken-farmer-turned-academic. Bob Ross would call my first trip to Germany a “happy little accident” as there was a mix-up in the paperwork for a band I had auditioned for—I had planned on being in the one going to France!—and that first trip sparked an interest which snowballed into a major, then a teaching job, and now a PhD.

  • I had a high school student ask why the meaning of “Let it Go” from Disney’s Frozen was translated so differently in the French version of the song. That question led me to looking at dubbing and translation in the context of world literature. From there I took the step into looking at adaptations from a broader perspective, finally landing on an interest in the reflection of cultural attitudes and societal values in fairy-tale variation. Film is exciting because the adaptation of what is usually a genre known for its brevity must add so much to the story in order to reach the required content for a feature-length production.

  • My family moved to a farm when I was 8 years old. I resisted as much as I could and part of their bribe was that I could have chickens. Those were just the starting point—we later expanded to ducks, geese, horses, miniature donkeys, and llamas.

  • Street art! Especially political street art (which… I think it all is political by nature of being presented to the public). You can see a few favorites I have found in the “Street Art” page on this site.

  • In Fall 2023 I taught a class (in English) called Dungeons, Dragons, and Deutsch (lovingly called D-Cubed), which combined the gameplay of Dungeons and Dragons with literary analysis and discussion of texts drawn from Medieval German literature. I worked with a research assistant over the summer to develop a D&D campaign that would test the players’ knowledge of The Nibelungenlied and Erec as well as their understanding of the concept of honor in medieval Germany. In the first two days of the week, we discussed and analyzed the readings, and on the last day students separated into groups to play the ongoing campaign. It might be the most I have ever laughed during a class I’ve taught!