As far back as graduate school at the University of Virginia, Martin Sheehan was aware of the reputation of the U of A’s Department of German Studies.
As Sheehan progressed through his own career, including nearly a decade as chair of the Department of Foreign Languages at Tennessee Tech University, he continued to encounter work of German Studies faculty from the U of A – at conferences, in webinars and in books and articles – and came to understand the breadth and interdisciplinarity of the work.
“When the opportunity arose to lead German Studies, I already knew I would be joining a department with unusual strength on both sides of the field: internationally recognized work in language learning and pedagogy, and an equally ambitious tradition of cultural and literary scholarship,” said Sheehan, who started this fall as Associate Professor and Department Head.
Once an aspiring engineer, Sheehan said he’s always been fascinated by what brings students to German and when he arrived at the U of A, he learned about several astronomy students who had added a German major and in exploring the connection, discovered that Hans-Walter Rix, now a director at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg, came to the U of A as a Fulbright scholar, earned his Ph.D. here, and later taught here for many years.
“Discoveries like that remind me that German can intersect with astronomy, engineering, business, environmental studies, music, history and many other fields. Sometimes students reveal those connections to us simply by telling us what excites them,” he said.
What brought to you the U of A and what do you envision for the future of the Department of German Studies?
“The University of Arizona’s Department of German Studies had been on my professional radar for many years before I had the opportunity to join it. Even as a graduate student, I regularly encountered Arizona faculty presenting their work at national conferences. Over time, I also found myself reading and citing scholarship by members of the department in my own research. Their names kept appearing on innovative books and articles, as well as on symposia, conferences, and collaborative projects that were expanding what German Studies could encompass. That mattered to me because I have always been drawn to a broad conception of the field, one that includes literature and cultural studies alongside film, media, digital humanities, language pedagogy and interdisciplinary work.
“The department’s designation as a German Center of Excellence reflects that larger record of achievement. What I appreciate even more now that I am here is how much sustained effort lies behind that reputation. My colleagues bring tremendous energy to their research and teaching, while also creating opportunities for students and engaging teachers and communities across Arizona and beyond. The department’s dual doctoral program with the universities of Leipzig and Cologne is another example of that ambition. It gives graduate students the chance to work across national and intellectual traditions in a way that few programs can offer.
“At a moment when German programs at several major universities have been consolidated or reduced, I find it especially meaningful to join a department that continues to ask expansive questions about what German Studies can be. That combination of scholarly excellence, international engagement, strong language education, and a willingness to push the boundaries of the discipline was a major reason Arizona appealed to me.”
Speaking of interdisciplinary research, your work touches on digital humanities and applied humanities – how can the humanities impact other fields?
“My route into the digital humanities actually began before I knew that term existed. I started college as an electrical engineering major who also excelled in my humanities classes like German and English. Eventually, the demands of the engineering curriculum forced me to make a choice, and I chose language, literature and culture. Years later, while completing my graduate work at the University of Virginia, I discovered the Scholars' Lab, an interdisciplinary research center in our library where I began attending workshops that showed me ways computational methods could help us generate and explore humanistic questions. It felt as though two parts of my intellectual life that I had once been forced to separate were beginning to come back together.
“Some of my research uses computational methods like social network analysis. If we claim that a character occupies an important position in a literary work, for example, we can map who speaks to whom and examine patterns of connection across the text. The quantitative data and the graphs we make out of them do not replace interpretation. Instead, the approach gives us another way of seeing the text and sometimes exposes relationships we might otherwise overlook.
“I am increasingly interested in video games for similar reasons. I grew up playing edutainment games like The Oregon Trail, and while I was drawn to the more active aspects of the gameplay (like hunting and avoiding rocks while rafting down the Columbia River), eventually I also explored the rich details the programmers baked into the game. The game asks players to make choices within a historical system and then live with the consequences. My current projects explore how we might use game mechanics to investigate subjects ranging from Viennese ball culture around 1900 to the hyperinflation experienced by Germans after the first World War. I am fascinated by the possibility that building and playing a game can itself become a form of humanistic inquiry, and I feel lucky to be in a college where this type of applied, creative scholarship is valued.”
What is the importance of language learning, both for students majoring or majoring in a language and for those in general education courses, and how can programs like the Arizona Summer Study in Leipzig impact that experience?
“There is a particular joy in seeing students enter a beginning German classroom with little or no knowledge of the language and then watching them develop confidence, competence, and eventually creativity. At first, every sentence can feel like an accomplishment. Before long, students begin experimenting, joking, taking risks and finding ways to express ideas that they could not have communicated only a few months earlier. That process teaches much more than vocabulary and grammar. It asks students to become comfortable with uncertainty.
“The uncertainty that students learn to navigate in the language classroom becomes much more tangible when they study abroad, which I have witnessed firsthand. My own experience with studying abroad began very early. I traveled to Forchheim, Germany, on a high school exchange, later spent a semester studying in Erfurt as an undergraduate, and eventually returned to Germany to teach for a year at the Technische Universität Dortmund. Years later, I had the opportunity to experience study abroad from the other side by helping accompany students to Berlin. That perspective was especially rewarding because I could see how transformative the experience could be for students. Some had barely traveled before, and a few had never even been on an airplane. Then, after spending time abroad, they were already looking for ways to return.
“I sometimes say that study abroad is valuable precisely because it is challenging, although I would never want that to frighten students away. The growth comes from discovering that you can navigate a train station when you are uncertain where to go, order a meal when you do not know every word on the menu, recover from a misunderstanding, or find another way to communicate when the first one fails. Each small success builds confidence. Students begin to realize that they can function in circumstances that initially seemed unfamiliar or intimidating. Those lessons in adaptability, independence, patience, and problem solving stay with them long after the trip ends.
“German Studies also gives students ways to encounter another culture beyond learning to communicate in its language. I love teaching literature and especially film because those courses allow students to discover how analysis and interpretation work. A student might begin by saying that a sequence of a movie made them anxious, unsettled, or exhilarated. My job is then to ask: “Why? What did the camera position, editing, sound, or visual composition of the scene do to make you feel like that?” Watching students move from feeling something to explaining how an artwork created that feeling is enormously satisfying. The lessons we learn in class help sharpen our eyes as we view the world around us.
“And German cinema gives us extraordinary material to work with. Some of classic films feature unexpected elements like child murderers, cabaret performers, vampires, monsters, or sleepwalking killers. That reality tends to surprise students who arrive expecting something much tamer and more solemn from early movies. Films such as these make excellent gateways into questions about psychology, gender, politics, social class, and the history of cinema itself.
Study abroad extends all of those lessons into everyday life. Students have to navigate unfamiliar circumstances, solve problems, listen carefully, and occasionally accept that they will misunderstand something. That experience builds linguistic proficiency, but also independence, adaptability, and humility. There is a qualitative difference between studying another culture and discovering how to live, however briefly, within it.”
How can you convey to students – and the broader community – the value of multilingualism and the humanities, especially in an increasingly high-tech future?
“I think multilingualism may become more valuable precisely because technology makes communication look effortless. Learning another language reminds us that genuine communication requires patience. You have to listen, notice context, tolerate ambiguity, rephrase yourself, and sometimes find an entirely different way of making a connection or getting your ideas across. Those habits are extremely valuable beyond the language classroom. They teach us how to encounter people whose experiences and assumptions differ from our own.
“I think something similar is true of the humanities in an age of artificial intelligence. Generative AI can process astonishing quantities of material created by human beings: our writing, images, theories, histories, hopes, and fears. But those systems necessarily begin with records of what humans have already thought and made. Human beings still have to decide what questions matter, what future we want, and what ought to exist that does not yet exist. Humanistic thinking helps us decide which questions are worth asking.
“Perhaps that is one reason I have always been attracted to older technologies. I collect typewriters, and I still use them to write letters and thank you notes to friends and colleagues. It might sound strange, but, in our current digital age dominated by emails and text messages, there is something wonderfully human about receiving a typewritten letter. You can see the uneven impression of the keys, the occasional typo, how the lines of text aren’t perfectly aligned because the paper was fed in at a slight angle. These physical traces show that someone sat at a machine and composed those particular words for you. You can see the effort. An email is faster, yes, but a typewritten note asks both writer and reader to slow down, to engage with intention."
“I don't think our technological future will necessarily make those slower forms of engagement obsolete. Who knows! We might value them more. We already see renewed interest in vinyl records, film cameras, printed books, typewriters, even iPods—all devices that do fewer things rather than more. For me, the humanities occupy a similar space. They teach sustained attention. They ask us to linger over a sentence, an image, a historical moment, or an idea. In a world capable of generating an almost limitless amount of content, the capacity to pay attention, interpret carefully, create something genuinely new, and communicate meaningfully with another person may become more valuable than ever.”
