Start of Main Content

Dr. Markus Zisselsberger

Sosland Fellowship
“Outside the Frame: Gendered Testimony in Claude Lanzmann’s Shoah.”

Professional Background

Dr. Markus Zisselsberger is an assistant professor of German at the University of Miami in Coral Gables, Florida. He earned his PhD in Comparative Literature from Binghamton University, SUNY in 2008. His research earned him Binghamton’s Distinguished Dissertation Award in 2009. Dr. Zisselsberger previously participated in the Curt and Else C. Silberman Faculty Seminar, titled “Teaching the Gendered Representation of the Holocaust,” at the Museum in 2012.

While in residence at the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies, Dr. Zisselsberger conducted research on his project, “Outside the Frame: Gendered Testimony in Claude Lanzmann’s Shoah.”

Dr. Zisselsberger speaks German natively, English fluently, and possesses linguistic skills in French and Spanish.

Dr. Zisselsberger’s first monograph is Fragments of One’s Owns Existence. The Reader W.G. Sebald, and is forthcoming with Camden House Publishers. Dr. Zisselsberger has edited two books: The Undiscover’d Country: W.G. Sebald and the Poetics of Travel (2010) and “If we had the word” Ingeborg Bachmann Views and Reviews (2004) which he co-edited with Gisela Brinker-Gabler. He has also written several articles on Robert Musil, W.G. Sebald, Franz Kafka, and Jean Améry, most recently, “Was bedeutet Wiederlesen? Jean Améry’s Literary Criticism, forthcoming in The Germanic Review in Summer/Fall 2014.

Fellowship Research

For his Sosland Fellowship in the Mandel Center, Dr. Zisselsberger examined how the testimonies of men and women differ in Claude Lanzmann’s 1985 documentary Shoah, including viewing seldom seen outtakes that are found in the Museum’s video archives. The goal of this project was to gain a better understanding of female experiences during the Holocaust as well as gendered differences in filmed Holocaust testimonies.

Dr. Markus Zisselsberger was in residence at the Center from June 1 to November 30, 2014.