DEPARTMENT OF GERMAN

Professor DeSocio teaches language and culture courses in the German department. He received his PhD in German Studies at the University of Michigan and taught as a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of German Studies at Vassar College. 

At Northwestern, Prof. DeSocio offers a wide variety of courses, ranging from elementary and intermediate German to seminars on the history of sexuality in Central Europe and on dance music and club culture in Chicago and Berlin. His research interests include language-learning technologies, methods to better integrate queer perspectives into language pedagogy, German modernist literature of the 1910s and 1920s, and postwar gay male literary cultures on both sides of the Atlantic. He has published articles and book chapters on topics such as teaching German queerly, undergraduate research in the language classroom, the temporal politics of the New Woman in the novels of Marieluise Fleißer, queer temporality in German modernist prose, and on queer German book culture more broadly.

He enjoys spending much of his free time with his miniature dachshund Helen, pursuing a passion for 1970s gay American literature, playing video games, and exploring the Midwest’s nightlife as an avid disco and house music dancer.