DEPARTMENT OF GERMAN

 Maria Zahner received a B.A. in History at the Universidade Federal do Estado do Rio de Janeiro (UNIRIO), in Brazil. Her bachelor’s thesis, entitled “Wars Belong to Men: Gender and the Holocaust in Ruth Klüger,” explored the themes of identity, gender and mourning in Ruth Klüger's weiter leben. She received her M.A. in Social History at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), where she completed her thesis, "Losses along the Way: Testimony in Ruth Klüger and Scholastique Mukasonga,” that continued her work on Klüger, placing her in dialogue with Rwandan writer Scholastique Mukasonga and exploring the role of testimonial literature in our understanding of history. 

Maria's current research interests include representation, genocide studies, identity, trauma theory, memory, and the convergences between history and literature, with particular regard to Klüger's ideas of the time and space of memory.