Damon Rarick
(Ph.D., Brown University)

Damon Rarick is an assistant professor of German at the University of Rhode Island.  His degrees in German and Physics have found their symbiosis in the IEP, and his research and teaching interests include applied language instruction, educational technology, technology and engineering, German language pedagogy, business and scientific German, and interdisciplinary manifestations of 20th century German literature.   He has published on Technology as a Teaching and Management Tool, GDR Literature, post-reunification German literature, and the reception of Greco-Roman mythology in modern German texts, and is an active manuscript reviewer for the Foreign Language Annals. 

Recently elected to the Executive Council of the American Association of Teachers of German (AATG, Dr. Rarick is looking into ways to promote and foster German language learning and instruction on a regional and national level.  At the state level, he is serving on the board of the Rhode Island Foreign Language Association and has been both a president and chapter testing chair for RI-AATG, the Rhode Island Chapter of the American Association of Teachers of German.

Currently, Dr. Rarick is launching the Online Journal of Global Engineering Education (OJGEE), a unique peer-reviewed research outlet for the cross-disciplinary and corporate constituencies involved in creating, maintaining, and growing global engineering education programs.  For the past five years, he has offered a workshop on Teaching Languages to Engineering Students with Walter von Reinhart at annual International Colloquia for International Engineering Education. 

Knowing how important the Internet is for promoting URI's academic mission and for the IEP's student recruitment, alumni relations, and corporate outreach efforts, Dr. Rarick has been designing, developing, maintaining and improving a large number of academic Web sites at the University, some of which now regularly receive over 20,000 page requests per month.  Dr. Rarick currently works with about 12 academic organizations to creatively and effectively develop and make use of an interactive Web presence in support of our academic programs, including:

• Rhode Island American Association of Teachers of German, which provides local and national resources for Rhode Island's German Instructors, including information on event announcements, chapter information, job announcements, listserv information, newsletters, and contact information.
• Honors Colloquium Lecture Series which provide visitors with speakers’ biographies, contact information, updates, information on related art exhibits and lectures and broadcast schedules.
  • 2004 Honors Colloquium Lecture Series on "Food & Human Rights, Hunger & Social Policy."
  • 2003 Honors Colloquium Lecture Series on "The Futures of Globalization"
• International Engineering Program, including:
  • Annual International Colloquia on International Engineering Education
  • National Resource Center for International Engineering Education
• Department of Modern and Classical Languages and Literatures(until 2004), including special sites for:
  • Deutsche Sommerschule am Atlantik
  • Salamanca Program (until 2005), now maintained by the Office of International Education (URI in Salamanca Program)

Before joining the International Engineering Program faculty, Dr. Rarick taught at Brown University, the Brown Learning Community, the Deutsche Sommerschule am Atlantik, and Stonehill College and has been a Summer Fellow at the American Institute for Contemporary Germany Studies (AICGS) in Washington, DC and at the University of California in Berkeley.   Dr. Rarick has been affiliated with the Deutsches Schriftstellerinnen Projekt (German Women Writers Project) at Brown University and has extensive experience with a wide range of computing platforms, applications, and instructional technologies.  He also recently served as a technical consultant for a number of organizations including the Modernist Journals Project at Brown University.

_Publications

• Janowitz, Hans. Jazz. Trans. by Damon Rarick and Cornelius Partsch.  New England Review 25.1-2 (2004):  92-111.

• Schäfer, Hans-Dieter.  "Culture as Simulation: the Third Reich and Postmodernism."  Trans. by Damon Rarick. Flight of Fantasy: New Perspectives on Inner Emigration in German Literature, 1933-1945. Ed. by Neil H. Donahue and Doris Kirchner.  Berghahn Books, September 2003.  82-112.

• "On the Role of Technology in Teaching and as a Management Tool." The Global Connection: Issues in Business German. Ed. by Bettina Kluth Cothran and Anne-Katrin Gramberg. Waldsteinberg: Popp, 2002. 66-86.

• "Book Review:  William Cloonan, The Writing of War:  French and German Fiction and World War II.  Crosscurrents:  Comparative Studies in European Literature and Philosophy.  Gainesville, FL:  UP of Florida, 1999." Studies in 20th Century Literature 26.2 (Summer 2002): 468-470.

• History, Memory and Theatricality in GDR Mythopoeism.  Ann Arbor, MI: UMI, 1998.  [Diss., Brown U, UMI # 9830522]

• "'Nichts bleibt ohne Folgen:' New Voices, New Myths by East German Writers after Reunification."  Schreiben im heutigen Deutschland:  Fragen an die Vergangenheit.  Ed. Ursula E. Beitter.   New York:  Peter Lang, 1998.  183-209. [Schreiben im heutigen Deutschland]