Gustavus Adolphus College

Professor
English

During summer, 2008, I spent two weeks in South Africa studying Apartheid and the post-Apartheid democracy in that country. I sought the opportunity to compare systems of oppression there with those in Nazi Germany. I learned of the many challenges South Africa faces: a 40% unemployment rate among some groups, a 25% HIV infection rate, and a current government that is sometimes corrupt. In 2010, South Africa will host the World Cup soccer championships.  This will bring international attention to both South Africa's progress since Apartheid and the many problems it still faces. In January 2009, with three other professors, I will be taking a Gustavus class to study South Africa and Namibia during our IEX term.

From 1987 to 2006, I made many international trips to such places as Cuba, Guatemala, Denmark, Germany, The Czech Republic, Ireland, Mexico, Poland, Hungary, England, Portugal, Norway, Sweden, India, Japan, Austria, Israel, Russia, Holland, Scotland, and France. I enjoy traveling with students and during our January Term have taken groups of students to Germany and the Czech Republic to study the Holocaust, on a 3,400 mile bus trip through the American South to study the Civil Rights Movement, and to Northern Ireland. In January 2007, I taught a course on women's craft and knitting here on campus!

In fall 2004, I was in residence at the Richard Stockton College of New Jersey as the Ida E. King Distinguished Visiting Scholar in Holocaust Studies. My current research project is a study of the intertextual appropriation of golem legends in contemporary Holocaust fiction.

Publications

• Experience and Expression: Women, the Nazis, and the Holocaust (Wayne State UP 2003)
• The Blessed Abyss: Inmate #6582 in RavensbrÃ�¼ck Concentration Camp for Women (Wayne State UP 2000)
• Shadows on My Heart: The Civil War Diary of Lucy Buck of Virginia, 1861-1865 (University of Georgia Press 1997)

Interests

• Holocaust and Genocide Studies
• Literary Theory
• Postcolonial Literature
• Contemporary Fiction
• Ethnic Literature
• Gender and the Genocide
• Social justice and literature
• "The Troubles" in Northern Ireland
• Women and war
• Personal narrative
• Autobiography

Elizabeth Baer Schedule

Browse Elizabeth Baer schedule.