Sonja Fritzsche
Associate Dean of Academic Personnel and Administration; Professor of German
Office: 301 Linton Hall
Phone: 517-353-8750
Email: fritzsc9@msu.edu
Website: sonjafritzsche.com
CV: 
Education 2035 Initiative
Mellon Big Ten Academic Alliance Less Commonly Taught and Indigenous Languages Grant
Ph.D., Germanic Studies, University of Minnesota
M.A., Modern European History, UCLA
Sonja Fritzsche began her position as Associate Dean in the College of Arts & Letters in August 2017. She served as Chair of the Department of Linguistics, Languages, and Cultures from 2015-2017 and previously was Department Chair and Professor of German and Eastern European Studies at Illinois Wesleyan University. Her primary responsibilities include working with the Dean to support Chairs and Program Directors in the area of personnel, resources, and space, with particular emphasis on evaluation procedures, College-wide administrator and faculty development initiatives, and promoting a culture of care, diversity and inclusion. Additional responsibilities included overseeing curricular matters, including new undergraduate initiatives (action research, experiential learning, Humanities student career preparation, student success), interdisciplinary majors and the Center for Integrative Studies in the Arts and Humanities (IAH). Currently she is co-PI on the Big Ten Academic Alliance Less Commonly Taught Languages Partnership ($2.5 million) funded by the Andrew W Mellon Foundation. Fritzsche was a Big Ten Academic Alliance (BTAA) Academic Leadership Program Fellow 2017-2018 and a BTAA Department Executive Officer Fellow in 2016. She served as President of the Association of Departments of Foreign Languages (ADFL) in 2015. She is currently Vice President of the Science Fiction Research Association.
She is co-editor with Anindita Banerjee of the anthology Science Fiction Circuits of the South and East (Peter Lang Oxford, 2018). Her other publications include The Liverpool Companion to World Science Fiction Film, editor (Liverpool University Press, 2014) and Science Fiction Literature in East Germany (Peter Lang, 2006). In addition, she has published articles and book chapters on German and comparative cinema and science fiction literature. She is the editor of the book series World Science Fiction Studies with Peter Lang Oxford. See her talk on German science fiction and her interview with Europa SF. She has taught all levels of German language, literature, and film as well as courses in English on comparative cinema and comparative utopia. Fritzsche has received grants from Fulbright and the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) among others. Her current projects includes co-editing the Routledge Companion to Gender and Science Fiction with Keren Omry, Wendy Peterson, and Lisa Yaszek.
