Faculty and Staff

Professor James received her Ph.D. in German from the University of London, U.K. She has also studied in Munich and Vienna. She was a professor of German at Hunter College for 20 years, and chair of the German Department for fifteen years. She was also a member of the faculty at the Graduate School, CUNY. She has written books on nineteenth century German drama ( Raimund and Vienna, Cambridge University Press, 1970, Georg Bü chner's Dantons Tod (Modern Humanities Research Association, 1982.) She also edited Patterns of Change, German Drama and the European Tradition, Peter Lang, 1990. Since the early eighties, she has been active in the movement to introduce proficiency-based foreign language teaching into the college and high school curriculum, and was trained as a tester of oral proficiency on the ACTFL model in 1983, and as a trainer of testing in 1985. She headed the NEH funded Hunter College project to institute a proficiency-based curriculum in an urban university. She was also Project Director of the NEH-funded Project at CUNY: "A Model Curriculum in German: From Zero Knowledge to Ph.D. orals" (1994-1997). She has published on institutional context as well as teaching procedures. She was President of the Association of Departments of Foreign Languages (1990), Interim Director of Foreign Languages at the Modern Language Association, and Editor of the ADFL Bulletin (1990-91), Chair of the MLA Advisory Committee on Foreign Languages and Literatures (1995-6). She has received awards from NYSAFLT (1989) and the Northeast Conference (1993) and received the first ADFL Award for Distinguished Service to the Profession in 1994.

Email

akym@hunter.cuny.edu

Prof. Kym holds her Ph.D. from the University of Cincinnati. She has published a book on Hesse's role as a Critic, and numerous articles on pedagogical topics. She is certified as an oral proficiency tester. She served as a mentor in the project "Spreading the Word: Improving Foreign Language Instruction in Colleges and Universities," organized by ACE, funded by NEH. Dr. Kym's literature teaching focuses on Swiss literature, East German literature and women in German literature. She has also taught courses on German for business and economics. Together with other faculty members, she prepares students for the various language examinations given by the Goethe Institutes world wide. Dr. Kym has developed distance learning courses on interactive television as well as on-line courses for which she received several grants. Dr. Kym was awarded the Distinguished Teacher Award presented by the New York State Association of Foreign Language Teachers and the Presidential Award for Excellence for Teaching by Hunter College.