Anna souchuk
BA German and Art History 2002
Academic Year 2000-2001 in Vienna
As an undergraduate student at UIUC majoring in German and Art History, Anna had strong German skills, but knew little about Vienna. She decided to study abroad with the IiVP in 2000-2001, an experience she now considers possibly the most transformative of her life. Not only did she achieve near-native level fluency, it was also in Vienna, and especially with the help of Bruce Murray, that she decided to pursue a Ph.D. in Germanistik. The IiVP German Language Program gave Anna the requisite language skills, confidence, and curiosity to embark on that endeavor.
In 2008, Anna received her Ph.D. in Germanic Languages and Literatures from Yale University. She is currently an Associate Professor of German and Chair of the Department of Modern Languages at DePaul University. Vienna remains a constant theme in Anna’s personal life, teaching, and scholarly work. Her publications and research focus on contemporary Austrian literature and film. One of the most popular courses she teaches examines fin-de-siècle Vienna and the Viennese coffeehouse as a place of cultural and intellectual exchange. Perhaps most rewarding, though, was the establishment of a partnership between DePaul and the IiVP in 2018, by which the IiVP became the official long-term study abroad option for DePaul students of German. It’s likely that none of these experiences – which have now reverberated across generations of students - would have been possible without the IiVP.