Congratulations to Silke-Maria Weineck, who was named the Grace Lee Boggs Collegiate Professor in Comparative Literature and German Studies.
The professorship was established in the Provost's Office in July 2021 in honor of Grace Lee Boggs, a lecturer at the University of Michigan for decades beginning in 1962. Ms. Boggs was an influential human rights activist, feminist, environmentalist, and author, and maintained a long-standing relationship with the University until her passing in 2015. Her books include Women and the Movement to Build a New America (1977), Living for Change (1998), and The Next American Revolution: Sustainable Activism for the Twenty-First Century (2011).
Professor Weineck is a passionate advocate for justice in higher education, and a comparatist of international recognition who brings to her scholarship a highly innovative, interdisciplinary methodology. She is the author of The Abyss Above: Philosophy and Poetic Madness in Plato, Holderlin, and Nietzsche (2002) and The Tragedy of Fatherhood: King Laius and the Politics of Fatherhood in the West (2014).
She is also the co-editor of Our Ancient Wars: Rethinking War through the Classics (2016) and co-author of City of Champions: A History of Triumph and Defeat in Detroit (2020). She has published numerous scholarly articles and literary translations, writes regularly for The Chronicle of Higher Education, and has been featured in interviews for National Public Radio.
