Matthew O. Anderson is Assistant Professor of German and arrived at Furman in August 2023. He received his B.A. in German and Philosophy from Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, WA, and his M.A. and Ph.D. in Germanic Studies from the University of Texas at Austin.
He has taught German language and culture courses at the intermediate and advanced levels, as well as English-language courses on fairy tales, children's literature, and the politics and history of international athletics. When designing his courses, Dr. Anderson strives to create hands-on opportunities for students to apply their diverse creative talents to the critical analysis of cultural products and processes.
In his spare time, Dr. Anderson enjoys hiking, cooking, travelling, and games of all kinds. He also loves to geek out about these hobbies with students, so please feel free to ask!
Honors & Awards
- 2018, Fulbright Student Research Grant (Germany), American Fulbright Commission
- 2017, Summer Research Grant, American Friends of Marbach (AfM)
- 2016, Winner, Children’s Books on Tour Translation Competition, German Book Office NYC
- 2012-13, Max Kade Graduate Fellowship in German Studies, The University of Texas at Austin
- 2011-12, Fulbright English Teaching Assistantship (Germany), American Fulbright Commission
Education
- Ph.D., Germanic Studies, The University of Texas at Austin, 2019
- M.A., Germanic Studies, The University of Texas at Austin, 2014
- B.A., German and Philosophy, Pacific Lutheran University, 2011
Research Interests
Dr. Anderson's research focuses on 19th-century popular literature and the publishing industry across German-speaking Europe, processes of literary and intermedial adaptation, and translation theory. He has published several articles on historical German youth literature, and his translation of Andreas Steinhöfel’s If My Moon Was Your Sun won the 2016 German Book Office’s Translation Competition. He has spent over three years studying and working in Germany (Freiburg as an undergraduate, Celle, Marbach, and Berlin each with the support of Fulbright grants) and is still searching for an American bakery that can recreate the perfect Vollkornbrot.
Publications
- Anderson, Matthew. “Adventure from Concentrate: Visual Interventions in German Youth Adaptations of James Fenimore Cooper’s Leatherstocking Tales.” Before Photography: German Visual Culture in the Nineteenth Century, edited by Kirsten Belgum, Vance Byrd, and John Benjamin, De Gruyter (2021).
- Anderson, Matthew. “Images of Land and Sea: Experiencing the World as Adventure through Theodor Dielitz’s Travel Anthologies for Young Readers, 1841-1862.” The World of Children: Educating and Entertaining Young Germans in the Long Nineteenth Century, edited by Simone Lässig and Andreas Weiß, Berghahn Books, 2019, pp. 57-80.
- Heine, Antje, Lars Schirrmeister, and Matthew O. Anderson. “The Better the Description, the Better the Instruction—Passives and Impersonals in the German Language of (Automotive) Engineering.” German as a Foreign Language, vol. 2, 2019, pp. 1-9.
- Anderson, Matthew, translator. If My Moon Were Your Sun (Wenn mein Mond deine Sonne wäre). By Andreas Steinhöfel, Plough, 2017.
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