"I have no recipes for global solutions. I am happy if I can make a difference in the lives of my students." This might sound like a simple task, but in reality it requires a lot of effort, creativity, and motivation - traits that Maria-Regina Kecht tries to develop to her students when offering courses to discuss the genocide in Rwanda, or mothers and daughters in literature and film. Her goal is to open students' minds in any respect, be it towards women, towards another people, or simply towards political policies. One can make a difference, that is what Maria-Regina Kecht tries to convey, either by developing a special freshman seminar in order to make her students think about things they might not even have considered before, or just by baking Austrian Christmas cookies and thus keeping up Austrian traditions after having lived in the United States for more than 25 years.
Vienna Calling
Having grown up surrounded by mountains, Maria Kecht frequently returns to Austria.
Maria-Regina Kecht has been a professor of German studies at Rice University in Houston, Texas, since 1997. Her courses focus on gender issues and Austrian literature, particularly on post-1945 female writers from Austria. This combination of interests already reflects Kecht's strong connection to her country of origin. Not only is Austria a present topic in her mind due to her professional emphasis on Austrian literature and everything that comes with it, but Austria also represents the future plan of Maria-Regina Kecht, since she intends to move back to Austria after she retires. Born in Innsbruck, hiking and skiing in the mountains surrounding the town are some of the typical Austrian childhood memories of Kecht, who is currently taking a one-year leave from Rice University to be in her home country. However, it's not Innsbruck's mountains that evoke her desire to live in Austria, it is the capital that attracts Maria-Regina Kecht the most. Vienna calling, so to speak. For her, Vienna is a "culturally extremely rich and multi-layered melting pot and fascinating in many kinds of ways." This is why her current project entitled "Vienna: Reading and Writing Urban Narratives" has Vienna as its central point. Written in collaboration with Helga Schreckenberger from the University of Vermont, this monograph, which will most likely be published in 2011 by the Modern Language Association, deals with Vienna as an urban space and comprises two overarching thematic sections. The first one focuses on the different discourses that constitute the personality of Vienna; the emphasis of the second section lies on the exploration of broadly applicable urban themes, using Vienna as an example. The significance of both sections is discussed from historical, cultural, and theoretical perspectives, and the authors suggest different pedagogical applications modeling a genre-based approach. In other words, the monograph is about how to approach a city with its distinct biography or personality and how to help someone from outside to steadily acquire a better understanding of that place - in this case, Austria's capital. Vienna is also the city where Maria-Regina Kecht currently lives while staying in Austria. During her leave, she will teach a course on gender and migration in Salzburg and will spend the rest of the time in her favorite city. "Vienna has got everything I love. It has bookstores, coffee houses, a very lively art scene; I don't need a car, I can use the bike or public transportation, and many of my friends live there."
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