Peter McIsaac
The Canadian Centre for German and European Studies at York University is pleased to announce that Peter M. McIsaac has accepted the Centre Directorship for a three-year, renewable term beginning July 1, 2010. McIsaac has been a CCGES affiliate since he arrived at York University in January 2008, and his appointment signals the Centre’s commitment to a strong research and outreach agenda in the coming years. “I am truly excited to be taking on the Directorship of CCGES,” says McIsaac. “Having been a faculty affiliate of the Centre for the past three years, I know what a positive role it plays both in the community in general and in helping faculty and students realize their research goals. To be able to play a part in this process from a leadership position will be both a challenge and a privilege.”
McIsaac is trilingual in German, English and Spanish, has a BS in physics and German (University of Michigan, 1990) and a Ph.D. in Germanic Languages and Literature (Harvard, 1996). His scholarship and teaching takes place at the intersections of modern German literature and culture, Museum Studies, and Science and Technology. Among his publications are the book Museums of the Mind: German Modernity and the Dynamics of Collecting (2007), and, as co-editor, a special issue of New German Critique on contemporary German literature (2003).
In terms of the direction the Centre will be taking under his stewardship, McIsaac notes, “CCGES has taken great strides towards establishing itself as a nexus of crucial, collaborative research into a variety of important questions, but my sense is that we have not even begun to exhaust the possibilities open to us at the York community. While Germany occupies, and will continue to occupy, a central place on the Centre’s research agenda, we need to send a signal to our colleagues working on other European questions that their intellectual curiosity would be welcome under the CCGES umbrella. A perfect example of what is possible is the European Union Centre of Excellence project housed at CCGES. With its focus on European Union studies and affairs, it shows how we can successfully broaden the palette of what we do to reflect the complexity and diversity of what “Europe” means.”
McIsaac succeeds Professor Roger Keil, director of the City Institute at York University and professor in the Faculty of Environmental Studies, who has served as interim director for the past year.
