Lisa Parkes

Dr. Parkes completed her undergraduate degree in German and Music at the University of London and came to the U.S. for her graduate studies, completing her Ph.D. in German at UCLA. Before coming to Harvard in 2009, she was the director of the German language program at UCLA (2002-2009).

She regularly teaches courses on German drama and theater, foreign language pedagogy, translation, music and literature, and, most recently, “German through Community Engagement,” in which student volunteers work in a local after-school program. Besides directing the German language program, she has directed student productions of plays by Büchner, Nestroy, Dürrenmatt, Schnitzler, Frisch, Borchert, Brecht, Horváth, Schimmelpfennig, Yael Ronen and Dimitrij Schaad.

In the summer, she co-directs the Harvard Summer Program in Vienna and Berlin, an interdisciplinary course in advanced language through cultural history, art, music, and theater. She is a member of the Standing Committee for Theater, Dance, and Media, Past President of the Massachusetts chapter of the AATG, and has served on the editorial boards of Unterrichtspraxis/Teaching German and AAUSC’s Issues in Language Program Direction series.

Selected Publications

Spielraum: Teaching German through Theater (Routledge, 2021)

Integrating the Arts: Creative Thinking about Foreign Language Teaching and Language Program Direction, co-edited with Colleen Ryan (Cengage, 2015).