Texas Tech University

Dr. Alec Cattell

Instructor

alec.cattell@ttu.edu

TLDPC (University Library) 155D

Dr. Alec Cattell serves as Associate Director of the Teaching, Learning, and Professional Development Center and Director of the Ethics in Teaching & Learning program. He also teaches German language and cultures, literature, and world cinema in the Department of Classical & Modern Languages & Literatures. Alec holds a Ph.D. in German from the University of Waterloo, where he also studied applied linguistics and earned the Certificate in University Teaching at the Centre for Teaching Excellence. He has published scholarly work on representations, aesthetics, and rhetorics of disability in German literature as well as curriculum design and technology in language pedagogy. His current research investigates the use of digital storytelling to shift narratives about (cultural) identity while fostering multiple literacies.

Teaching

CMLL 2305: Introduction to Language and Culture. Taught online each Spring semester.

CMLL 2306: Introduction to World Cinema.

GERM 1310: Survival German Language & Cultures. Taught online each Spring semester.

GERM 2302: A Second Course in German II. This course is part of the Global Readiness Through Language and Culture project.

GERM 3301: Cultures of the German Speaking World.

GERM 3304: Introduction to German Literature. Service learning course.

GERM 4309: Business German. Service learning course.

Licenses

IDI ® (Intercultural Development Inventory) Qualified Administrator, since December 2019

The Intercultural Development Inventory® (IDI®) assesses intercultural competence—the capability to shift cultural perspective and appropriately adapt behavior to cultural differences and commonalities. Intercultural competence has been identified as a critical capability in a number of studies focusing on overseas effectiveness of international sojourners, international business adaptation and job performance, international student adjustment, international transfer of technology and information, international study abroad, and inter-ethnic relations within nations.

Selected Publications

Cattell, A. (2024). “Teaching at the Intersection of German Studies and Disability Studies.” In S.M. Hilger (Ed.), Medical Humanities in German Studies. (pp. 189-202), Bloomsbury.

Cattell, A. & Kleinhans, B. (2023). “Teaching for a Green Mindset in the Era of  Climate Change.” Seminar: A Journal of Germanic Studies 59(4), 386-390. DOI: 10.3138/seminar.59.4.7

Cattell, Alec. “Unusual Sights: Clemens J. Setz’ Disability Aesthetics.” Gegenwartsliteratur: Ein germanistisches Jahrbuch / A German Studies Yearbook, vol. 21, 2022, pp. 69-90. 

Cattell, A. & Kleinhans, B. (2021). Toward sustainability in German curricula. In M. J. de la Fuente (Ed.), Education for sustainable development in foreign language learning: Content-based instruction in college-level curricula (pp. 141-158), Routledge.

Cattell, A. (2021). The wounded self: Writing illness in twenty-first-century German literature. [Review of the book The wounded self: Writing illness in twenty-first-century German literature, by N. Schmidt]. Seminar: A Journal of Germanic Studies 57(2), 182-184. DOI: 10.3138/seminar.57.2.Rev004

Cattell, A. (2020). For the Love of Petra: Disability Rhetorics in Norbert Scheuer's Peehs Liebe. Orbis Litterarum 75(3), 114-128.

Cattell, A. (2018). Reading Disability Ethically: Gertrud Kolmar’s Susanna. Seminar: A Journal of Germanic Studies 54(3), 350-64.

Cattell, A. (2018). ‘Hopefully I won’t be misunderstood.’ Disability Rhetoric in Jürg Acklin’s Vertrauen ist gut. Humanities 7(3), 71. DOI: 10.3390/h7030071

Boehringer, M., Cattell, A., and Kleinhans, B. (2017). Belief Systems: Tracing Historical and Contemporary Trends in Austrian Culture. In M. Boehringer, A. Cattell, and B. Kleinhans (Eds.), Glaubenssysteme: Belief Systems in Austrian Literature, Thought and Culture (pp. 7-17), Praesens Publishers.

Cattell, A. (2013). Reflective Curriculum Construction in the Postmethod Era: Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations. In J. Plews and B. Schmenk, Traditions and Transitions: Curricula for German Studies (pp. 157-174), Wilfrid Laurier UP.

Honors, Awards, and Grants

2019: Faculty Spotlight Award (TLPDC) 2019: Service Learning Faculty Fellow (TLPDC)

2019-present: Principal Investigator, Global Readiness Through Language and Culture (Texas Tech Center for Global Communication)

2017-2019: Principal Investigator, Identity and Resistance in Global Contexts (Texas Tech Center for Global Communication)

2016-2017: Faculty Fellowship, FUTURES Faculty Colloquium (Humanities Center at Texas Tech)

2016: Recipient, Promoting Inclusive Excellence Departmental Scholarship (Texas Tech Division of Institutional Diversity, Equity & Community Engagement)

2016: Recipient, Lawrence Schovanec Teaching Development Scholarship (TLPDC)

2015: Alumni College Research Fellowship (Humanities Center at Texas Tech)

2013: Recipient, Cecilia and George Piller Graduate Award (Waterloo Center for German Studies)

2012: Recipient, Best Graduate Student Paper Award (Canadian Association of University Teachers of German)

Selected Conference Presentations (updated February 2020)

Cattell, A. “Reframing the World Through Digital Storytelling.” Annual meeting of the Canadian Association of University Teachers of German at the Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Western Ontario, London, ON, Canada. May 30, 2020.

Cattell, A. “Fostering Global Readiness Through Language and Culture.” Seventh Annual International Conference on the Development and Assessment of Intercultural Competence, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ. Jan. 24, 2020.

Cattell, A. “The Struggle to Control Narrative: Peer Meter and Barbara Yelin’s 2010 Graphic Novel Gift.” Annual meeting of the Canadian Association of University Teachers of German at the Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada. June 1, 2019.

Cattell, Alec. “New Disability Rhetorics in German Literature.” Forty-Second Annual Conference of the German Studies Association, Pittsburgh, PA, September 28, 2018.

Cattell, A. “For the Love of Petra: The Disability Rhetorics of Pseilos and Apate.” Annual Meeting of the American Comparative Literature Association, University of California, Los Angeles, CA, April 1, 2018.

Cattell, A. “Hopefully I won’t be misunderstood. Disability and Storytelling in Jürg Acklin’s Vertrauen ist gut,” Annual meeting of the Canadian Association of University Teachers of German at the Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences, Ryerson University, Toronto, ON, Canada, May 28, 2017.

Cattell, A. "Learner Training for Vocabulary Study with iLrn," 8th Annual CALL Conference, Ohio University, Athens, OH, March 24, 2016.

Cattell, A. “Remembering Susanna,” Annual meeting of the Canadian Association of University Teachers of German at the Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, ON, Canada. May 31, 2015.

Cattell, A. “Physical Violence and Discursive Violence in Three Expressionist Plays: Critiques of Militarism and Rehabilitation as Disabling Discourses,” Thirty-Eighth Annual Conference of the German Studies Association, Kansas City, MO, September 21, 2014.

Cattell, A. “Metaphors of the human/animal: Semiotic and diegetic bodies in Brokenbrow,” Reading Animals: A Conference on Animal Studies, University of Sheffield, July 19, 2014.

Education

Ph.D. in German (focus: literature and disability studies), University of Waterloo, ON, Canada, 2014

Dissertation title: “Disability Drama: Semiotic Bodies and Diegetic Subjectivities in Post-World-War-I German Expressionist Drama”

Advisor: Dr. Michael Boehringer

M.A. in German (focus: applied linguistics and language pedagogy), University of Waterloo, ON, Canada, 2009

Thesis title: “Re-evaluating Communicative Language Teaching: Wittgenstein and Postmethod Pedagogy”

Advisor: Dr. Barbara Schmenk

BA in Honours German, University of Waterloo, ON, Canada, 2007

Alec Cattell

CMLL German Studies

  • Address

    CMLL Building, 2906 18th St, Lubbock, TX 79409
  • Phone

    806.742.3145