Olga Elaine Rojer

Department Chair
Associate Professor of German
BA, Mount Holyoke College
MA, American University
PhD, University of Maryland

orojer@american.edu

Professor Olga Rojer obtained a PhD in German Studies from the University of Maryland in 1985.  Her early research focuses on the marginalized literature of the German speaking exile in Latin America.  She is the author of Exile in Argentina: 1933-1945 (Peter Lang, 1989).  Her recent research has emphasized the subaltern literature of the Caribbean creole Papiamentu and postcolonial literature in Dutch.  Professor Rojer received a Pushcart Prize nomination for her work on the fiction of Dutch Caribbean author Boeli van Leeuwen.  Her book, Founding Fictions of the Dutch Caribbean: Cola Debrot’s "My Black Sister" and Boeli van Leeuwen’s A Stranger on Earth (Peter Lang, 2007), presents her collaborative translations and a critical introduction to two pivotal novels from the early period of postcolonial Dutch-language fiction from the Dutch Caribbean.  Her research interests include German and Dutch Caribbean literature and film, and literary translation. Professor Rojer is also an award winning screenwriter, whose screenplays often develop out of her critical projects.