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Hiram MaximProfessor of German Studies and Linguistics1st Year CoordinatorPlacement Exam Coordinator

Education

  • Ph.D. , University of Texas at Austin, 1999

Biography

Teaching Fields: Second Language Acquisition and Educational Linguistics

Hiram Maxim received his B.A. from Washington and Lee University, his M.A. from Middlebury College, and his Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin. His first post-doctoral position was as Assistant Professor and Supervisor of Graduate Teaching Assistants in the German Section of the Department of Modern Languages at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville. From there he spent six years in the German Department of Georgetown University as Assistant and then Associate Professor before joining the Department of German Studies and the Program in Linguistics at Emory University in August 2007 as Associate Professor. He was promoted to Professor in 2013.

His research focuses on instructed adult second language development with specific interest in pedagogical approaches and curricular models that facilitate students’ longitudinal sociolinguistic development. His early work focused on research into curricular models for overcoming the well-documented bifurcation in collegiate foreign language education between so-called language courses at the lower levels and so-called content courses at the upper levels. His jointly written monograph, Realizing Advanced L2 Writing Development in Collegiate Education: Curricular Design, Pedagogy, Assessment (2010), documents the potential for the longitudinal development of foreign language learners' writing abilities when a coherent curricular framework is in place. The research conducted for that project served as the basis for the full-scale curricular reform that he and his departmental colleagues at Emory have implemented at the undergraduate level. More recently, his research has focused on opportunities for sociolinguistic development in the linguistic landscape with a specific focus on the landscapes of Atlanta, Georgia and Vienna, Austria. His linguistic landscape research in Vienna has been conducted largely with Emory students as part of the department’s summer study abroad program, and his work in Atlanta with students has examined the manifestation (and lack thereof) of Atlanta’s burgeoning multilingual population in public language use. He has co-edited two volumes focused on language learning in the linguistic landscape (one in 2020 and one forthcoming). 

His research has been supported by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), and twice his scholarship has been recognized for distinction by the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL). In 2018-2019 he was the Fulbright-Botstiber Visiting Professor of Austrian-American Studies at the University of Vienna, supported by a fellowship from the Fulbright Commission.

Dr. Maxim teaches happily all levels of German as well as courses in applied linguistics in the Linguistics Program. In recent years, he has been particularly interested in instructional opportunities for German and Linguistics students beyond the classroom whether it has involved, for example, exploring the presence of German in the state of Georgia or the languages across metro Atlanta. The teaching page of his website outlines in greater detail recent pedagogical projects. For his teaching he has received the Emory Williams Distinguished Undergraduate Teaching Award, the Emory College Language Center’s Excellence in Language Teaching Award, and he just finished a three-year term as the Masse-Martin/NEH Distinguished Teaching Professor in Emory College.

Books

Recent publications

Monographs:

Realizing Advanced L2 Writing Development in Collegiate Education:  Curricular Design, Pedagogy, Assessment (co-authored with Heidi Byrnes and John Norris).  Monograph Series of the Modern Language Journal, December 2010.

Edited Books:

Spatializing Language Studies: Pedagogical Approaches in the Linguistic Landscape. Eds. With Sébastien Dubreil and David Malinowski. New York: Springer, 2023.

Celebrating Janet Swaffar: A Festschrift. Ed. with Katherine Arens. Austin: Agarita Press, 2023.

Language teaching in the linguistic landscape: Mobilizing pedagogy in public space. Ed. with David Malinowski and Sebastien Dubreil.  New York: Springer, 2020.

Educating the Future FL Professoriate for the 21st Century. Ed. with Heather Willis Allen. AAUSC Series Issues in Language Program Direction. Boston: Heinle, 2012.

Advanced Foreign Language Learning: A Challenge to College Programs. Ed. with Heidi Byrnes.  AAUSC Series Issues in Language Program Direction. Boston: Heinle, 2004.

Articles/Chapters in journals and scholarly books:

“Developing advanced L2-German writing: A functionally oriented longitudinal study.” Modern Language Journal, 107.4 (2023): 965-990.

“Do language classrooms socialize linguistic indifference?” (with M. Ryshina-Pankova). German Quarterly, 96.3 (2023): 386-394. 

“A longitudinal case study of curriculum-based L2 writing development.” System 96 (2021).

“A methodological and pedagogical framework for designing L2 student-based linguistic landscape research.” In D. Malinowski and S. Tufi (Eds.). Reterritorializing linguistic landscapes: Questioning boundaries and opening spaces. New York: Bloomsbury (2020): 346-363.

“Der Aufbau eines lernerzentrierten Projekts zur Untersuchung der Sprachlandschaft.” Der Deutschunterricht 4 (2018): 44–52.

“‘Centering’ foreign language departments around useful outcomes assessment: Challenges and opportunities” (with L. Askildson). In J. M. Norris & J. McE. Davis (Eds.), Student learning outcomes assessment in college foreign language programs. Honolulu: University of Hawaii National Foreign Language Resource Center (2015): 57-69.

"Curricular integration and faculty development: Teaching language-based content across the foreign language curriculum." In J. Swaffar & P. Urlaub (Eds.), Transforming Postsecondary Foreign Language Teaching in the United States. New York: Springer (2014): 79-101.

"Overcoming curricular bifurcation: A departmental approach to curriculum reform." (with P. Hoeyng, M. Lancaster, C. Schaumann, & M. Aue). Die Unterrichtspraxis, 46 (2013): 1-26. Recipient of the Stephen A. Freeman Award for Best Published Article in 2013 from the Northeast Conference on the Teaching of Foreign Languages.

"'It's made to match': Linking L2 reading and writing through textual borrowing." Crossing Languages and Research Methods. Analyses of Adult Foreign Language Reading, Cindy Brantmeier (Ed.). Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing (2009): 97-122.

"An Essay on the Role of Language in Collegiate Foreign Language Programmatic Reform." Die Unterrichtspraxis 42.2 (2009): 123-129 

"Developing Formal Language Abilities along a Genre-based Continuum."  In Conceptions of L2 Grammar:  Theoretical Approaches and their Application in the L2 Classroom, Johanna Watzinger-Tharp and Stacey Katz (Eds.), AAUSC Volume on Issues in Language Program Direction. Boston: Heinle (2009): 172-188.

Teaching

  • GER 470: Green Germany
  • GER 470W: Die Gegenwart der Vergangenheit
  • GER 470W: German in Georgia
  • GER 380: Emory auf Deutsch
  • GER 380: DieUS-Wahl 2020
  • GER 370A: The Austrian Experience: Lebenswertes Wien
  • GER 302W: America, the Beautiful? Amerika-Bilder in der deutschsprachigen Welt
  • GER 201: Intermediate German I
  • GER 101: Elementary German I