米尔科米. 大厅

With his job offer on Valentine’s Day 2007, Dr. 大厅 became Converse’s first full-time professor of German language and literature in nearly 60 years. As the university’s only Germanist, he teaches all levels of language, literature, and culture. He also directs the new major in Communications and Media Studies. Mirko’s upper-division courses focus on the intellectual and cultural history of German-speaking Central Europe since 1750. His recent seminars on “Science Fiction Cinema of the Eastern Bloc,” “Freud: The Netflix Series,” and “The Media Theory of Byung-Chul Han” continue to attract students from across the university.

During the 2024–2025 academic year, Mirko is living on campus as a Faculty-in-Residence: helping international students feel welcomed, 支持, and valued during their time at Converse.

The university has honored Mirko with the Cato Award for Faculty Excellence, the Kathryne Amelia Brown Award for Excellence in Teaching, the O’Herron Award for Faculty Excellence, the Scholarly and Creative Achievement Award, and the 学生生活 Faculty Involvement and Collaboration Award. He is also the recipient of a South Carolina Independent Colleges and Universities Excellence in Teaching Award. His most prized accolade remains the Joe Ann Lever Award of Excellence, which was presented to him by the graduating classes of 2011 and 2018.

Originally from the Twin Cities, Mirko received his BA with highest honors, MA, and PhD in German Studies from the University of Minnesota. He was a longtime student of the late Jochen Schulte-Sasse. As a Fulbright Fellow, he studied philosophy and musicology at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. He also has a diploma in Modern Standard Arabic from the Defense Language Institute, where he studied under former Jordanian diplomat Adnan Sadduk.

Selected Publications & 演讲

Trained as an intellectual and cultural historian, Mirko’s research has explored how radical forms of music promote cultural creativity, 批判, 和阻力. 他的书中, Musical Revolutions in German Culture: Musicking against the Grain, 1800–1980, investigates several deconstructive approaches to musical production, consumption, and reception. Together with Seth Howes and Cyrus Shahan, he co-edited 除了没有 Future: 文化 of German Punk, a volume that explores how punk became an enduring cultural phenomenon.

Over the past five years, Mirko has published academic and general interest articles on the history of Finnish-speaking Laestadian Lutherans in the Upper Midwest. He has presented his research at scholarly societies and church forums in the US and Finland. He currently serves on the board of the Lutheran Historical Conference.