History and Humanities

Emily Auerbach is an award-winning English Professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She serves as Project Director of the UW Odyssey Project, a free, life-changing college humanities course for low-income adults. In addition, Emily Auerbach is co-host of University of the Air, a one-hour program broadcast statewide on Wisconsin Public Radio on Sundays from 4-5 PM featuring interviews with faculty in a variety of disciplines. She is the Project Director of the “Courage to Write” series of radio documentaries and written guides on women writers.

Emily Auerbach’s most recent book is entitled Searching for Jane Austen. International scholar and novelist Margaret Drabble calls the book “a witty, approachable introduction to Jane Austen for today’s readers, using modern analytical techniques to reveal new aspects of a great writer” and observes, “Emily Auerbach’s approach to Jane Austen is lively, engaging, and thoroughly modern. Like Austen, Auerbach wears her wide learning lightly and imparts a great deal of information in a most enjoyable manner.”

Emily reaches hundreds of thousands of nontraditional students through lectures and book discussions at public libraries, Elderhostels, prisons, retirement centers, schools, and service clubs as well as through courses taught through the mail and online. Over 4,000 people attended “Jane Austen in the 21st Century,” a 40-event festival she directed for the UW Center for the Humanities. This interdisciplinary festival was honored with the 2001 Governor’s Award in the Humanities. Emily has received numerous other teaching, broadcasting, arts, and humanitarian awards for her work, including the Robert Gard Wisconsin Idea Award, the Van Hise Outreach Teaching Award, the Underkofler Distinguished Teaching Award, the Bartell Arts Award, and the Ohio State Broadcasting Award.

Sage Goellner is an assistant professor of French and Continuing Education at the University of Wisconsin-Madison where she directs French programs for the Department of Liberal Arts and Applied Studies. She grew up in northern Wisconsin and earned her PhD at the UW-Madison. In the Department of Liberal Arts and Applied Studies, she works with non-traditional students and lifelong learners in continuing adult classes and online courses, teaching a variety of French language, culture, and literature classes. As a part of her outreach efforts, she is also editor-in-chief of France Synergies, a worldwide educational resource for teachers of French. She is also a faculty affiliate with the Department of French and Italian.

Dr. Goellner has lived and studied in several Francophone regions, including Ile-de-France (Paris), Haute-Corse (Ajaccio), Provence (Avignon), Auvergne (Le Puy-en-Velay), and Quebec (Montreal and Quebec City). She has also guided educational travel trips to Aquitaine, Burgundy, and Quebec.

Her area of research focuses on the relationship between France and the Maghreb, and she is completing a book about literary representations of the French colonization of Algeria. She is an active member of Women in French (WIF), the American Association of Teachers of French (AATF), and the Modern Language Association (MLA). She is interested in 19-century French colonial literature, travel literature, and women’s writing.

When not working, Professor Goellner enjoys all things French, and also gardening, yoga, ballet, and spending time with her family.