Montclair State University German Program Presents Grimm Delights A Fairy Tale Workshop

Generations of American college students first encounter Grimm fairy tales as children through Disney film adaptations and often struggle to overcome the nostalgic, visual connections they have when approaching the fairy tales again as adults. In this interactive workshop “Fairy Tales from Grimm to Disney,” open to all on campus, Dr. Matthew O. Anderson (Assistant Professor of German at Furman University) will work directly with Montclair State students to break "the Disney spell" and to help them take an active role in the storytelling experience. During this event, he will discuss examples of prominent and unique fairy tale illustrations, model critical engagement with illustrated editions, and help participants explore some of the delightful and disturbing depths of fairy tales’ form, content, and context through a series of hands-on activities. Through its connections to visual media, cultural history, pedagogy, and various communication styles, this presentation will also help students reflect on the interdisciplinary relevance of this storytelling material. 

Guest Speaker Bio: Dr. Matthew O. Anderson is an Assistant Professor of German at Furman University in Greenville, SC. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Texas in Austin in 2019 and has taught collegiate German language and culture courses for 13 years. His research focuses on 19th-century popular literature and the publishing industry across German-speaking Europe, processes of literary and intermedial adaptation, and translation theory, and he has published articles on historical German youth literature, literary adaptation, and transnational networks of knowledge dissemination. His most recent article, “From Sights Unseen to Must-See Sights: Reviewing Grimm Iconography in the Fairy Tale Classroom” appeared in a special issue of Colloquia Germanica in 2025. During his Fall 2026 sabbatical, he is working to integrate intermedial adaptations (esp. graphic novels) and LLM interactions into units in his first-year writing and intermediate-advanced German-language seminars and considering how these tools can be aligned to complement genre-based content instruction.