Biography

Kirsten E. Kumpf Baele is the Director of the Anne Frank Initiative (AFI) and a Distinguished Associate Professor of Instruction in German at the University of Iowa. Her work centers around human experiences and social justice, as reflected in her research, teaching, and public engagement.

Her academic career has consistently been shaped by stories and lived experiences that highlight social inequalities, constraints, and the potential for personal transformation. Her work focuses on the liminal and transitional spaces that, when closely examined, reveal richness, reclamation, and resilience. She is both personally and professionally driven to (re)examine concepts of confinement and resistance—whether literal, physical, or figurative—to challenge reductionist systems and structures that fail to honor individuality or foster empathy.

Research Interests

Kumpf Baele’s dissertation explored the conditions, meanings, and myths of homelessness in German fiction and film, and her ongoing research includes topics such as exophonic writers, the spatial turn in literature, the aesthetics and politics of hair in prewar film, forced adoption practices and control of the female body in Belgian film, crises of masculinity in the military, embodied pedagogy as it connects with service-learning projects, and the limitation of filmic and architectural freedoms in the former GDR.

Publications

She is co-editor of Engaging Anne Frank and Other Difficult Life Stories (Routledge, forthcoming 2024), and her chapter “Auf Wiedersehen, Soldat: Does a Soldier Ever Truly Return Home” was recently accepted for publication in 2025 by Routledge-Warwick. Some of her other publications as seen below can be found in LIT Verlag, Bloomsbury, and McFarland.

Public Engagement

She was deeply honored by the selection of her application to plant the 13th Anne Frank sapling on the University of Iowa campus in 2022.

The tree-planting ceremony was part of a year-long series of campus and community events including the Provost's Global Forum "Teaching Anne Frank" for which she was a grant co-recipient, and the exhibition of “Let Me Be Myself: The Life Story of Anne Frank,” which was displayed at the Old Capitol before traveling to other schools, campuses, and civic spaces across the state with the very relevant goal of engaging in community dialogue about discrimination and othering. 

From this work, Kumpf Baele, along with twelve other advisory committee members, founded the Anne Frank Initiative and acts as its director. The Initiative diligently creates opportunities for the UI and Iowa City communities to engage in research, pedagogy, artistic expression, and other transformative, human-centered activities. These efforts strive for advocacy, reflecting Anne Frank’s spirit, celebrating her legacy and embodying all that she represents in a more globalized, international, and contemporary context. 

In addition to her community-engaged work surrounding Anne Frank and her story, Kumpf Baele has developed programming and/or taught for the Iowa City Public Library’s Teen Center, Theater Cedar Rapids, the Iowa Youth Writing Project, Clear Creek Amana middle- and high schools, Jefferson High School in CR, and most recently the UNESCO City of Literature. In 2022, she was awarded the “Outstanding Public Engagement Award” from the UI College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.

Service

Over the course of her teaching career, she has mentored several Honors Teaching Practicum students and Office of Undergraduate Research (OUR) fellows. She has also led student ambassador programs and organized extracurricular programs and opportunities for majors, and she serves on the board of trustees on the Student Publications, Inc. which runs and manages The Daily Iowan. Beyond campus, she holds the position of Testing Chair for the Iowa chapter of the American Association of Teachers of German (AATG).

Selected Publications

• Editor, Exploring Anne Frank and Difficult Life Stories (2025)
• Co-author, "Die architekten (1990): East/west ideology, concrete topography and the shadow of plattenbau" in Home Screens: Public Housing in Global Film & Television (2023)
• Author, What to Lea(f) In, What to Lea(f) Out: Pedagogical Opportunities of a Cultural Icon - Anne Frank's Chestnut Tree in The Construction and Dynamics of Cultural Icons (2021)
• Co-author, Pregnant Girls in the Attic - No Choices: An Analysis of Patrice Toy's Little Black Spiders in Reproductive Rights Issues in Popular Media (2017)

Courses Taught

I. Language Program (taught in German)

• GRMN 1001 / Elementary German I 
• GRMN 1002 / Elementary German II 
• GRMN 1020 / Intensive Elementary German 
• GRMN 1010 / First Year German Review 
• GRMN 2001 / Intermediate German I 
• GRMN 2002 / Intermediate German II 
• GRMN 2020 / Intensive Intermediate German 

II. Upper-Level Courses for the Major (taught in German)

• GRMN 3104 / Composition & Conversation II: “Was uns bewegt! Jugend Pop- & Subkulturen in den deutschsprachigen Ländern” 
•  GRMN 4540 / Literature in Film: “Anders, aber dennoch dabei: Erzählen vom Anderssein & Anderswerden” 
• GRMN 3501 / German Writers Engaged 
• GRMN 3010 / Stories in German: Auf der Schwelle: (Im)mobility, Crossings and Displacement in German Literature and Film 
• GRMN: 4910 / Peer Tutoring in German

III. Interdisciplinary Courses (taught in English)

• GRMN 1000 / “Pen”ned In: Voices of the Confined 
• WLLC & GRMN 2620 / Anne Frank & Her Story 
• GHS & GRMN 1100 / Contraception Across Time and Cultures (co-taught course) 
• Introduction to American Literature and Culture (co-taught in the American Studies Department at TU Dortmund)
• Ban it and I’ll Read It: Banned Books in 20^th Century United States and German-Speaking Countries (taught half in English and half in German; TU Dortmund, Germany)
• Uncuffed Thoughts: Prison Literature in the U.S. and German-Speaking Countries (taught half in English and half in German; TU Dortmund, Germany)