Robert Zahniser
German, World Literature

Robert Zahniser is a long-time veteran of WSC; he has forty-three years of teaching experience and has been in Wayne since 1966. At WSC he has taught German (Beginning, Intermediate, and upper-level courses) and Literature (Topics in Literature, World Literature, Film/Literature and various upper-level courses). His teaching interests have included European Fiction, Modern Drama, Eighteenth-Century British Literature, German Expressionism, World Literature in a variety of forms (with and emphasis on Eastern Europe), Art History and Film. He received his Bachelor's degree from Allegheny College in Meadville, Pennsylvania, and furthered his education at the University of Hamburg and the University of Arkansas, where he received a Master's in English and Ph.D. in Comparative Literature (1972).

Zahniser's teaching experience outside of Wayne State College includes five years as a teaching assistant at the University of Arkansas, three years at Oklahoma City University and in the Spring 1996 a guest position at the Barnaul Pedogogical Institure in the Altai region of Siberia. Dr. Zahniser has gone to Germany via the Fulbright Travel Grant program and the Goethe Institute; he has attended four NEH summer seminars (1974, 1980, 1983, and 1987) and since 1988 has regularly participated in the University of Illinois summer research program for Russian and East European studies. In 1999 he was the WSC nominee for the Balsley Whitmore Excellence in Teaching Award. Dr. Zahniser is originally from Sharpsville, Pennsylvania, and lives in Wayne with his wife Edith, who teaches German at Wayne High School as well as the college. Zahniser counts among his special interests/hobbies travel, classical and folk music, and the further study of film-which includes building the U.S. Conn Library collection of World Cinema at Wayne State College. He is currently in phased retirement.