Wilms presented a paper on Air War and Literature

Wilfried Wilms, assistant professor of German, presented a paper "Colonizing Cologne - Life in the Ruins in Heinrich Böll's The Silent Angel at the 17th annual, international, multidisciplinary conference on World War II at Siena College. The paper explored W.G. Sebald's book Air War and Literature, specifically his 'repression hypothesis' concerning the inability (or unwillingness) of German writers to address the destruction of German cities during the bombing war. Wilms also is author of two essays, "Im Griff des Politischen – Odoardo Galotti's Ermächtigung zur Konfliktfähigkeit," which was published in March in Germany's Deutsche Vierteljahrsschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Geistesgeschichte, vol. 76/1 (2002): 50-73, and "The Universalist Spirit of Conflict – Lessing's Political Enlightenment," which appears in the September issue of Monatshefte für deutschsprachige Literatur und Kultur, vol. 94.3 (2002).