THE ZONE OF INTEREST Movie Talk

Tickets for THE ZONE OF INTEREST are at regular Ross prices. Available online and at the Ross Box Office.

H. PETER REINKORDT 

H. Peter Reinkordt was Professor of German at Doane University, Crete. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Nebraska in 1972 in German Language and Literature. Reinkordt has taught at a private secondary school in Switzerland, at UNL, and Nebraska Wesleyan before settling at Doane College in 1984 and teaching there until 2011 full time, and as emeritus he taught one history course each fall until 2016.

While his areas of special interest and research are German literature of the Medieval Period and the 20th century as well as German history and culture, he taught a range of classes involving German language acquisition. His focus on contemporary history of Europe deals with fascism, the Holocaust and recent developments with special emphasis on Germany, particularly post-WW II and more recently unification of East and West Germany since the fall of the wall in 1989.

In the seventies Reinkordt lived and worked in Switzerland for four years, traveling widely in Europe as well as through Asia and Egypt. He keeps in touch with current European events by frequent trips to Europe. He has been involved with the film program at the Ross since the early 1980’s, then the Sheldon Film Theater, and is currently a member of the Board of Directors of the Mary Riepma Ross Media Arts Center.

BETTY LEVITOV 

Before retiring, Betty Levitov was a university professor for nearly four decades, first at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln where she earned her doctorate in African Literature, and for thirty years at Doane University (formerly Doane College) in Crete, Nebraska. She taught courses in travel writing, African, African-American, women’s, contemporary, and Holocaust literature, and film appreciation.

Levitov is best known for her unique semesters of studies and travel in Africa, something she dreamed up, pitched to her dean and president, and began as a pilot in 1998. Because the semesters were successful and furthered Doane University’s commitment to global studies, she led four more four-month semesters, traveling to Ethiopia, Egypt, Rwanda, Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Malawi, Mozambique, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Namibia, Lesotho, and South Africa. She led fifteen three-week excursions with students, Doane alumni, and friends to Africa, Greece, Italy, France, Belgium, Holland, and India. She wrote about the first Africa semester in her award-winning book Africa on Six Wheels: A Semester on Safari (University of Nebraska Press, 2007, Publisher’s Weekly starred review).

Levitov’s appreciation for a village culture and economy has roots in her childhood in Baltimore, Maryland, where she grew up in a three-family kibbutz. Back in the United States after three years of volunteer teaching in Liberia, she, her former husband, and their Peace Corps friends created their own Africa-inspired cooperative family in Lincoln, Nebraska. Levitov has been a long-time Board member of the Friends of the Mary Riepma Ross Theater.