Angela Hsiau-mei Lin , a Vanderbilt German professor and musician, has died after a long illness. She was 40.
“She was a brilliant intellect who will be sorely missed by all who were fortunate enough to know her,” said Barbara Hahn, chair of the Department of Germanic and Slavic Languages.
Born in Taichung, Taiwan, Lin came to the United States as a child. After receiving her B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania, she earned her doctorate in 1999 from Princeton University with a dissertation on “The Divided Rhetoric of Sentimentality: Critique and Self-Definition in Wagner, Nietzsche, and Schnitzler.” She was an accomplished pianist and scholar; at Vanderbilt she taught a variety of courses, including German Romanticism and Music, Myth and Modernity: Rereading Wagner. Her research interests included modernism, literary and aesthetic theory and music and literature.
Colleagues and friends will gather at Vanderbilt 3 p.m. April 23 in Room 102 of Buttrick Hall in Lin’s honor. Details for a memorial service are pending.
In lieu of flowers, the family asks that donations be made to the Johns Hopkins Peabody Institute with a note that they are in memory of Angela Lin. These funds will support the Creative Access Program, which allows Peabody students to bring the world of music to hospitals, schools and other local organizations. Donations can be made by checks to the Peabody Institute, or online at http://www.peabody.jhu.edu/giving .
Media contact: Jim Patterson, (615) 322-NEWS
jim.patterson@vanderbilt.edu