By Kate Rix

Each year, Berkeley’s Department of German invites its graduate students to organize a conference, and the scholarly quality of these events has always been high. But the 2008 conference on the theme of rebellion in German culture surprised everyone.

When the conference was over, an academic press expressed interest in turning the presented papers into a book — a major coup for the organizers, who were still at work on their Ph.D. dissertations.

Cambridge Scholars published Rebellion and Revolution: Defiance in German Language, History and Art earlier this year to the delight of graduate students Priscilla Layne and co-editor Melissa Etzler.

Even more impressive is that the volume includes one of Layne’s own papers, “Waiting for my Band: Music, Legacy and Identity in Peter Zadek’s Ich bin ein Elefant, Madame.”

“The paper is a chapter from my dissertation and it was great to be able to contribute that to the book,” says Layne.

But Layne is no stranger to achievement. She followed a singular path from her hometown of Chicago to graduate school at Cal. Her parents, who came to the United States from the West Indies, raised their family in one of Chicago’s immigrant neighborhoods.

Even for cosmopolitan Chicago, it was an unlikely source that eventually inspired Layne’s interest in German.

“It was my love for Indiana Jones,” she recalls. “I wanted to be an archaeologist and speak five languages. I was really impressed by his ability to speak with people everywhere he went.”

At the age of ten she took herself to the public library and checked out all the Berlitz language tapes she could find: Hebrew, French and German. The last one stuck, with some help from a friend.

“I had an affinity for it,” she says. “Another kid in my neighborhood was really into it. He gave me a children’s detective novel in German. Then I started taking classes in German in seventh grade. It was a lucky opportunity.”

Chicago’s vibrant immigrant neighborhoods gave Layne the opportunity to use her language skills, and she went on to study comparative literature and English at the University of Chicago. At Berkeley, Layne has traced rebellion in Germany from the Middle Ages to the present, but her focus is on the post-World War II period. Her dissertation is an analysis of post-war movements in Germany that used black culture as a vehicle for social commentary. While working on that research, she has also taught undergraduate German language courses as well as a course on multicultural Germany.

As an undergraduate, Layne was a scholar in Chicago’s Mellon Mays program, which provides support and mentorship for undergraduates who plan to pursue doctoral degrees. Through Mellon Mays programs at a number of leading universities, the Mellon Foundation aims to increase diversity in the faculty ranks at institutions of higher learning.

Berkeley has a Mellon Mays program for its own undergraduates, and shortly after arriving at Cal as a new graduate student, Layne met with Jacqueline Larios, an undergraduate Mellon fellow who is studying multiculturalism in French history.

“We were a really a good match,” Layne says. “Jacqueline went abroad last semester and I advised her about how to get the most out of it. I had gone abroad for my junior year and at the time I had only been out of the country for two weeks to visit my grandfather.” Layne also gave Larios advice about the GRE exams and writing an effective statement of purpose.

If Larios ever chooses to plan an academic conference, Layne could offer a useful tip or two. One would be to make the most of good luck. As presenters from universities around the world arrived on campus, ready to discuss dissent and rebellion, a group of protesters was perched in a grove of oak trees on the edge of campus, opposing plans to fell the trees for a new athletic facility.

Meanwhile, other events taking place on campus and around the Bay Area marked the 40th anniversary of international protests in1968. “We got a lot of attention and part of it was the timely topic,” says Layne. “We didn’t plan around the anniversary of 1968, but it definitely gave us momentum.”