Jeffrey Luppes was born in Iowa and grew up outside of Kansas City, Missouri. He has taught courses at all levels of German since his arrival at IU South Bend in 2011. His favorite courses to teach are beginning language classes. His greatest joy as a teacher is helping students discover what they find most fascinating about German culture. Dr. Luppes developed and co-led study abroad programs to Germany (to Berlin and South Bend’s sister-city Arzberg) in 2018 and 2023. He has taught in-person, hybrid, and online courses at the undergraduate and graduate levels (MAT in German). He is the faculty advisor for the IU South Bend German Club and started a weekly German conversation table on campus. In 2017, Dr. Luppes earned a German Embassy Teacher of Excellence Award and in 2018 he was inducted into the IU Faculty Academy on Excellence in Teaching (FACET).
Dr. Luppes completed doctoral studies at the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor (2010) and has published a number of articles and book reviews on German cultural history and memory culture, in particular on representations of German wartime suffering in the form of monuments. He is interested in topics at the intersection of German history, culture, and politics. His current research focuses on the material culture of the Third Reich.