Melissa Winters, who completed the MA in German Literature and Culture in 2005, is in the joint PhD program in German and Medieval Studies. Her main research interests focus on Middle High German lyric poetry. She is especially interested in prosody and form, and intends to write on late Minnesang. She also enjoys working on romance and epic, medieval and Neo-Latin literature, and the Old High German corpus. She arrived in Germanistik by way of musicology: she holds the M Phil and MA in music theory from Yale University (1992), and the BA in music from Mills College (1988). Her studies at Yale focused on early twentieth-century avant-garde music, (particularly that of the Second Viennese School), pitch-class set analysis, Schenkerian analysis, and the history of music theory. Her current interest in pre-modern literature has grown out her previous activities as a singer of early music and performer on the Renaissance lute. Between 1993 and 2002, she worked in the construction and printing trades, pursuing her literary and musical interests in her spare time. She has held positions as a construction laborer (Local Union No. 261, San Francisco), pile driver (L.U. No. 34, Oakland, CA), janitor, printer, and bookbinder. Between 2002 and 2004, she took a number of upper division and graduate courses in German literary history, Middle High German, and Latin at UC Berkeley in order to lay the groundwork for her current studies. She is delighted to be back in the steelyards of academe.