A Kansas University assistant professor in the School of Fine Arts has filed a civil rights lawsuit against KU, claiming that she has been subjected to a hostile work environment and anti-German discrimination.

Catherine Joritz filed the lawsuit Monday in Douglas County District Court. The lawsuit claims that she was wrongfully terminated and asks the court for appropriate relief.

She also asked the court to reinstate the Hall Center for Humanities Creative Fellowship that had been awarded to her for the upcoming academic year.

Joritz, who began teaching in the film and media studies department in 2012, was not available Thursday for comment, and KU spokesman Joe Monaco declined to comment, saying the university does not generally discuss pending litigation.

The lawsuit indicates that Joritz’s problems began when she taught a basic video course in spring 2014.

Several students apparently did not care for Joritz’s teaching style, but instead of complaining to her, they spoke with the then-department chair, associate professor Tamara L. Falicov, the lawsuit said.

Instead of sending the students back to Joritz to see if their differences could be settled, Falicov told the students they could express their complaints at the end of the semester with anonymous student evaluations, according to the lawsuit, which also claimed that standard university practice was to address problems as they occur.

Meanwhile, Falicov sent an email to Joritz saying she wanted to talk about “how Basic Video is going” and “some issues students have.” Later the same day, the lawsuit said, Falicov emailed Joritz and said the issues “aren’t urgent issues.”

After the semester was over and students had left for the summer, Joritz received the evaluations.

The evaluations, the lawsuit said, “included handwritten angry, aggressive, anti-German comments,” such as “She is a Nazi sympathizer,” “She drove us nuts frequently mispronouncing well-known words,” “(She) talked about Germany all the time,” and “She talked about German feminism.”

The student evaluations and comments became a permanent part of Joritz’s teaching record, the lawsuit said.

Joritz said in the lawsuit that she met with faculty members and KU administrators, including Chancellor Bernadette Gray-Little, several times to discuss her concerns and request that the comments that she considered to be discriminatory and hostile be removed from her teaching file. The university rejected her request, the lawsuit said.

During the 2014-2015 school year, Joritz underwent a tenure-track committee review.

One of the committee members cited Joritz’s German background as a reason for the negative student comments, the lawsuit said.

“Some of the student observations may also be due to the fact that (Joritz) taught extensively in Germany for many years before teaching at KU, and she has had some difficulty in adjusting her communicative and teaching skills to her new teaching environment and culture,” the committee member wrote, according to the lawsuit.

In May, KU sent Joritz notice that she would not be reappointed to her position; according to the lawsuit, the letter stated that “the Chancellor determined that your research record demonstrated insufficient progress toward tenure, warranting non-reappointment.”

According to the lawsuit and her biography on the KU website, Joritz is an American who attended the School of the Art Institute in Chicago from 1977 to 1982. Prior to coming to KU, she spent 30 years in Germany working as an animator, freelance artist and educator. During her career, she has won numerous awards for her animation work.

She came to KU in 2012 to begin a tenure-track professorship. According to the lawsuit, she received good evaluations and pay raises until last year.

In January, Joritz was awarded KU’s Hall Center for the Humanities Creative Fellowship for 2016.

In March, the 62nd International Short Film Festival in Germany announced that Joritz’s animated short film “Zapf Dingbats – A Tribute to Hermann Zapf” would be presented at the annual event.