Director of the Film anad Media Studies Program
Director of the graduate program in Critical European Culture Studies
His books include Visual Alterity: Seeing Difference in Cinema, The Europeanization of Cinema, German Film after Germany, and Queer Social Philosophy: Critical Readings from Kant to Adorno. His essays have appeared in journals such as New German Critique, Screen, Camera Obscura, German Quarterly, and Film-Philosophy.
Education & Training
- PhD, German Studies, Minor in Comparative Literature, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1995.
- MA, German Studies. University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1987.
- BS, German Studies. University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1985.
Representative Publications
Visual Alterity: Seeing Difference in Cinema. Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2021
European Art, Culture, and Politics special issue of EuropeNow (33) 2020 https://www.europenowjournal.org/2020/04/27/introduction-3/
United in Diversity, special issue of EuropeNow (26) 2019 https://www.europenowjournal.org/issues/issue-26-april/
The Europeanization of Cinema: Interzones and Imaginative Communities. Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2014.
German Film after Germany: Toward a Transnational Aesthetic. Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2008.
After the Avant-garde: New Directions in Experimental Film. Rochester: Camden House Press, 2008.
Queer Social Philosophy: Critical Readings from Kant to Adorno. Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2004.
“National to Transnational German Cinema,” German Cinema Book, British Film Institute, 2018.
“Xscreen 1968: Material Film Aesthetics and Radical Cinema Politics,” The Sixties, (May 2017), 1-16.
“German Visual Culture: From National to European Style,” Monateshefte, 108.3 (2016), 372-382.
“Film Policy in Germany,” International Journal of Cultural Policy, 22.5 (2016): 724-742.
“The Europeanization of Turkish/German Cinema,” Jahrbuch Deutsch-Türkische Studien, 2015, 15-38.
“Re-imagining the German East: Expulsion and Relocation in German Feature and Documentary Film.” German Politics and Society. 31: 4 (2013), 16-39.
"Großstadtfilm and Gentrification Debates: Localism and Social Imaginary in Soul Kitchen and Eine flexible Frau.” New German Critique 40:3 (2013), 171-191.
“East-West Globality and the European Mode of Film Production.” Asian-German Studies. Mary Riehl and Veronika Feuchtner eds. Camden House, 2013.
"Toward a Phenomenology of Emotion in Film: Michael Brynntrup and The Face of Gay Shame," in Modern Language Notes (2010).
“From Lyric to Militant: Experiments with the Turkish German Image.” Turkish German Dialogues on Screen in New Cinemas Journal (2010).
“European Film Beyond its Borders: Neo-Orientalism in Transnational Production Strategies.” Global Art Cinema: New Theories And Histories Rosalind Galt and Karl Schoonhover eds. Oxford University Press (2010).
Working Papers
“Regional, National, Transnational: The European Interzone”
“The Eighties in Super-8: The German Small Film Revolution, East and West”
“Gay Rights as Human Rights: Warsaw and Berlin in Post-Wall Transnational Conciliation”
Research Interests
The Reason of Europe
The central critical theoretical proposition of the study is that Europe is not a perfect union, it is a terrain of dis/union. Beginning from the longer history of the idea Europe, this project explores Europe as a constantly shifting discourse; each new iteration of the idea of Europe contains its own reason that displaces older rationales. Selecting case studies of imaginative communities that compete with each other, the study explores what motivates collectives, establishes complex connectivities, and forms disjuncture with the people next door.
(Un)Popular Culture
As much as popular cultural has been theorized, it remains an elusive concept. High and low, mass and elite, typically discussions of popular culture reinstate even as they seek to overcome these oppositions. This project seeks to take this problem head on by considering instead what is unpopular culture. It positions itself with recent discussions of "the pretty," "nice," or other intermediate terms of aesthetic evaluation. It fosters in this way what we may understand Low Theory. Objects of analysis come primarily from visual culture.