About me
I am Associate Professor of German and Affiliate Faculty of Film Studies at UNC Charlotte. I also serve as the Associate Chair of the Department of Languages, Cultures and Translation. My research interests include German postwar film and literature, film theory, and cultural studies. I have published on Heinrich Böll, Rolf Dieter Brinkmann, Rainald Goetz, German horror film, and German old-school rap. I am also one of the translators of Alexander Kluge’s Kong’s Finest Hour. Currently, I am working on a monograph on German horror cinema after 1945.
Education
- Ph.D. in German Literature, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2012
- M.A. in German Literature, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2008
- DAF-Certificate (Teaching German as a Foreign Language), Ruhr-University Bochum, 2006
- M.A. in Cultural Studies, Ruhr-University Bochum, 2005
- B.A. (Zwischenprufung) in Cultural Studies, Ruhr-University Bochum, 2002
Teaching Areas
- German Language and Culture
- Horror Cinema
- German Postwar Literature and Film
Current Research Interests
- The Holocaust in Film
- German Postwar Horror Cinema
- German Hip-Hop
Book Project
- Tales from the Dark Side: German Postwar Horror Cinema. In progress.
Recent Publications
- Peer Reviewed Journal Article: “The Massacre Will be Televised: Splatter Aesthetics, Media Politics, and the Horrors of Reunification in Das deutsche Kettensägenmassaker,” Colloquia Germanica. Forthcoming 2025.
- Peer Reviewed Essay in Edited Volume: “Of Brown Phantoms and Crypto-Fascist Monsters: The Gothic in German Postwar Horror Cinema,” The German Gothic, Eds. Jeffrey High, Curtis Maughan. Bath: Anthem. Forthcoming 2025.
- Peer Reviewed Journal Article: “The Thing that Eludes Us: John Carpenter, Abject Horror, and the Shapeshifting of Cold War Cinema,” Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts. Vol. 35, No. 1, 2024. 31-58.
- Peer Reviewed Essay in Edited Volume: “Searching for (A) Home in the Rubble: The Heimkehrer-Flaneur in Wolfgang Staudte’s Die Mörder sind unter uns,” Domesticity under Siege: Threatened Spaces of the Modern Home. Eds. Mark Taylor, Georgina Downey, and Terry Meade. London et. al. Bloomsbury Visual Arts, 2023. 125-147.
- Translation, with Susanne Gomoluch: Alexander Kluge. “The Indestructability of the Political,” “The Chronicle of Pangaea.” Kong’s Finest Hour: A Chronicle of Connections. (Revised and Expanded Edition) London, New York, Calcutta: Seagull Books, 2021, pp. 133-164, 207-300.
- Peer Reviewed Essay in Edited Volume: “Poetry of an Alien: Black Tape, Silo Nation, and the Historiography of German Hip-Hop’s Alte Schule,” Sounds German: Popular Music in Postwar Germany at the Crossroads of the National and Transnational. Ed. Kirkland A. Fulk. New York: Berghahn, 2020. 84-105. Word count: approx. 10,500.
- Book Review: Bryan Turnock. Studying Horror Cinema in: The Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts, Vol. 21, No.1. 2020, 158-160.
- Peer Reviewed Essay in Edited Volume: “Nosferatu’s Daughters: Radical Feminism, Lesbo-Vampirism, and Fluid Identities in Dennis Gansel’s Wir sind die Nacht,” Vampire Films Around the World: Essays on the Cinematic Undead of Sixteen Cultures, Ed. James Aubrey. Jefferson, McFarland, 2020. 64-77. Word count approx. 6000.
Academic Employment
- July 2023 – present: Associate Chair, Department of Languages and Culture Studies, The University of North Carolina at Charlotte
- July 2019 – present: Associate Professor, Department of Languages and Culture Studies, The University of North Carolina at Charlotte
- Summer 2019: Faculty, Deutsche Sommerschule am Pazifik, Portland State University
- July 2013 – June 2019: Assistant Professor, Department of Languages and Culture Studies, The University of North Carolina at Charlotte
- 2012 – 2013: Lecturer, Interim Director of the German Undergraduate Language Program, Department of Germanic and Slavic Languages and Literature, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
- Summer 2012 – Summer 2013: Faculty, Middlebury Language Schools, German School, Middlebury College
Recent Presentations and Invited Lectures
- “Anti-Semitism on Floppy Disks: Naziware and the Virality of Hate,” Southeastern Association of Cultural Studies Annual Conference, Charlotte, NC, February 15-16, 2024
- “Das Schwarze Auge,” German Studies Association 47th Conference (part of the GSA Seminar on Game Studies), Montreal, QC, October 5-8, 2023
- “Grimm Love: Horror and Heritage in Rohtenburg,” Southeastern Association of Cultural Studies Annual Conference, Charlotte, NC, February 17-18, 2023
- “The Massacre Will not be Televised: Splatter Theory, Avant-Garde Horror, and the Cutting up of the Heuchelmaschine in Das deutsche Kettensägenmassaker,” German Studies Association 46th Conference, Houston, TX, September 15th-18th, 2022
- “The Thing that Eludes Us: John Carpenter, Horror’s Abject, and the Hermeneutics of Cold War Cinema,” Southeastern Association of Cultural Studies Annual Conference, Charlotte, NC, February 26th-27th, 2021 (online)
- “Mysterious Caverns, Desolate Mountains, and Haunted Castles: The Gothic in German Postwar Horror Cinema,” German Studies Association 44th Conference, Washington, DC, October 1st-4th, 2020 (online)
- “West German Gothic Cinema: Repressed Horrors in Harald Reinl’s Die Schlangengrube und das Pendel (The Torture Chamber of Dr. Sadism),” Southeastern Association of Cultural Studies Annual Conference, Charlotte, NC, February 7th-8th, 2020
Classes Taught at UNC Charlotte (Selection)
- GERM 3202 Advanced Grammar, Conversation, and Composition II (Topic: German Film)
- GERM 3050 The Ghosts of Berlin (Study Abroad Program)
- GERM 3160/FILM 3050 Mayhem, Monsters, and Mass-Murderers: German Horror Film
- GERM 3650 The Holocaust through German Literature and Film
- GERM 3660 Survey of German Film
- GERM 4050 Advanced Seminar: Deutschland bei Nacht in Literatur, Film und Musik
- LBST 1102, 1201 & 2101 Arts & Science: Global Horror Cinema
Current Professional Affiliations
- Pacific Ancient and Modern Language Association
- German Studies Association
- Southeastern Association of Cultural Studies