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About me

I am an Associate Professor of German and Affiliate Faculty of Film Studies at UNC Charlotte. My research interests include German postwar film and literature, global horror cinema, and cultural studies. I have published on Heinrich Böll, Rolf Dieter Brinkmann, Rainald Goetz, German horror film, and 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
  • Youth- and Sub-Cultures
  • German Postwar Literature and Film

Current Research Interests

  • German Postwar Horror Cinema
  • Video Game Studies
  • German Hip-Hop

Book Project

  • Tales from the Dark Side: German Postwar Horror Cinema. In progress.

Recent Publications

  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • Book Review: Stefan Bronner, Björn Weyand (Eds.). Christian Krachts Weltliteratur: Eine Topographie in: German Studies Review, Vol. 42, No. 3. 2019, 651-653.
  • Peer Reviewed Article: Kai-Uwe Werbeck. “‘An der Kernstelle der Existenz’: Techno, Intoxication, and the Limits of Literary Representation in Rainald Goetz’s Rave,” Colloquia Germanica, 50.2, 2017, pp. 229-247. Published 2019.
  • Book Review (“Referat”): Kai-Uwe Werbeck, “Ralf Schnell. Heinrich Böll und die Deutschen,” Germanistik 59. 3-4. 2018, 1001.

Academic Employment

  • 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

  1. “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)
  2. “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)
  3. “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
  4. “Blood and Soil: The Representation of National Space in Contemporary German Vampire Films,” Pacific Ancient and Modern Language Association 107th Conference, San Diego, CA, November 14th-17th, 2019
  5. “Berlin Under Siege: Spatial Allegory in Marvin Kren’s Zombie Film Rammbock,” German Studies Association 43rd Conference, Portland, OR, October 5th-8th, 2019
  6. “Media Archaeology and Excavation of Early Computer Games,” Research Panel, part of the UNC Charlotte Digital Humanities Forum, Charlotte, NC, April 5th, 2019
  7. “Necromancers, Nightmares, and Neo-Nazis: 21st Century German Horror Cinema,” Sewanee: The University of the South, Sewanee, TN, March 4th-5th, 2019.
  8. “The City of Bits: Augmented Reality Games and Mediated Modes of Experience,” Philological Association of the Carolinas Annual Conference, Asheville, NC, February 21st-22nd, 2019
  9. “West German Exploitation Cinema,” German Studies Association 42nd Conference (part of the GSA Seminar on Popular Culture in 20th-Century Germany), Pittsburgh, PA, September 27th-30th, 2018
  10. “Cinematic Space as National Metaphor in Harald Reinl’s Der Frosch mit der Maske,” Philological Association of the Carolinas Annual Conference, Charleston, SC, February 23rd-24th, 2018

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