Film Studies

20th/21st Century

German

Education

• Ph.D., University of Mannheim, Germany
• M.A., University of Waterloo, Canada

Research Interests 

• Film Studies (esp. Genre Cinema, Austrian, French and German Cinema)
• Representations of Artificial Intelligence in Film and Literature
• 20th Century and Contemporary German literature

Select Publications 

• Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained: The Continuation of Metacinema (edited volume, Bloomsbury Academic, 2014.
• Funny Frames: The Cinematic Concepts of Michael Haneke. New York and London, Continuum: 2010.
• New Austrian Film (coeditedwith Robert von Dassanowsky, University of Colorado, Colorado Springs/UCLA), New York: Berghahn Books, 2011 (rereleased in paperback in 2014).
  
• “Wolfszeit,” in: Gewalt, Verlust, Verletzung, Dennis Henkel, Thomas Ballhausen, eds., Springer Verlag, 2026 (forthcoming).
• “Nomadic Strangers: Asian and European Travelers in German and Austrian Road Movies from the 1970s to the Present,” in: Charting Asian German Film History: Imagination, Collaboration, and Diasporic Representation, Qinna Shen, Zach Ramon Fitzpatrick, Qingyang Freya Zhou, eds. Camden House, 2025: 207-26.
• “The Birth of an Origin” in: The Birth of a Nation, Jenny Berret and Douglas Field, eds., Manchester University Press, 2022: 136-58.
• “Ein Kommissar geht um…: „Heimat“ im deutschen Fernsehkrimi am Beispiel von Der Kommissar und Tatort,” in: Heimat – Neue Perspektiven, Thorsten Carstensen and Oliver Kohns, eds. Transcript Verlag 2021: 337-60.
• “Search for the Sublime: The Road Trilogy, or Wenders’ Roam-man-ticism,” Olivier Delers, ed. Change is Possible and Necessary: New Perspectives on Wim Wenders as Filmmaker and Visual Critic, Bloomsbury Press, 2019: 29-47.
• „Handke verfilmt / Handke verfilmt sich - Wenders’ und Handkes verwegene Übersetzungen,“ in: Thorsten Carstensen, ed., Die tägliche Schrift. Peter Handke als Leser, transcript Verlag, 2020: 249-267.

Affiliations 

• Austrian Studies Association (Member of the Board) 
• Modern Language Association
• Society for Film and Media Studies 

Courses 

• NEXT 275: Representations of AI in Literature and Film 
• WRLD 230: Introduction to Film Studies (online/asynchronous)
• WRLD 491: The Politics of Superhero Movies 
• MATX 601: Texts & Textuality 
• MATX 604: Professional Development Seminar
• MATX 690: Seminar in Media, Art & Text

Awards

• Faculty Success Program, National Center for Faculty Diversity and Development, Award funded by VCU Office of the Provost, Spring 2025
• Affordable Course Content Grant (VCU libraries) Spring 2024
• Humanities Research Center Residential Fellowship. Spring 2017
• Humanities Research Center's Research Grant, Fall 2016
• Outstanding Faculty Award: Excellence in Scholarship (Humanities & Social Sciences), Spring 2015