Essays and Other Publications

Critical Essays  |  Critical Review Essays  |  Translations  |  Other Publications

Critical Essays

In Print

  • “Whither German Cinema? Observations from the 72nd Berlin International Film Festival.” Senses of Cinema 102 (August 2022): 6,100 words.
  • “A Genre Epic reappraised: Dominik Graf’s ‘The Invincibles.” MUBI Notebook (July 2020): 4,000 words.
  • “The Berlin School.” The German Cinema Book 2nd ed. Eds. Tim Bergfelder, Erica Carter, Deniz Göktürk, and Claudia Sandberg (London: British Film Institute, September 2019): 252-261.
  • “Nina Hoss: An unlikely German Film Star?” The German Cinema Book 2nd ed. Eds. Tim Bergfelder, Erica Carter, Deniz Göktürk, and Claudia Sandberg (London: British Film Institute, September 2019): 168-169.
  • With Christina Gerhardt. “Introduction: German Screen Cultures and the Long 1968.” Celluloid Revolt: German Screen Cultures and the Long Sixties. Eds. Christina Gerhardt and Marco Abel (Rochester: Camden House, 2019): 1-23.
  • “‘Il faut souffrir’; or, Why the Personal Was (Mostly) Not the Political at the 69th Berlin International Film Festival,” Senses of Cinema 90 (March 2019): 6,500 words.
  • “‘Das ist vorbei’: Unzeitgemäße Begegnungen mit dem Neoliberalismus in Christian Petzolds dffb Studentenfilmen.” Über Christian Petzold. Eds. Ilka Brombach and Tina Kaiser (Berlin: Verlag Vorwerk 8, 2018): 76-99.
  • With Jaimey Fisher. “Introduction: The Berlin School and Beyond.” A Transnational Art-Cinema: Berlin School and Its Global Contexts. Eds. Marco Abel and Jaimey Fisher (Detroit: Wayne State UP, 2018): 1-37.
  • “Clouds Over Berlin: A Few Remarks about German Cinema at the 68th Berlin International Film Festival,” Senses of Cinema 86 (March 2018): 7,000 words.
  • “Dissent and Its Discontents: Five Decades of RAF in German Film and Television at the moving history film festival (Potsdam, Germany, 20-24 September, 2017),” Senses of Cinema 85 (December 2017): 6,000 words.
  • “‘Das ist vorbei’: Untimely Encounters with Neoliberalism in Christian Petzold’s dffb Student Film.” In “Christian Petzold: A Dossier.” Eds. Marco Abel and Jaimey Fisher, Senses of Cinema 84 (September 2017): 9,750 words.
  • With Jaimey Fisher. “Who Is Petzold?” Introduction of “Christian Petzold: A Dossier.” Eds. Marco Abel and Jaimey Fisher, Senses of Cinema 84 (September 2017): 2,250 words.
  • “A Few Notes on German Cinema at the 67th Berlin Film Festival,” Senses of Cinema 82 (March 2017): 5,300 words.
  • With Roland Végső. “Biopolitical Education: The Edukators and the Politics of the Immanent Outside.” Studies in Twentieth and Twenty-First Century Literature 2 (summer 2016) (special issue on “On 24/7: Neoliberalism and the Undoing of Time,” eds. Necia Chronister & Lutz Koepnick): 11,000 words.
  • “Henner Winckler: Filming Without Predetermined Results.,” Senses of Cinema 77 (December 2015): 11,000 words.
  • With Alexander Vazansky. “Introduction: What Was Politics in ‘1968’ in West Germany?”  Introduction to “What was Politics in 68? A Special Issue on the West German Sixties.” Eds. Alexander Vazansky and Marco Abel. The Sixties: A Journal of History, Politics and Culture2 (12/2014; published summer 2015): 83-98.
  • “Seeing and Saying.” Berlin School Glossary: An ABC of the New Wave in German Cinema. Eds. Brad Prager, Kristin Kopp, Lutz Koepnick, and Roger Cook. London: Intellect, 2013: 231-237.
  • “Yearning for Genre: The Cinema of Dominik Graf.” Generic Histories of German Cinema: Film Genre and Its Deviations. Ed. Jaimey Fisher. Rochester: Camden House, 2013: 261-284.
  • “The Agonistic Politics of the Dreileben,” German Studies Review 36.3 (summer 2013): 607-616. In “The Berlin School (1): The DREILEBEN Experiment.” Eds. Marco Abel and Christina Gerhard., German Studies Review 36.3 (2013): 603–642.
  • “The Minor Cinema of Thomas Arslan: A Prolegomenon.” Turkish German Cinema in the New Millennium: Sites, Sounds, and Screens. Eds. Sabine Hake and Barbara Mennell. Oxford & New York: Berghahn Books, 2012: 44-55.
  • “22 January 2007: Film Establishment Attacks ‘Berlin School’ as Wrong Kind of National Cinema”.” A New History of German Cinema. Eds. Jennifer Kapczynski and Michael Richardson. Rochester: Camden House, 2012: 602-608.
  • “Sehnsucht nach dem Genre: Die Sieger von Dominik Graf.” In Im Angesicht des Fernsehens: Der Filmemacher Dominik Graf: 78-104.
    • This essay is a translation of “Yearning for Genre: The Cinema of Dominik Graf,” Generic Histories of German Cinema: Film Genre and Its Deviations, Jaimey Fisher, ed. (Rochester: Camden House, 2013).
  • “The Counter-Cinema of the Berlin School.” Cinema and Social Change in Germany and Austria. Eds. Gabriele Mueller and James M. Skidmore. Waterloo, Canada: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2012: 25-42.
  • “‘A Sharpening of Our Regard’: Realism, Affect, and the Redistribution of the Sensible in Valeska Grisebach’s Longing.” New Directions in German Cinema. Eds. Paul Cooke and Christoph Homewood. London: I. B. Tauris, 2011: 204-222.
  • “Die Sieger.” Quarterly Review of Film and Video 27.5 (2010): 410-413.
  • “Imaging Germany: The (Political) Cinema of Christian Petzold.” The Collapse of the Conventional: German Film and its Politics at the Turn of the New Century. Eds. Jaimey Fisher and Brad Prager. Detroit: Wayne State UP, 2010: 258-284.
  • “Yearning for Genre: The Films of Dominik Graf.” Cine-Fils: Cinephile Interview Magazine. March 2010: 4,000 words.
    • Web site no longer active.
  • “Underground Film Germany in the Age of Control Societies: The ‘Cologne Group’.” Quarterly Review of Film and Video 27.2 (2010): 89-107.
  • “Failing to Connect: Itinerations of Desire in Oskar Roehler’s Post-Romance Films.” New German Critique 109 (Winter 2010): 75-98.
  • “Intensifying Affect.” Electronic Book Review, October 2008: 11,000 words.
  • “Intensifying Life: The Cinema of the ‘Berlin School’.” Cineaste: America’s Leading Magazine on the Art and Politics of the Cinema online 33.4 (Fall 2008): 7,800 words.
    • Reprinted in Portuguese as “Intensificando a vida: o cinema da ‘Escola de Berlim’,” trans. Cristian Borges, in Nova Cinema Independente Alemão: Uma outra politica do olhar, ed. Cristian Borges (São Paulo: Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil 2009): 22-39. This catalogue accompanied a retrospective of the Berlin School that took place in São Paulo 11 February – 1 March, 2009.
    • Slightly revised and reprinted in German as “Das Leben intensivieren: Das Kino der ‘Berliner Schule’,” trans. Sabine Wilke, in Literatur für Leser 54 (2/10): 113-125 (published April 2011).
  • “The State of Things Part Two: More Images for a Post-Wall Reality—The 56th Berlin Film Festival.” Senses of Cinema 39 (April-June 2006): 8,400 words.
  • “Images for a Post-Wall Reality: New German Films at the 55th Berlin Film Festival.” Senses of Cinema 35 (April-June 2005): 5,500 words.
  • “Don DeLillo’s ‘In the Ruins of the Future’: Literature, Images, and the Rhetoric of Seeing 9/11.” PMLA 118.5 (October 2003): 1236-1250.
  • “Speeding Across the Rhizome: Deleuze Meets Kerouac On The Road.” Modern Fiction Studies 48.2 (Summer 2002): 227-256.
    • Reprinted in Turkish in book form as Deleuze ve Kerouac—Rizom’da Hareketlilik: Gilles Deleuze ve Jack Kerouac’in “Yolda” Karşılaşmaları Üzerine. Istanbul: Sub Yayın Tarihi, 2017.
  • “Judgment is not an Exit: Toward an Affective Criticism of Violence with American Psycho.” Angelaki 6.3 (December 2001): 137-154.
    • Reprinted in Contemporary Literary Criticism 229. Ed. Jeffrey W. Hunter (New York: Thomson Gale Group, 2007): 239-253.
  • “Fargo: The Violent Production of the Masochistic Contract as a Cinematic Concept.” Critical Studies in Mass Communication 16.3 (September 1999): 308-328.
  • “One Goal is Still Lacking: The Influence of Friedrich Nietzsche’s Philosophy on William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury.” South Atlantic Review 60 (September 1997): 35-51.

Forthcoming

  • “(Don’t) Look Back on Sylvie: Klaus Lemke, D. A. Pennebaker, and the Lightness of a ‘Left without Leftism’.” In New German Cinema and Its Global Contexts. Wayne State UP, forthcoming 2023: 13,000 words ms.

In Progress

  • “Tätowierung (Johannes Schaaf, 1967) and the Joys of Violence; or: the Forgotten Case of the Aesthetic Left”: 9,000 words.

Critical Review Essays of…

  • Die Filmer der Jessica Hausner. Referenzen, Kontexte, Muster by Sabrina Gärtner. German Studies Review 44.2 (2021): 433-436.
  • Women at Work in Twenty-First Century European Cinema by Barbara Mennel. German Studies Review 43.1 (2020): 215-217.
  • Movement and Performance in Berlin School Cinemaby Olivia Landry. German Studies Review 43.1 (2020): 210-212.
  • Christian Petzold by Jaimey Fisher. Seminar: A Journal of Germanic Studies 52.1 (2016): 93-96.
  • Postwall German Cinema: History, Film History, and Cinephilia by Mattias Frey. German Studies Review 37.3 (October 2014): 716-719.
  • Romuald Karmakar by Olaf Möller and Bilder hinter den Worten by Tobias Ebbrecht. Filmblatt 46/47 (winter 2011/2012): 133-137.
  • A Critical History of German Film by Stephen Brockmann. German Quarterly 84.4 (fall 2011): 504-507.
  • German Cinema since Unification by David Clarke. Quarterly Review of Film and Video 26.3 (2009): 229-236.
  • The Cinema of the Low Countries by Ernest Mathijs, ed. Quarterly Review of Film and Video 25.5 (2008): 447-453.
  • Trier on von Trier by Stig Björkman. Quarterly Review of Film and Video 25.1 (2008): 81-86.
  • The Spaces of Violence by James R. Giles. Published as “Spatializing Violence, Violating Space: Towards a New Theory of Violence in Contemporary American Fiction,” South Atlantic Review 71.3 (summer 2006): 121-132.
  • Prosthetic Memory: The Transformation of American Remembrance in the Age of Mass Culture by Alison Landsberg. Quarterly Review of Film and Video 23.4 (2006): 377-388.
  • Lacan and Contemporary Film by Todd McGowan and Sheila Kunkel, eds. Published as “Own Your Lack!: New Lacanian Film Theory Encounters the Real in Contemporary Cinema,” South Atlantic Review 71.1 (Winter 2006): 132-140.
  • Violence and American Cinema by J. David Slocum, ed. Quarterly Review of Film and Video 19.3 (July-September 2002): 271-277.
  • Serial Murder 2nd edition by Ronald M. Holmes and Stephen T. Holmes. Crime, Law and Social Change: An Interdisciplinary Journal 30.3 (1998/99): 292-297.
  • Insights from Film into Violence and Oppression: Shattered Dreams of the Good Life by John P. Lovell. Crime, Law and Social Change: An Interdisciplinary Journal4 (1998): 354-357.

Translations

In print

  • “‘Holger Thought Aesthetics and Politics Together’: An Interview with Harun Farocki about Film Student Holger Meins and His Path to the RAF” by Tilman Baumgärtel. Celluloid Revolt: German Screen Cultures of the Long 1968. Eds. Christina Gerhardt and Marco Abel (Rochester: Camden House, 2019): 271-280.
  • “The Protestant Method” by Christoph Hochhäusler. Senses of Cinema 84 (September 2017): 2,000 words.

Other Publications

In Print

  • “Wunderbar Graf Interview.” Cineaste XLVII, No. 4 (fall 2022): 3.
    • Invited Letter to the Editor in response to Graham Fuller’s essay and interview with Dominik Graf on his film Fabian: 520 words.
  • “Mit Nonchalance am Abgrund: Die Neue Münchner Gruppe,” Program notes for the retrospective of the same name I was invited to curate for the Zeughauskino at the German Historical Museum, Berlin, May 7 – 27, 2022.
  • “Die Verflechtung,” in Program Catalogue of moving history film festival 02: Als wir träumten: Revolution, Mauerfall, Nachwendezeit (Potsdam, September 25-29, 2019): 117-119.
  • With Christina Gerhardt. “Celluloid Revolt: German Screen Cultures and the Long 1968.” Proofed: A Boydell & Brewer Blog(14 June 2019): 1,000 words.
  • With Julia Schleck. “Academic Freedom, Radical Hospitality, and the Necessity of Counterspeech.” Academe online (February 2019): 2,300 words.
  • “Una experiencia de Alemania más allá de la realidad.” Cahiers du Cinéma España 39, Especial No. 13 (November 2010): 14-16.
  • “German Desire in the Age of Venture Capitalism.” Yella (dir. Christian Petzold). DVD. New York: The Cinema Guild (March 2009): 3,600 words.
  • Program Notes for the “Retrospective of Contemporary German Cinema: The ‘Berlin School’,” Mary Riepma Ross Media Arts Center, Lincoln, NE, March 23 – April 5, 2007: 1,624 words.
  • “Roddy Doyle.” Dictionary of Literary Biography: British Novelists Since 1960, Second Series 194 (1998): 107-112.
  • “A New Letter by Samuel T. Coleridge.” Notes and Queries 242 (September 1997): 329-330.
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