Invited Guest Lectures and Workshop Participations
International
“Mit Nonchalance am Abgrund: Die Neue Münchner Gruppe,” Zeughauskino at the German Historical Museum, Berlin, May 7, 2022.
Opening lecture of the retrospective [German description from catalog; English here] (curated by me), “Mit Nonchalance am Abgrund: Die Neue Münchner Gruppe,” May 7 – 27, 2022.
“On the Berlin School.” Universidad Autónoma de la Ciudad de México, Mexico City, October 21, 2021 (virtual).
“A précis of ‘Left Politics without Leftism: A Counter-Genealogy of Germany’s Political Cinema’.” American Academy in Berlin, September 10, 2019.
“Tätowierung, West-German Cinema around ’68, and the Joys of Violence; or: the Forgotten Case of the ‘AestheticLeft’.” Oxford University (St. John’s College), November 22, 2018.
“‘1968’, German Cinema, and the Joys of Violence; or: the Forgotten Case of the Aesthetic Left.” Invited presentation as part of the workshop, “The Joys of Violence,” at Uppsala University, Sweden, September 19-21, 2018.
“‘So this was Germany!’: Towards Theorizing A People That Will Have Been.” As part of the cross-disciplinary seminar series, “Zeitgeist: What Does It Mean to Be Germany in the 21st Century?,” at the University of Birmingham, UK, November 21, 2011.
“The Counter-Cinema of the ‘Berlin School.” University of Western Ontario, London, Canada, March, 16 2009.
“Innen sicher und aussen mobil: Das Kino der Berliner Schule.” Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Germany, June 19, 2007.
National
“With Nonchalance at the Abyss: The New Munich Group, Klaus Lemke’s Sylvie, and the Lightness of a Left without Leftism.” Cinema and Media Studies Colloquium, University of Pennsylvania, April 6, 2022.
“The New Munich Group and ’60s Political Cinema in West Germany.” Virginia Commonwealth University, November 10, 2021 (virtual).
“Is School Out?; or, The Berlin School as Event.” Vanderbilt University, February 2, 2018.
“Biopolitical Education: The Edukators and the Politics of the Immanent Outside.” University of Missouri, April 22, 2016.
“Promise as Premise: The German Film Movement of The Berlin School Will Have Been.” Georgia State University, Atlanta, March 5, 2014.
Invited moderator of two panels at “The State We’re In: The Films of the Berliner Schule,” Deutsches Haus, New York City November 22-23, 2013.
Fellow participants at this two-day symposium, itself part of a two-week film exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, “The Berlin School: Films from the Berliner Schule,” included six directors and a cinematographer associated with the Berlin School, as well as Fatima Naqvi, associate professor of German at Rutgers, and the German film critic Katja Nicodemus
Provided opening remarks on the Berlin School and subsequently moderated the symposium’s opening panel (11/22) with Angela Schanelec, Christoph Hochhäusler, and Ulrich Köhler; moderated (11/23) panel with Angela Schanelec and her cinematographer Reinhold Vorschneider
“Current German Cinema and Its Notion of Germany: On the Berlin School.” University of California at Berkeley, April 6, 2012
“The Counter-Cinema of the Berlin School: Filming the Nation in the Age of Neoliberalism.” University of California at Davis, April 5, 2012.
“Séance: A Prolegomenon to the Berlin School.” As part of “The Making of Now: New Berlin Cinema,” Dartmouth, 5/2011.
Fellow speakers: Eric Rentschler (Harvard), Gerd Gemünden (Dartmouth), and German filmmaker Christoph Hochhäusler
Invited participant in a workshop on the “German New Wave” at the University of Missouri, Columbia, MO, November 5-8, 2009
“Wither Germany: The Minor Cinema of the Berlin School and the Question of the German People.” As part of “The Fall of the Wall: A Prism for Looking at Germany’s Recent Past and Future” (which was part of the “Freedom without Walls: Fall of the Berlin Wall 1989-2009” campus week at Columbia University). Co-sponsored by NYU’s Deutsches Haus and the German Embassy. New York City, October 22-23, 2009.
Invited participant in the Missouri Film Institute on the “Berlin School” at Washington University, St. Louis, December 2008.
“Christian Petzold’s Yella and the Cinema of the Berlin School.” Block Museum of Art at Northwestern University, October 2008.
Participated in the German Film Institute at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, August 2008.
“Violence, Affect, Ethics: Thinking the Ethics of Violence as the Violence of Ethics.” As part of a public colloquium on “Violence and Ethics” hosted by the Honor’s Program and the John Hazen White Sr. Center for Ethics and Public Service at the University of Rhode Island, April 1, 2008.
“How to Survive the Academic Job Market.” The Pennsylvania State University, October 14, 2005.
“Taking Lacan and Heidegger to the Limits of What They Can Do: Kaja Silverman’s Envisioning of Seeing as Lack in World Spectators.” University of South Carolina, February 2003.
Local
“Angela Schanelec’s I Was at Home, But… Mary Riepma Ross Media Arts Center, Lincoln, NE, March 3, 2020.
“Christian Petzold’s Transit.” Mary Riepma Ross Media Arts Center, Lincoln, NE, April 13, 2019.
“Christian Petzold’s Barbara.” Mary Riepma Ross Media Arts Center, Lincoln, NE, February 3, 2013.
“Werner Herzog’s Cave of Forgotten Dreams.” Mary Riepma Ross Media Arts Center, Lincoln, NE, November 25, 2012.
“Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry.” Mary Riepma Ross Media Arts Center, Lincoln, NE, September 16, 2012.
“Christian Petzold’s Yella.” Mary Riepma Ross Media Arts Center, Lincoln, NE March 1, 2009.
“‘The Berlin School’: New Images for a Post-Wall Reality.” Mary Riepma Ross Theatre, Lincoln, NE, March 25, 2007.
“Viva Pedro!: The Films of Pedro Almodóvar.” Mary Riepma Ross Theatre, Lincoln, NE, October 29, 2006.
“Comedy of Reconciliation? Go for Zucker and German-Jewish Relations in the 21st Century.” Mary Riepma Ross Theatre, Lincoln, NE, April 30, 2006.
Conference Presentations
“Making Films in the ‘Cemetery of Genre Cinema’: Christian Petzold’s Auteurist Inflection of Polizeiruf 110,” German Studies Association Conference, Houston, 9/22.
“(Don’t) Look Back on Sylvie: Klaus Lemke, D. A. Pennebaker, and the ‘Lightness’ of a ‘Left Without Leftism’,” German Studies Association Conference, Indianapolis., 10/21 (virtual).
Postponed due to COVID-19 from originally scheduled presentation at GSA 2020.
“Three Perspectives on the (German) Nation and its ‘Others’: Maren Ade’s Toni Erdmann, Angela Schanelec’s The Dreamed Path, and Valeska Grisebach’s Western,” German Studies Association Conference, Pittsburgh, 9/18.
Part of the panel, “Envisioning German Encounters with the Other: German Film and Literature in the Age of Merkel’s ‘Wir schaffen das’,” which I co-organized.
“School Is Out: Christoph Hochhäusler’s Polit-Thrillers and the Fate of the Berlin School’s Utopian Politics.” Society for Cinema and Media Studies Conference, Atlanta, GA, 3/16.
Part of the panel “School Is Out; or What Happens When A Wave is No Longer New?,” which I organized and chaired.
“Between Crisis and Utopia: Some Elective Affinities between the Films by Christian Petzold and Olivier Assayas.” German Studies Association Conference, Washington D.C., 10/15.
Part of the interdisciplinary three-day seminar, “The Berlin School and Its Global Contexts,” which I co-organized.
“‘New Munich Group’ Filmmaking: With Nonchalance Before the Abyss.” German Studies Association Conference, Kansas City, 09/14.
“What Was ‘Left’ Filmmaking around 1968: The New Munich Group.” Modern Language Association Conference, Chicago, 01/14.
“Against the ‘Political’ Film in ‘1968’: The Forgotten Case of the New Munich Group.” German Studies Association Conference, Denver, 10/13.
Part of the three-day interdisciplinary seminar, “What Was Politics in ‘1968’?,” which I co-organized.
“Political Desires in the Age of Transnational Neoliberalism: The German Berlin School, the Romanian New Wave, and the New Europe.” Society for Cinema and Media Studies, Chicago, 03/2013.
Part of the panel, “The Berlin School and Its Global Contexts: Romania, Argentina, and Thailand,” which I co-organized and for which I served as panel moderator.
“No Turn Back: Dissensus and the Affect-Image in Films of the Berlin School.” Modern Language Association Conference, Boston, 01/2013.
“Debating Filming/Filming Debate: The Aesthetics and Politics of the Dreileben” German Studies Association Conference, Milwaukee, 10/2012.
“‘Do You Want to Be Understood?’; or, Schanelec with Spinoza (via Deleuze).” German Studies Association Conference, Louisville, KY 09/2011.
Part of a panel on Angela Schanelec’s films that I organized.
“‘The goal is a cinema that makes life more intense’: The Cinema of Christoph Hochhäusler.” German Studies Association Conference, Oakland, CA 10/2010.
“Realism beyond Identity: The Cinema of Thomas Arslan.” Rethinking German-Turkish Cinema Conference, Austin, TX, 3/2010.
“Yearning for Genre: The Cinema of Dominik Graf.” Society for Cinema and Media Studies Conference, Los Angeles 3/2010.
“Movement and Nation in Die innere Sicherheit.” German Studies Association Conference, Washington D.C., 10/2009.
“Towards a New National Cinema: Topographical Singularization of Germany in the ‘Berlin School’ Films.” German Studies Association Conference, St. Paul, MN 10/2008.
“Untimely Mappings: The Politics of the A-Representational Realism of the ‘Berlin School’.” Cinema and Social Change in Germany and Austria Conference, Waterloo, Canada, 5/2008.
“Underground Film Germany: The ‘Cologne Group’.” Society for Cinema and Media Studies Conference, Philadelphia, 3/2008.
“Berliner Schule Cinema: Re-visions of Mobility in the Age of post-Wall Globalization.” Popular Culture/American Culture Association National Conference, Boston, April 4-7, 2007.
“Imaging Germany: The (Political) Cinema of Christian Petzold.” Society for Cinema and Media Studies Conference, Chicago, 3/2007.
“Imaging Mobility in Contemporary German Cinema.” Society for Cinema and Media Studies Conference, Vancouver, Canada, 3/2006.
“Representation is not an Exit: Toward an Affective Criticism of Violence in American Psycho.” Violence, Cinema, and American Culture Conference, St. Louis, MO, 4/2001.
“Judgment is not an Exit: Toward an Affective Criticism of Violence in American Psycho.” Second Millennium Literature/Film Conference of the Literature/Film Association, Ocean City, MD, 12/2000.
“Hitchhike, Take Flight: Speedily Traveling the Rhizome with Deleuze on Kerouac’s Road.” Twentieth Century Literature Conference, Louisville, KY, 2/2000.
“Maso-Criticism: Towards a Non-Representational Encounter with Violence in Twentieth Century American Literature and Film.” Southwestern Popular Culture Conference, Albuquerque, NM, 2/2000.
“Speedily Traveling the Rhizome: Kerouac’s On the Road as an Aesthetic Mapping of the American Political Landscape.” Writing the Journey: A Conference on American, British and Anglophone Travel Writers and Writing, Philadelphia, PA, 6/1999.
“Rethinking Ethics Through Deleuzean Suggestions for an Approach to Violent Cinema: Fargo’s Production of the Masochistic Contract as a Cinematic Concept.” 24th Annual Conference on Film and Literature: Violence in Film and Literature, Tallahassee, FL, 1/1999.
“The Spectacular ‘Etc.’ in Henry VIII, or, How to Discipline Bodies with(out) Violence.” 24th Annual Conference on Film and Literature: Violence in Film and Literature, Tallahassee, FL, 1/1999.
