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Bio

I have been teaching at Carnegie Mellon since 1993. I got my Ph.D. at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1989. My undergraduate degree came from Columbia University (1982). In 1980-81, I spent my first year in Germany at the University of Freiburg, and in 1985-86, I worked on my doctoral dissertation at the University of Leipzig in the German Democratic Republic (GDR, East Germany), thus becoming one of the relatively few American Germanists to gain significant personal experience in the socialist German state.

My research interests tend to address the interconnection between culture and national identity. At Carnegie Mellon, I teach a variety of courses in German and English, including Nazi and Resistance Culture and History of German Film. I also teach courses on the former GDR and its collapse. For my course on German film history, I developed a textbook entitled "A Critical History of German Film" that has been successfully used at other universities and colleges in the U.S. and elsewhere.

I frequently spend time in Germany for fun and research and have ongoing projects and relationships with colleagues and friends in Europe and elsewhere. In 2011-12, I was honored to serve as president of the German Studies Association, the largest academic association of German Studies experts in the world, and from 2014-2023, I served as president of the International Brecht Society (IBS) and regularly help to organize the IBS’s symposia in the United Kingdom, Germany and elsewhere.

Department Member Since 1993