I am Associate Professor of German and Associate Chair in the School of Modern Languages at the Georgia Institute of Technology. I received my Ph.D. in Germanic studies from the University of Texas at Austin. In 2011, I was awarded the 2011 Texas Foreign Language Teaching Excellence Award at the University of Texas. I teach courses on all aspects of German studies, with a particular emphasis on 20th century culture, literature, and media. I am the director of the Berlin part of the German Languages for Business And Technology (LBAT) study abroad program at Georgia Tech.
In my research, I combine approaches from cultural history, cultural studies, film studies, and literary studies to explore questions related to the Adenauer period (West German nation building, Cold War politics, propaganda, gender relations, Americanization and anti-Americanism, the provisional capital Bonn). I also work on Weimar modernism, film, and on Foreign Language curriculum development. I often implement Mobile Learning technologies (ARIS, AppGyver) in the classroom. My book Staging West German Democracy: Governmental PR Films and the Democratic Imaginary, 1953-1963 (Bloomsbury Academic, 2019) examines how political “founding discourses” of the nascent FRG were reflected, reinforced, and actively manufactured by the Federal government through PR films produced in conjunction with the West German newsreel system Deutsche Wochenschau.
See book announcement here:
https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/staging-west-german-democracy-9781501347108/