Submitted by Michael Neininger
on
Martin Schwartz on Fassbinder's own couch from his Munich apartment, as seen in Deutschland im Herbst! (Photo credit Isabelle Bastian)
- I went to my first GSA in 2024 to present a paper on how the Holocaust is strangely missing in New German Cinema.
- Last month, I returned to GSA to participate in the invited seminar on “Teaching Uncomfortable Films,” which gave me terrific practical insights to apply in developing my approach to Holocaust cinema for 195.
- I was invited to the American Academy for Jewish Research’s selective annual graduate seminar at NYU, convened by Lila Corwin Berman and Josef Stern, senior scholars in the field of Jewish Studies.
- My first peer-reviewed paper, Trans Misery and Jewish Danger: Fassbinder’s In einem Jahr mit 13 Monden (In a Year of 13 Moons), was accepted for publication by Studies in European Cinema, a top journal in cinema and media studies. This paper was really reared by the department: it began as a term paper for Rafael’s seminar and Richard guided me through expanding and enriching it as my PhD paper. My advisor, Jason, then gave me some very useful notes before I sent the piece off. Thank you, UW German Studies!
- In 24/25, I served as a Hanauer Fellow for Excellence in Western Civilization and a Stroum Center for Jewish Studies graduate fellow. As part of the latter fellowship, I worked with SCJS’s outstanding editorial team to develop a piece of public scholarship for the Center’s website on antisemitism controversies around the international exhibition Documenta 15. I will be presenting on this material at the Association for Jewish Studies conference in DC in December. I am refining this work for publication and intend for it to contribute to critical antisemitism theory.
- In May I was awarded a Dissertation Research Grant by the American Academy for Jewish Research. With this support and an opportunity grant from the Stroum Center, I went to Germany this summer to do primary-source research at the Zentralarchiv zur Erforschung der Geschichte der Juden in Deutschland in Heidelberg, the AdK in Berlin, and the Deutsches Filmmuseum und Filmarchiv Fassbinder-Center in Frankfurt. After spending a week there looking through Fassbinder’s papers and rare archival video, the curator even let me sit on Fassbinder’s own couch and took a picture! Attached.
- I apprenticed with Richard teaching 195 and have been awarded support from the Continuum College to develop it into an online course which will debut this summer. I’m excited to help this body of film and thought to reach more students!
- I’m enjoying a Dissertation Writing Fellowship awarded by the Stroum Center this AY. I have been deriving great pleasure and stimulation from integrating insights and material gained from my archival investigations into theoretical and interpretive perspectives. It isn’t easy writing about antisemitism today, but I do feel I have the opportunity to help clarify terms and stakes on a topic of public discourse that all too often sheds more heat than light.