Nancy Nenno, Ph.D.

Professor of German | Affiliate Faculty - Film Studies, African American Studies, African Studies

My research interests center on the (self-) representations of Blackness, the African Diaspora, and Black Germans/Austrians in the film, literature, and culture of the German-speaking world, particularly. I have published on Josephine Baker, African Americans in Europe, and most recently on foreign contract workers in the GDR. I am currently co-editing a volume on Black Austrian Studies with Clemens Ruthner (University College Dublin) and Daniel Bitouh (Vienna), which is under contract with Peter Lang.

Education

Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley

M.A., University of California, Berkeley

B.A. and Honors B.A., Brown University

Courses Taught

Grmn 101-314 Elementary German, Intermediate German, German Conversation, German Composition and Grammar

The African Diaspora in German-Speaking Europe (in German & in English); Classics of German Cinema (in German)

German Cinema in Exile: film noir (in English)

CSI Deutschland: Der Krimi (in German)

Eyes Wide Shut: Horror in German Cinema

Selected Publications

“Migrationsland DDR? Recuperating the Histories of Non-European Vertragsarbeiter*innen in the GDR and Beyond,” Die Unterrichtspraxis/ Teaching German. 55.2 (2022): 237-257. Online. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/tger.12212

“Face to Face: Race, Gender, and the Gaze in Mo Asumang’s Die Arier (2014)," The Tender Gaze, ed. Muriel Cormican and Jennifer William, (Camden House, 2021) 60-75.

“Here to Stay: Black Austrian Studies,” Rethinking Black German Studies: Approaches, Interventions and Histories, ed. Tiffany Florvil and Vanessa Plumly (Peter Lang, 2018) 71-104

“Elective Paternities: Germans and African Americans in Hugo Bettauer’s Das blaue Mal (1922),” German Studies Review 39.2 (2016): 259-77. Project MUSE, doi:10.1353/gsr.2016.0050

“Undermining Babel: Victor Trivas’s Niemandsland (1931),” The Many Faces of Weimar Cinema, ed. Christian Rogowski (Camden House, 2010) 286-98.

“Projections on Blank Space: Landscape, Nationality, and Identity in Thomas Mann’s Der Zauberberg” (updated from 1996), Thomas Mann’s Der Zauberberg: A Casebook, ed. Hans Rudolf Vaget (Oxford UP, 2008) 95-122.

“Undermining Babel: Victor Trivas’s Niemandsland (1931),” The Many Faces of Weimar Cinema, ed. Christian Rogowski (Camden House, 2003) 286-98.

“’Postcards from the Edge’: Education to Tourism in the German Mountain Film,” Light Motives: German Popular Cinema, Margaret McCarthy and Randall Hall (Wayne State UP, 2003) 61-83.

“Bildung and Desire: Anna Elisabet Weirauch’s Der Skorpion,” Queering the Canon: Defying Sights in German Literatures and Culture, ed. Christopher Lorey and John Plews (Camden House, 1998) 207-21.

“Primitivism, Femininity, and Modern Urban Space: Josephine Baker in Berlin,” Women in the Metropolis: Gender and Modernity in Weimar Culture, ed. Katharina von Ankum (University of California Press, 1997) 145-61.

Honors and Awards

Awardee, participant funding for German Literary Institutions in Berlin Seminar 2023, the University of Notre Dame and the University of Georgia

Awardee, Max Kade Grant for Travel to Berlin, German Literary Institutions in Berlin Seminar, June 4-15, 2023

Nominee for William V. Moore Distinguished Teacher-Scholar Award (2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2023)

DAAD Short-term research Grant to Berlin, Summer 2020 (declined due to pandemic).