Angelica Fenner

Associate Professor, Cinema Studies Institute
Associate Professor, Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures
Affiliated Faculty, Centre for European and Eurasian Studies
Angelica Fenner

Areas of interest

  • Women’s film authorship in German and European cinema
  • Diaspora and migration
  • Feminist and queer theory
  • Documentary media
  • Affect and material culture

Biography

Main Bio

Angelica Fenneris cross-appointed Associate Professor in Germanic Languages & Literatures and in the Cinema Studies Institute. Her research interests encompass women’s film authorship in German and European cinema, diaspora and migration, feminist and queer theory, affect and material culture, and documentary media. In support of her research, she has secured past and present grants from the Connaught Fund, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), the DAAD, the Camargo Foundation, and the Waterloo Centre for German Studies. She is author of Race under Reconstruction in German Cinema (University of Toronto Press, 2011), co-editor of the volumes Fascism and Neo-fascism: Critical Writings on the Radical Right (2004) and The Autobiographical Turn in Germanophone Documentary and Experimental Film (2014), and guest co-editor of special issues for the journals Transit (2014), Camera Obsura (2018) and Feminist German Studies (2022). She is currently working collaboratively on the SSHRC-funded research project, Rethinking Feminist Film History: The Ulm School, 1962-68.

Select publications

Books

  • Race Under Reconstruction in German Cinema: Robert Stemmle's Toxi. University of Toronto Press, 2011. 283 pp.

Books Edited

  • The Autobiographical Turn in German Documentary and Experimental Film. Co-edited with Robin Curtis. Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2014. 390 pp
  • Fascism and Neo-Fascism: Critical Writings on the Radical Right in Europe. Co-edited with Eric Weitz. NY: Palgrave, 2004. 286 pp.

Guest Editor

  • Special Issue: The Singular Plural of Feminist Film Practice. Guest editors, Angelica Fenner and Barbara Mennel. Feminist German Studies 30.1 (2022)
  • Special Issue: Rethinking Gender and German Cinema: Women’s Film Authorship in Neoliberal Times.  Hester Baer and Angelica Fenner, Guest Editors. Camera Obscura 99 (2018).
  • Special Issue: Contemporary (Re)Mediations of Race and Ethnicity in German Visual Cultures.  Angelica Fenner and Uli Linke, Guest Editors. Transit: A Journal of Travel, Migration, and Multiculturalism in the German-speaking World (UC Berkeley), 9.2 (December 2014).

Articles in Academic Journals

  • “Introduction: The Singular Plural of Feminist Film Practice.” Co-authored with Barbara Mennel. Feminist German Studies 30.1 (2022): 1-26. Special Issue: The Singular Plural of Feminist Film Practice
  • “Introduction: Revisiting Feminism and German Cinema.”Co-authored with Hester Baer. Special Issue: Revisiting Feminism and German Cinema: Women’s Film Authorship in Neoliberal Times. Camera Obscura 99 (2018): 1-19.
  • “Jennifer Fox’s Transcultural Talking Cure: Flying: Confessions of a Free Woman.” Journal of Feminist Media Studies 9.4 (2009): 427-445. Special Issue: Transcultural Media and the Transnational Politics of Difference.
  • “Aural Topographies of Migration in Yamina Benguigui’s Inch’Allah dimanche.” Camera Obscura 66 (2007): 93-127.
  •  “Turkish Cinema in the New Europe: Visualizing Ethnic Conflict in Sinan Çetin's Berlin in Berlin.Camera Obscura 44 (2001): 105-149.
  • "Personal Vendettas and their Public Appropriations: The Politics of Film Reception in Sibylle Schönemann’s Verriegelte Zeit." GDR Bulletin24 (Spring 1997): 47-57.
  • "Versuch eines interkulturellen Dialogs: Mehrstimmigkeit als Erzählstrategie in Helma Sanders-Brahms' Shirin's Hochzeit." Frauen in der Literaturwissenschaft Rundbrief 49 
  • (Dezember 1996): 25-29.

Book Chapters

Filmmaker Interviews

  • Feminist Filmmaking Before Feminism: Interview with Ula Stöckl.” Co-authored with Hester Baer. Feminist German Studies 30.1 (2022): 54-72. Special Issue on The Singular Plural of Feminist Film Practice.
  • “Refracting the Gaze: Ines Johnson-Spain on Becoming Black.” Feminist German Studies 30.1 (2022): 118-140. Special Issue on The Singular Plural of Feminist Film Practice.
  • “On Mobilizing for Gender Equity and Diversity in the German Film Industry: A Conversation with Yvonne de Andres, Pro Quote Film.” MAI: Journal of Feminism and Visual Culture 8 (2022).
  • “Reframing Diversity for German Screens: Sheri Hagen in Conversation.” MAI: Journal of Feminism and Visual Culture 5 (2020).
  • “Representation Matters: Tatjana Turankyj on Women’s Filmmaking and the Pro Quota Film Movement.” Camera Obscura 99 (2018): 129-145. Special Issue: Revisiting Feminism and German Cinema: Women’s Film Authorship in Neoliberal Times,” eds Hester Baer and Angelica Fenner.
  • "If People Want to Oppress You, They Make You Say ‘I’: Hito Steyerl in Conversation.” In The Autobiographical Turn in Germanophone Documentary and Experimental Filmedited by Robin Curtis and Angelica Fenner, 37-51. Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2014.
  • "The Hybrid Approach: An Interview with the Filmmaker Branwen Okpako." Women in German Yearbook 28 (2012): 113-137.
  • “The Dialogical Documentary: Jennifer Fox on Finding a New Film Language.” CineAction 77 (May 2009): 25-33.
  • “Seyhan Derin: ‘She has her own way of asserting herself.’” Women in German 21 (2005): 43-61.

DVD Audio Commentary

  • Toxi (Robert Stemmle, 1952, Germany, 89 min.). Produced by the DEFA Library, University of Massachusetts, 2011).

Review Essays

  • Matthias Frey. Postwall German Cinema: History, Film History, and Cinephilia (NY: Berghahn, 2013) and Gabrielle Mueller and James Skidmore, eds. Cinema and Social Change in Germany and Austria (Waterloo, ON: Wilfried Laurier, 2012) in Seminar 50.4 (November 2014): 511-515.
  • Michael Renov. The Subject of Documentary (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 2004) in Quarterly Review of Film & Video 25.3 (2008): 251-256.
  • Jacqueline Levitin, Judith Plessis, Valerie Raoul, eds. Women Filmmakers Refocusing (NY: Routledge, 2003) in Jump Cut 49 (Spring 2007)
  • Caryl Flinn. The New German Cinema: Music, History, and the Matter of Style (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004) in Journal of Film Music 1.4 (Winter 2006).
  • Linda Schulte-Sasse. Entertaining the Third Reich: Illusions of Wholeness in Nazi Cinema (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1996) in Film Quarterly 54.1 (Fall 2000): 44-46.
  • Marc Silberman, German Cinema: Texts in Context (Detroit: Wayne State UP, 1995) and Wallace Steadman Watson. Understanding Rainer Werner Fassbinder: Film as Private and Public Art (Columbia: University of South Carolina, 1996) in Film Quarterly 51.2 (Winter 1998): 57-58.
  • Book Reviews

  • Hester Baer, German Cinema in the Age of Neoliberalism (Edinburgh University Press, 2022) in German Quarterly 95.3 (2022): 343-345.
  • Olivia Landry, Movement and Performance in Berlin School Cinema (Indiana University Press, 2018) in Discourse 44.1 (2022): 93-96.
  • Gunda Werner Institute/Heinrich Böll Foundation. Reach Everyone on the Planet: Kimberlé Crenshaw and Intersectionality (Berlin: Rucksal, 2019) in Feminist German Studies 36.2 (2020): 115-117.
  • Nora Alter and Timothy Corrigan. Essays on the Essay Film (Columbia University Press, 2017) in Studies in 20th& 21st Century Literature 43.2 (2019).
  • Eric Rentschler. The Use and Abuse of Cinema: German Legacies from the Weimar Era to the Present. (New York: Columbia University Press, 2015) in Seminar: A Journal of Germanic Studies 55.1 (2019): 81-82.
  • Sara Lennox, ed. Remapping Black Germany: New Perspectives on Afro-German History, Politics, and Culture (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2016) in The Germanic Review 93.4 (2018).
  • Marion Kraft, ed. Kinder der Befreiung: Transatlantische Erfahrungen und Perspektiven Schwarzer Deutscher der Nachkriegsgeneration(Berlin: Unrast, 2015) in Seminar: A Journal of Germanic Studies 53.1 (2017): 93-96.
  • Marco Abel, The Countercinema of the Berlin School(Rochester,NY: Camden, 2012) in Seminar: A Journal of Germanic Studies 52.3 (2016): 346-348.
  • Eli Goldblatt. Coming Home: A Literacy Autobiography (Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University, 2012) in International Journal of Communication 8 (2014): 2-10.
  • Monika Albrecht. “Europa ist nicht die Welt.” Postkolonialismus in Literatur und Geschichte der westdeutschen Nachkriegszeit (Bielefeld: Aisthesis Verlag, 2008) in Gegenwartsliteratur 13 (2014): 347.
  • Tina Campt. Image Matters: Archive, Photography, and the African Diaspora in Europe (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2012) in Journal of Family History 38.3 (July 2013).
  •  Tobias Nagl. Die unheimliche Maschine: Rasse und Representation im Weimarer Kino. (München: Edition Text+Kritik, 2009) in Film Blatt15.43 (Fall 2010).
  • Christine Haase. When Heimat Meets Hollywood: German Filmmakers and America, 1985-2005 (Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2007) in German Studies Review 33.3 (October 2010): 706-7.
  • Heide Fehrenbach. Race after Hitler: Black Occupation Children in Postwar Germany and America (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005) in German Studies Review 31.1 (February 2008): 178-79.
  • Nora Alter & Lutz Köpnick, eds. Sound Matters: Essays on the Acoustics of Modern German Culture (New York: Berghahn Books, 2004) in German Studies Review 30.1 (February 2007): 235.
  • Ian Balfour & Atom Egoyan, eds. Subtitles: On the Foreignness of Film. (Boston: MIT Press, 2004) in Journal of Popular Film & Television34.2 (June 2006): 95-96.