Languages and Literature, University of Warwick
Thesis title:
This thesis considers the representation of gender and sexuality in Weimar cinema, moving beyond virgin/vamp dichotomies to examine how film reflects the multifaceted nature of gender and sexuality in Weimar society. I highlight how some characters’ experiences depicted may be regarded as emancipatory, for example driving cars and earning money, but I also show how this liberation was limited and subject to patriarchal control and influence. My work also explores how film responds to crucial sociopolitical debates such as abortion reform, including films that represent conservative viewpoints, as well as those that speak to more modern impulses. This thesis also includes an exploration of Weimar cinema’s portrayal of women who experience same-sex desire and adopt a non-binary approach to gender expression, and my use of an intersectional methodology emphasises the need to embrace the contradictions inherent in Weimar understandings of gender and sexuality by exploring overlaps of gender and sexuality with other categories of marginalisation such as race and disability. Drawing upon films by well-known directors, such as Fritz Lang and Georg Wilhelm Pabst, this study shows that contradictions can be found even within films by directors nominally understood as representative of a particular viewpoint. Furthermore, the inclusion of lesser-known films by these directors not only obfuscates our understanding of their politics, but also underscores the need to expand the Weimar film canon. Using various methodologies, this work develops a much more nuanced understanding of depictions of gender and sexuality in this period by providing new readings of well-known films, and these new interpretations allow me to bring lesser-known films into the Weimar film canon. In so doing, my work addresses some of the limitations of the academic literature on Weimar cinema but also furthers our understanding of this complex and fascinating period of German cinematic history.
'Review of Nicholas Baer, Historical Turns Weimar Cinema and the Crisis of Historicism' (forthcoming with Oxford German Studies)
Screening War: Edward Berger's All Quiet on the Western Front in Context (forthcoming with De Gruyter, co-edited with Ervin Malakaj and Ian Roberts)
'Im Kino Nichts Neues: All Quiet on the Western Front and the Cinematic Legacy of World War One’, in Screening War: Edward Berger's All Quiet on the Western Front in Context (co-written with Ian Roberts, forthcoming with De Gruyter)
'In the Closet: Codified "Queerness" in G. W. Pabst's Die Büchse der Pandora (1929)' (chapter in Weimar Visions: Queer Visual Cultures, ed. by Birgit Lang, Ina Linge & Katie Sutton, forthcoming with Toronto University Press)
'Racially Profiled? Jewish Vampirism in Nosferatu', in Studies in European Cinema (available Open Access here)
'Anti-Heimat Cinema: The Jewish Invention of the German Landscape (Ofer Ashkenazi)', in Focus on German Studies, 28 (2021), 193-196, <https://journals.uc.edu/index.php/fogs/article/view/4414/3328>
'A Celebration of Anders als die Andern', (2021), <https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/modernlanguages/academic/postgraduate/harrabin/weimarfilmnetwork/blogs/?topic=8a1785d779ae97850179b32b31ac1125>
'From Caligari to RuPaul's Drag Race: The Machinenmensch in Pop Culture', (2021), <https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/modernlanguages/academic/postgraduate/harrabin/weimarfilmnetwork/blogs?topic=8a17841b779666fe0177abe2a9b6259e>
'"Problem Bodies?": Imaging Disability in Weimar Cinema' - The Association for German Studies conference, 2-4 September 2024 [University of Leeds]
‘Primitive Savages’ and ‘Exotic Nightmares’: Depictions of Racial ‘Otherness’ in Weimar Cinema' - The Future of German Screen Studies: Cultures, Media, Histories', 19-21 June 2024 [University of St. Andrews]
'Colonial Fantasies in Fritz Lang's Harakiri (1919)' - Provincializing Weimar Culture, 25-26 April 2024 [Utrecht University]
'In The Closet: Codified 'Queerness' in G. W. Pabst's Die Büchse der Pandora (1929)' - Weimar's Queer Visual Cultures, 8-9 June 2023 [University of Exeter]
'Im Kino Nichts Neues: All Quiet on the Western Front and the Cinematic Legacy of World War One’ - co-presentation with Dr. Ian Roberts, Watching War: A Symposium on Edward Berger's All Quiet on the Western Front (2022)', 11 May 2023 [University of British Columbia & University of Warwick, online]
'Gretchen, Girl, Garçonne: Representations of Women in the Films of G. W. Pabst' - Women in German Studies Conference, 10-12 November 2022 [University of Leeds]
'In the Closet: Codified 'Queerness' in Weimar Cinema' - Weimar Visions: Picturing Sexual subjectivities, organised by Katie Sutton, Birgit Lang and Ina Linge, 1-2 October 2022 [Berlin]
'Jewish' Vampirism in Nosferatu' - Nosferatu: 100 Years of Horror Symposium, organised by Evan Torner and Ervin Malakaj, 18th March 2022 [University of British Columbia, online]
'From the "monstrous other" to the "monstrous Jew": Representations of "Jewishness" in Weimar Film' - Warwick Workshop for Interdisciplinary German Studies, 2nd February 2022 [University of Warwick]
Postgraduate and Early Career Academic Workshop - Postgraduate and Early Career Academic Workshop, 24 June 2021 [University of Aberdeen, online]
'Competing Models of Motherhood and Reproductive Choices in Weimar Cinema' (Imagining Justice: Law, Politics and Popular Visual Culture in Weimar Germany seminar series, 14 May 2024, University of Lucerne)
'Das Leben welcher Anderen: Putting The Lives of Others into Context' (Channel Talent interactive school webinar for students of German, 22 April 2024, online)
Roundtable participant (History of Sexuality Seminar Panel on the Anniversary of Anders als die Andern, 20 February 2024, University of London)
'Sex at the Movies: Different from the Others and Pandora's Box' (Gender and Sexuality in Modern European Art, 16th November 2023, Dickinson College)
'Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari (1920) and Im Westen nichts Neues (2022)' (Germany & Austria in Motion: Film, Identity and Society, 12 October 2023, University of Bristol)
'Love, Family and Relationships in Goodbye Lenin!' (DeutschZusammen German Teacher's Day, 30 September 2023, University of Warwick)
'From the "monstrous other" to the "monstrous Jew": Representations of "Jewishness" in Weimar Film' - Cambridge German Graduate Research Seminar, 27 January 2022, University of Cambridge)
Rethinking Weimar Cinema (2026, University of Oxford, funded by the
Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (DAAD) 'Promoting German Studies' programme)
Entrenched Narratives, Hidden Figures: Reappraising Representations of War Across German Screen Media (21-22 March 2024, University of Warwick , funded by the British Association for Film, Television, and Screen Studies Special Interest Group Funding Scheme, the Association for German Studies Conference Grant, and the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (DAAD) 'Forging German Connections' programme)
Watching War: A Symposium on Edward Berger's All Quiet on the Western Front (2022) (11th May, University of Warwick and University of British Columbia)
The Culture of Fascism Symposium (8th March, co-organiser, University of Warwick, funded by Connecting Cultures)
Women in German Studies Online Teaching Development Day (8 September 2021, co-organiser, University of Leeds and University of Warwick)
I am the founder and co-editor of The Weimar Film Network, which provides a platform for discussions on the cinema of the Weimar Republic. The Network posts articles, blog posts and reviews by students and academics, encouraging a sense of community within Weimar Film Studies. We also have a resource section that would be useful for anyone teaching, researching or is just generally interested in Weimar Cinema. You can find out more, including how to contribute to the network, via the website or on Twitter. Please send all enquiries, including about potential collaboration to weimarfilmnetwork@warwick.ac.uk.
Alongside Dr. Ian Roberts, I co-organise the Weimar 100 Project, which marks the centenaries of key films from the period 1918-1933 in German history. A key aim of the project is to make Weimar film more accessible to a modern audience. Each year between 2019 and 2033, a public screening and talk will be held, showcasing classic and obscure films from the years of the Weimar Republic. The most recent event (2020) marked the centenary of the release of Robert Wiene's Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari (1920) and included an online screening and talk about the contested readings of the film.
British Association for Film, Television, and Screen Studies
German Screen Studies Network
Women in German Studies
U.K. Association for German Studies
I achieved a first class undergraduate degree in German Studies at the University of Warwick, in which I studied a wide range of language and cultural modules, ranging from 1790s Germany up to the present-day. In my final year, I completed a dissertation entitled 'From Lola to Lulu, From Freder to Rath: Gender and Sexuality in the Weimar Republic'. My undergraduate degree also included a stint in Munich, where I worked as a British Council Language Assistant in a Fachoberschule. I then completed my Postgraduate Certificate in Secondary Education at the University of Manchester, teaching German up to A Level and French to Key Stage 3, before returning to Warwick to complete my Masters. My Masters research examined representations of 'the Jew' in Weimar cinema, observing how the films indicated latent antisemitism bubbling under the surface of Weimar society. My thesis was supervised by Dr. Ian Roberts and Dr. Christine Achinger.
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