Departmental Contacts

Headshot of Todd Herzog

Todd Herzog

Professor in the School of Communication, Film, and Media Studies and the Department of Asian, East European, and German Studies. Director of the Niehoff Center for Film and Media Studies and the Digital Media Collaborative., A&S German Studies

732 Old Chemistry Building

513-556-2751

Todd Herzog holds faculty appointments in the School of Communication, Film, and Media Studies and the Department of Asian, East European, and German Studies at the University of Cincinnati, where he also directs the Digital Media Collaborative and the Niehoff Center for Film & Media Studies. He is author or editor of six books and has published over three dozen articles on topics ranging from the modernist crime story to the representation of history in the films of Quentin Tarantino. He is currently working on a book project on Vienna’s Prater and the History of Amusement.
Headshot of Tanja U Nusser

Tanja U Nusser

Professor of German Studies & Director of Graduate Studies; Department of Asian, East European, and German Studies, A&S German Studies

742 Old Chemistry Building

513-556-2752

Tanja Nusser is interested in animals, artificial reproductions and artificial humans, science (and maybe mad scientist too), in terror and catastrophes, and questions of the real. Her main research interests are literature since the 19th century, film studies, and history of science, disability studies, and gender studies, postcolonial and transnational theory.

She is author of a book on the German filmmaker Ulrike Ottinger (2001) and one on artificial reproductions in literature and film (2011). She is co-editor of the book series Szenen / Schnittstellen (Fink Verlag, Germany) and co-edited volumes on the Berlin Republic. Reflections on / of German Unification (1990-2015) (2019), Kathrin Röggla (2017), Catastrophe and Catharsis: Perspective on Disaster and Redemption in German Culture and Beyond (2015), Engineering Life. Narrationen vom Menschen in Biomedizin, Kultur und Literatur (2008), Askese. Geschlecht und Geschichte der Selbstdisziplinierung (2005), Rasterfahndungen. Darstellungstechniken – Normierungsverfahren – Wahrnehmungskonstitution (2003), Techniken der Reproduktion. Medien – Leben – Diskurse (2002) and Krankheit und Geschlecht: Diskursive Affären zwischen Literatur und Medizin (2002).
Headshot of Evan Torner

Evan Torner

Associate Professor of German Studies and Film / Media Studies; Undergraduate Director of German Studies; Director, UC Game Lab, A&S German Studies

730 Old Chemistry Building

513-556-2749

Evan Torner defended his dissertation on race representation in East German genre cinema at the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 2013, and spent 2013-2014 at Grinnell College as an Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow. He has published several articles pertaining to East Germany, critical race theory, DEFA Indianerfilme, science-fiction, transnational genre cinema, and game studies, as well as co-edited several books. His volume Immersive Gameplay: Essays on Role-Playing and Participatory Media co-edited with William J. White was published with McFarland Publishing in 2012, and he is one of the founding editors of the Analog Game Studies journal (http://analoggamestudies.org). His major projects underway include the Handbook of East German Cinema: The DEFA Legacy, co-edited with Henning Wrage and under contract with Walter De Gruyter, and a monograph entitled A Century and Beyond: Critical Readings of German Science-Fiction Cinema.
Headshot of Mikiko Hirayama

Mikiko Hirayama

Associate Professor of Japanese Art History, A&S German Studies

728F Old Chemistry Building

513-556-0265

Professor Hirayama ​teaches courses on Japanese and Chinese art history.  
Her research focuses on Japanese art criticism of the early twentieth century. Her recent publications include  “Inner Beauty: Kishida Ryūsei (1891-1929)’s Theory of Realism.” Edited by Minh Nguyen. New Essays in Japanese Aesthetics:  Philosophy, Politics, Culture, Literature, and the Arts. Lanham, MD: Lexington Press, 2017,  “Ishii Hakutei and the Journal Hōsun.”  Edited by Chris Uhlenbeck, Amy Riegle Newland, and Maureen de Vries. Waves of Renewal: Modern Japanese Prints, 1900-1960. Leiden: Hotei Publishing, 2015, “‘Fictionalized Truth’: Realism as the Vehicle for War Painting” in Art and War in Japan and Its Empire, 1931-1960 (2012),  “From Art without Borders to Art for the Nation: Japanist (Nihonshugi) Painting by Dokuritsu Bijutsu Kyōkai during the 1930s” in Monumenta Nipponica (2010), and Reflecting Truth: Japanese Photography in the Nineteenth Century (co-editor, 2005).  

She has delivered papers at venues such as the College Art Association conference, Association for Asian Studies conference, and Asian Studies Conference Japan.   Hirayama's service to the field included serving as an anonymous reviewer for Art Bulletin and Ars Orientalis.

 
Headshot of Sunnie Rucker-Chang

Sunnie Rucker-Chang

Slavic and East European Studies Program Director, UC STARTALK Workforce Media Development and Year-Long Russian Immersion Programs

Sunnie Rucker-Chang
PhD, Ohio State University, 2010 (Slavic Languages and Literatures)
 
Dr. Sunnie Rucker-Chang's primary interests lie in contemporary cultural movements and identity formation in Central and Southeast Europe. She writes primarily on racial and cultural formations, minority-majority and minority-minority relations in Southeast Europe. She is co-editor and contributor to Cultures of Mobility and Alterity: Crossing the Balkans and Beyond (with Yana Hashamova and Oana Popescu-Sandu) (forthcoming, University of Liverpool Pres, 2022), co-author of Roma Rights and Civil Rights: A Transatlantic Comparison (Cambridge, 2020), and co-editor of and contributor to Chinese Migrants in Russia, Central Asia and Eastern Europe (Routledge, 2011). Her work has appeared in Critical Romani StudiesEuropeNow! - A Journal of Research and Art, Interventions: Journal of Post-Colonial Studies, Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs, Journal of Transatlantic Studies, Slavic and East European Journal, and Slavic Review. She is currently finishing a monograph focusing on the politics of Blackness in former Yugoslav states that challenges conventional ideas of race and racialization in the Balkans and connects the region to broad trends in European Studies.

 
Headshot of Steve R Hofferber

Steve R Hofferber

Program Manager

Headshot of Elaine M Dunker

Elaine M Dunker

Financial Administrator 2, A&S Romance & Arabic Languages & Literat

360D ARTSCI

513-556-1524