A professor at the Free University of Berlin for two decades, Professor Koch is the preeminent film scholar in the German-speaking world. Her contributions to the academic study of cinema since the 1960s have shaped the field. She has published influential books on Siegfried Kracauer (Siegfried Kracauer zur Einführung, 1996; also published in English translation by Princeton University Press), Herbert Marcuse (Herbert Marcuse zur Einführung, 1987), the visual construction of Judaism (Die Einstellung ist die Einstellung. Zur visuellen Konstruktion des Judentums, 1992), and the representation of gender difference in film (“Was ich erbeute, sind Bilder”. Zur filmischen Repräsentation der Geschlechterdifferenz, 1988). Her recent articles include: “Carnivore or Chameleon: The Fate of Cinema Studies” (Critical Inquiry) and “Face and Mass: Towards an Aesthetic of the Cross-Cut in Film” (New German Critique).

Professor Koch’s course description for the compact seminar (German 204):

This seminar will take an interdisciplinary approach to the topic of “Space and Time in Cinema.” We will discuss philosophical positions and comparative texts addressing media-specific registers of space and time, with a focus on film. In this context, we will explore the relationship between narrativity, historical and media-specific time, as well as the construction of urban, global, and heterotopic space in film.