• August 2009-present: University of Nebraska: Associate Professor of English and Film Studies, Department of English
• August 2004-July 2009: University of Nebraska: Assistant Professor of English and Film, Department of English
• June 2004-August 2004: University of Nebraska: Post-Doctoral Research Associate, Department of English
• August 2003-May 2004: Georgia State University: Visiting Instructor in Film, Department of Communication
• August 1995-May 2003: The Pennsylvania State University: Graduate Teaching Assistant/Lecturer, Department of English

• Ph.D., English, The Pennsylvania State University, May 2003
• M.A., English, The Pennsylvania State University, May 1997
• B.A., English, Georgia State University, August 1995
• Universität zu Köln, English and Mathematics, 1991-1992 (attended)

Books

Violent Affect: Literature, Cinema, and Critique after Representation. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2007. Paperback reprint spring 2009.

Violence: most of us would be happy if we never had to experience it, and many are driven by the belief that nonviolent spaces exist. In Violent Affect, however, Marco Abel starts from a different, potentially controversial assumption: namely that violence is all-pervasive by ontological necessity. In order to work through the implications of this provocation, Abel turns to literary and cinematic works such as those by Don DeLillo, Bret Easton Ellis, Mary Harron, Patricia Highsmith, the Coen Brothers, and Robert DeNiro, contending that we do not even know what violent images are, let alone how they work and what they do. Countering previous studies of violent images based on representational and, consequently, moralistic assumptions, which, Abel argues, inevitably reinforce the very violence they critique, Violent Affect instead turns to the concept of “affect” as a means to explain how violent images work upon the world. Arguing for what he calls a “maso-critical” approach to violence, Abel’s analysis attends to the affects inherent to violent images with the goal of momentarily suspending judgment of them, thus allowing for new, unanswered critical questions about the issue of violence to emerge. Abel suggests that shifting from representational understandings of violence toward an account of its affective forces is a necessary step in developing more ethical tools to intervene in the world—for acting upon it for the betterment of the future..

• You can purchase the book directly through the UNP website as well as through websites such as Amazon.com.
• For reviews of the book, see
  • Wendy C. Hamblet, "A Masocritical Engagement with Marco Abel's Theory of Violent Affect," Theory & Event 12.2 (2009).
    • In her conclusion, she writes: "Abel's masocriticism is itself a metaphysical experience, a magic that is worked upon the subject to move her from her sense of reality in order to teach her lessons about violence, not accessible from within the scholarly frame of reference. Literary and cinematic criticism will be greatly offended by Marco Abel's new theory of masocritical engagement, but it will also be affected. Further studies in the field of literary and cinematic criticism will be incapable of honest progres until they first address Abel's fundamental challenge to the founding assumptions of their methodology."
  • James R. Giles, South Atlantic Quarterly (2009)

Translations

• Creativity and Innovation in the Music Industry by Peter Tschmuck.  (From original German.)  Berlin, etc.: Springer Verlag, 2006.

Critical Essays

• "Intensifying Affect." Electronic Book Review, October 2008: 11,000 words.
• "Intensifying Life: The Cinema of the 'Berlin School'." Cineaste online 33.4 (Fall 2008): 7,800 words.
  • Reprinted in Portuguese as "Intensificando a vida: o cinema da 'Escola de Berlim'" in Nova Cinema Independente Alemao: Uma outra politica do olhar, ed. Cristian Borges (São Paulo: Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil 2009): 22-39. This catalogue accompanied a retrospective of the Berlin School that took place in São Paulo 11 February - 1 March, 2009.
• "The State of Things: More Images for a Post-Wall Reality--The 56th Berlin Film Festival." Senses of Cinema: An Online Film Journal Devoted to the Serious and Eclectic Discussion of Cinema 39 (April-June 2006): 8,400 words.
• "Images for a Post-Wall Reality: New German Films at the 55th Berlin Film Festival."  Senses of Cinema: An Online Film Journal Devoted to the Serious and Eclectic Discussion of Cinema 35 (April-June 2005): 5,500 words.
• "Don DeLillo's 'In the Ruins of the Future': Literature, Images, and the Rhetoric of Seeing 9/11."  PMLA 118.5 (October 2003): 1236-1250.
• "Speeding Across the Rhizome: Deleuze Meets Kerouac On The Road."  Modern Fiction Studies 48.2 (Summer 2002): 227-256.
• "Judgment is not an Exit: Toward an Affective Criticism of Violence with American Psycho."  Angelaki 6.3 (December 2001): 137-154. 
  • Reprinted in Contemporary Literary Criticism 229. Ed. Jeffrey W. Hunter. New York: Thomson Gale Group, 2007: 239-253.
• "Fargo: The Violent Production of the Masochistic Contract as a Cinematic Concept."  Critical Studies in Mass Communication 16.3 (September 1999): 308-328. 
• "One Goal is Still Lacking: The Influence of Friedrich Nietzsche's Philosophy on William Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury."  South Atlantic Review 60.4 (November 1995): 35-51.

Forthcoming:

• "Imaging Germany: The (Political) Cinema of Christian Petzold." The Collapse of the Conventional: German Film and its Politics at the Turn of the Century. Eds. Jaimey Fisher and Brad Prager. Detroit: Wayne State UP, 2009: 10,000 words ms.
• "Underground Film Germany in the Age of Control Societies: The 'Cologne Group'." Quarterly Review of Film and Video 27.2 (2010): 11,800 words ms.
• "Failing to Connect: Itinerations of Desire in Oskar Roehler's Post-Romance Films." New German Critique 109 (Winter 2010): 11,500 words ms.
• "'A Sharpening of Our Regard': Realism, Affect, and the Redistribution of the Sensible in Valeska Grisebach's Longing [Sehnsucht]."   Paul Cooke and Christoph Homewood, eds. German Language Cinema in the New Millennium: Beyond the Cinema of Consensus?. London: I.B. Taurus, 2010: 7,300 words.
• "22 January 2007: The Establishment Strikes Out Against the 'Berlin School'."  A New History of German Cinema. Eds. Jennifer Kapczynski and Michael Richardson, eds. Rochester: Camden House, 2011: 2,000 words.

Under Review:

• "The Counter-Cinema of the Berlin School."   Submitted 12/08 to a volume on "Cinema and Social Change in German and Austrian Cinema," edited by James Skidmore and Gabriele Mueller for Wilfrid Laurier University Press (Waterloo, Canada): 6,500 words ms.

Solicited:

• "Yearning for Genre: The Cinema of Dominik Graf." To be written for a volume on "Genre in German Film History," ed. Jaimey Fisher. Due 12/09: 7,500 words.

Critical Review Essays

• Review of German Cinema since Unification. Quarterly Review of Film and Video 26.3 (2009): 229-236.
• Review of Cinema of the Low Countries by Ernest Mathijs, ed. Quarterly Review of Film and Video 25.5 (2008): 447-453.
• Review of Trier on von Trier by Stig Björkman.  Quarterly Review of Film and Video 25.1 (2008): 81-86.
• "Spatializing Violence, Violating Space Towards a New Theory of Violence in Contemporary American Fiction." A Critical Review Essay of The Spaces of Violence by James R. Giles. South Atlantic Review 71.3 (summer 2006): 121-132.
• Review of Prosthetic Memory: The Transformation of American Remembrance in the Age of Mass Culture by Alison Landsberg.  Quarterly Review of Film and Video 23.4 (2006): 377-388.
• "Own Your Lack!": New Lacanian Film Theory Encounters the Real in Contemporary Cinema." A Critical Review Essay of Todd McGowan and Sheila Kunkel, eds., Lacan and Contemporary Film Theory. South Atlantic Review 71.1 (Winter 2006): 132-140.
• Review of Violence and American Cinema by J. David Slocum, ed.  Quarterly Review of Film and Video 19.3 (July-September 2002): 271-277. 

Other Publications

• "A Cinema of Solidarity: An Interview with Andreas Dresen." Senses of Cinema 50 (April-June 2009): 16,000 words.
• "German Desire in the Age of Venture Capitalism." Yella (dir. Christian Petzold). DVD. The Cinema Guild (2009): 3,600 words.
• "The Cinema of Identification Gets on my Nerves: An Interview with Christian Petzold." Cineaste online 33.3 (Summer 2008): 12,600 words.
• Program Notes for the "Retrospective of Contemporary German Cinema: The 'Berlin School'," Mary Riepma Ross Media Arts Center, Lincoln, NE, March 23 - April 5, 2007: 1,624 words.
• "Tender Speaking: An Interview with Christoph Hochhäusler." Senses of Cinema 42 (January-March 2007): 11,000 words. This interview, expanded by an introductory essay, is my translation of the original interview I published in German as
  • "Das Seltene und Kostbare." An Interview with German filmmaker Christoph Hochhäusler. Filmtext.com (May 2006): 7,200 words.
• Review of Serial Murder 2^nd edition by Ronald M. Holmes and Stephen T. Holmes.  Crime, Law and Social Change: An Interdisciplinary Journal 30.3 (1998/99): 292-297.
• Review of Insights from Film into Violence and Oppression: Shattered Dreams of the Good Life by John P. Lovell.  Crime, Law and Social Change: An Interdisciplinary Journal 29.4 (1998): 354-357.
• "Roddy Doyle."  Dictionary of Literary Biography: British Novelists Since 1960, Second Series 194 (1998): 107-112.
• "A New Letter by Samuel T. Coleridge."  Notes and Queries 242 (September 1997): 329-330.

The Berlin School: Toward a Minor Cinema

• Book contracted with Camden House Press, 8/09
• Anticipated completion: late 2011

In their Own Words: The Berlin School in Conversation

• A collection of interviews I conducted, or will conduct, with the directors associated with the Berlin School
• Each interview will be prefaced by a brief introductory essay on the directors
• Anticipated completion: late 2012

Post-Wall Cinema: German Film Culture in the Shadow of Unification

Idea for a comprehensive history of German cinema since 1990 covering topics such as:

• the RAF in Post-Wall cinema
• the impact of Turkish-German directors
• the artistic and commercial role played by X Filme and other production companies
• the aesthetic relationship of Post-Wall cinema to Hollywood
• the Berliner Schule (Berlin School)
• the Kölner Group (the Cologne Group)
• the aesthetic and political relationship of Post-Wall cinema to the New German Cinema of the 1970s
• the relationship between the old West and East as depicted in Post-Wall cinema
• the impact of "3^rd way socialism" (Gerhard Schröder's SPD) on Germany in the Post-Wall era

As part of my research, I've attended the Berlin film festival from 2005 to 2009 and have thus far interviewed contemporary German directors such as Christoph Hochhäusler, Benjamin Heisenberg, Christian Petzold, Henner Winckler, Ulrich Köhler, Rainer Knepperges, Bernhard Marsch, Markus Mischkowski, Kai Maria Steinkühler, Andreas Dresen, Dominik Graf, producer Florian Koerner von Gustorf, as well as Austrian director Jessica Hausner.

• "Yearning for Genre: The Cinema of Domiinik Graf." Society for Cinema & Media Studies conference, Los Angeles, 3/2010.
• "Realism beyond Identity: The Cinema of Thoomas Arslan." Rethinking German-Turkish Cinema Workshop, Austin, TX, 3/2010.
• "Movement and Nation in Die innere Sicherheit." German Studies Association Conference, Washington DC, 10/2009.
• "Towards a New National Cinema: Topographical Singularization of Germany in the 'Berlin School' Films." German Studies Association Conference, St. Paul, MN, 10/2008.
• "Untimely Mappings: The Politics of the A-Representational Realism of the 'Berlin School'." Cinema and Social Change in Germany and Austria Conference. Waterloo, Canada, 5/2008 .
• "Underground Film Germany: The 'Cologne Group'." Society for Cinema & Media Studies conference. Philadelphia, 3/2008.
• "Berliner Schule Cinema: Re-visions of Mobility in the Age of post-Wall Globalization." Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association conference. Boston, 4/2007.
• "Imaging Germany: The (Political) Cinema of Christian Petzold." Society for Cinema & Media Studies conference. Chicago, 3/2007.
• "Imaging Mobility in Contemporary German Cinema: 'The Berliner Schule'." Society for Cinema & Media Studies conference. Vancouver, Canada, 3/2006.
• "Representation is not an Exit: Toward an Affective Criticism of Violence in American Psycho."  Violence, Cinema, and American Culture.  St. Louis, MO, 4/2001.
• "Judgment is not an Exit: Toward an Affective Criticism of Violence in American Psycho."  Second Millennium Literature/Film Conference of the Literature/Film Association.  Ocean City, MD, 12/2000.
• "Hitchhike, Take Flight: Speedily Traveling the Rhizome with Deleuze on Kerouac's Road."  Twentieth Century Literature Conference.  Louisville, KY, 2/2000.
• "Maso-Criticism: Towards a Non-Representational Encounter with Violence in Twentieth Century American Literature and Film."  Southwestern Popular Culture Conference.  Albuquerque, NM, 2/2000.PCA/ACA
• "Speedily Traveling the Rhizome: Kerouac's On the Road as an Aesthetic Mapping of the American Political Landscape."  Writing the Journey: A Conference on American, British and Anglophone Travel Writers and Writing.  Philadelphia, PA, 6/1999.
• "Rethinking Ethics Through Deleuzean Suggestions for an Approach to Violent Cinema: Fargo's Production of the Masochistic Contract as a Cinematic Concept."  24^th Annual Conference on Film and Literature: Violence in Film and Literature.  Tallahassee, FL, 1/1999.
• "The Spectacular 'Etc.' in Henry VIII, or, How to Discipline Bodies with(out) Violence."  24^th Annual Conference on Film and Literature: Violence in Film and Literature.  Tallahassee, FL, 1/1999.

Invited Guest Lectures

At the University of Nebraska

• Graduate Seminar: "Adorno & Deleuze: The Force of Representation." This course examined the seemingly incommensurable philosophies of Theodor Adorno and Gilles Deleuze. The aim was to see whether this alleged incommensurability holds up to closer scrutiny and, if not, how productive a thinking-together of these two thinkers might be with regard to questions and problems affecting the study of literature, film, music, painting, criticism, and politics.
• Graduate Seminar: "Introduction to Literary Theory and Criticism." This course introduced graduate students to a range of theoretical approaches to the study of the humanities. The course placed an emphasis on reading primary texts by the likes of Adorno, Benjamin, Marx, Derrida, Hegel, Deleuze, Foucault, Negri, Badiou, Kant, Butler, Spivak, Bhaba, Althusser, and other.
• Graduate Seminar: "Introduction to Research Methods and Scholarship." This course introduced graduate students to the history and methodologies of "English studies," including literary studies, rhetoric and composition, creative writing, film studies, and critical theory, as well as to general issues of professionalization.
• Graduate Seminar: "Digitizing Visual Culture."  This course traced out how visual culture has functioned and been conceptualized throughout the 20^th century, from the analog moment addressed by Benjamin, Heidegger, and Adorno, to the digital transformation articulated by Mark B. N. Hanson, Lev Manovich, W. T. Mitchell, as well as Deleuze, Foucault, and Derrida.  The goal was to come to terms with how visual culture in its various phases is intricately tied to larger social transformations (various stages of capitalism; from disciplinary to control; etc.) that occurred throughout the 20^th century.
• Introduction to Film History [2 sections]. In this course, students became acquainted with the historical development of the art form.  In addition to covering the history of cinema in the United States, I emphasized the medium's international history by discussing in detail the cinema histories of Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Hong Kong, Japan, and Iran.
• National Cinema.  In this course we covered 3 cinemas: Italian from 1945-1963; French from 1955-1968; and West-German from 1968-1989.  The goal of this course was to discover what is "national" about these cinemas.  We discussed both individual directors as well as the socio-historical context within which these cinemas emerged, flourished, and, eventually, affected other national cinemas.
• National Cinema--New Realisms in Contemporary European Cinema. We looked at Dogme 95, post-1995 British cinema, and the "Berlin School" of Germany.
• National Cinema--Contemporary Danish and British Cinema. We looked at Dogme 95 and post-1990 British cinema, with an emphasis on the questions of realism, masculinity, and class.
• National Cinema--German Cinema since 1970. From New German Cinema to the 'Berlin School'.
• Film Directors--German Filmmakers : In this course we focused on German directors, from the likes of Fritz Lang and F. W. Murnau to Wolfgang Staudte and Frank Beyer, to some New German Cinema directors, to post-Wall directors of the "Berlin School" such as Petzold, Arslan, Schanelec, and Hochhäusler, as well as directors such as Farocki, Tykwer, Akin, and Austrian directors such as Haneke and Hausner.
• Film Directors [2 sections]. In this course students studied the oeuvres by Jean-Luc Godard, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Michael Haneke, and Claire Denis. The analysis of their films incorporated a broadly auteurist method, but the emphasis lied on mapping out the aesthetics of politics, and the politics of aesthetics, at work in these European filmmakers' works.
• Film Directors [2 sections].  In this course we traced a lineage beginning with Godard, which goes via the cinema of Fassbinder to the films of Wong Kar Wai and Pedro Almodovar.  We approached these directors from a loosely configured "auteurist" approach but understood auteurism in the original sense of having a politique, rather than in the watered-down version of Andrew Sarris and others who reterritorialized the political aspects of the original concept onto the individualist plane of the subject/genius/auteur whose films are said to have an overriding individual thematic/stylistic/aesthetic signature.
• Introduction to Film Theory and Criticism [multiple sections]. In this course, we first covere some of the canonical film theories (realism, semiotics, apparatus, feminism, psychoanalysis) as represented by a standard Film Theory anthology such as Braudy and Cohen's; then we discuss more contemporary developments in film theory, covering film theorists such as Deleuze, Zizek, Jameson, Charney, Bordwell, Sobchack, Virilio, Shaviro, Manovich, Prince, Geuens, and Frampton.
• Film Genre.  In this course we studied various film genres (Western, Melodrama, Gangster, Film Noir, Art House, etc.).  Students first study the ÒclassicalÓ periods of these genres, and then we will examine how more contemporary instantiations of them continue to activate, as well as transform, the "codes" of the classical genres.  In the process, we will ask ourselves how helpful the category of "genre" is to begin with as a critical tool to study and respond to individual films.

At Georgia State University

• History of Motion Picture (Film 2700) [2 sections].  Mass lecture course, wherein students become acquainted with the historical development of the art form.  In addition to covering the history of cinema in the United States, I emphasize the medium's international history by discussing in detail the cinema histories of Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Hong Kong, Japan, and Iran.
• Film Theory and Criticism (Film 4750) [3 sections].  In this senior level seminar, I first cover some of the canonical film theories (realism, semiotics, apparatus, feminism, psychoanalysis) as represented by a standard Film Theory anthology such as Braudy and CohenÕs; then we discuss more contemporary developments in film theory, covering film theorists such as Deleuze, Zizek, Jameson, Charney, Bordwell, Sobchack, Virilio, Shaviro, De Lauretis, and Manovich.
• Hollywood Cinema Pre-1967 (Film 4170).  This senior level seminar examines in depth the development of Hollywood cinema from the pre-Hays office period to the release of The Graduate.  Schematically, the course is divided into two sections: 1) the classical Hollywood cinema style/the Studio system, and 2) "responses" to it, including a) Film Noir, b) Melodrama, c) Science Fiction, d) the Social Problem Film, and e) Auteurism.
• Contemporary Hollywood Cinema (Film 4980).  In this senior level seminar, we focus on the notion of "authenticity" and how it percolates the discourse surrounding contemporary American cinema.  We first investigate in detail the Hollywood Renaissance, with an eye on the auteurist dimension of it and how it is said to have "saved" Hollywood.  Then we delineate the aftermath of what we today think of as the second golden age of American cinema by discussing the increasing focus on film as a business operation, tracing out American cinema's development from the emergence of the Blockbuster, through its intensification during the Reagan years, all the way up to the (post-) internet economy years that have simultaneously seen a new focus on independent productions and witnessed a further amplification of the "mallification" of American cinema.

At Penn State University

• Contemporary Literature (English 140, 1 section).  This course open to majors and non-majors investigates the role contemporary literature plays in contemporary culture.  By reading a variety of fictional texts covering a wide range of perspectives on contemporary culture, students are encouraged to ask how, at least temporarily, fiction is capable of taking apart and refusing to compete with the terms established by what Nietzsche called the "regime of Truth."
• Introduction to Critical Reading (English 200, 1 section).  Gateway course for the English major, wherein students familiarize themselves with a variety of literary theories by engaging fiction, film, and music and their respective provocations concerning theoretical concepts such as author, reading, subjectivity, history, identity, culture, difference, poststructuralism, and postmodernism.
• Introduction to American Studies (American Studies 100, 1 section).  This course introduces students to issues such as race, class, gender, identity, representation, ideology, and difference by systematically examining a specific topic, in this case "Violence in 20^th century American culture."
• Introduction to Popular Culture (American Studies 105, 4 sections).  The course introduces students to issues of American popular culture, including the concepts of race, class, gender, identity, representation, and ideology.  Given the current sociopolitical climate of suspicion and unease when it comes to the productions of the popular culture industry in the United States, I have specifically designed the course with an eye on the last decade as a means to facilitate critical discussions on important cultural and political debates that have paralleled the formative years of my students in the 1990s.
• Introduction to Film History and Theory (Communication 250).  Gateway course for the Film major, wherein students familiarize themselves with the historical development of the art form, its historical contexts, as well as a variety of theoretical approaches to cinema, including Marxism, psychoanalysis, auteurism, formalism, and post-structuralism.
• Business Writing (English 202 D, 8 sections).  Upper division course in which students learn business writing genres and conventions and develop rhetorical and ethical strategies for analyzing and composing written, oral, and online texts.
• Rhetoric and Composition (English 15, 5 sections).  Required first-year course that emphasizes rhetorical analysis, cultural analysis, and the development of rhetorical skills with an emphasis on audience and strategies.  While heeding the basic framework set by the English departmentÕs highly regarded Composition Program, I designed the course around topics circulating through contemporary American popular culture.

Research

• Maude Hammond Fling Faculty research fellowship, in the amount of $6,500, granted by the Research Council at UNL, 2009.
• Charles J. Millard Trust Fund research fellowship, in the amount of $6,500, granted by the Research Council at UNL, 2008.
• Maude Hammond Fling Faculty research fellowship, in the amount of $6,500, granted by the Research Council at UNL, 2006.
• Liberal Arts Graduate Student Award for Excellence in Research (in the Humanities), The Pennsylvania State University, 2001-2002.
• Philip Young Award (given to students in the field of 20^th American literature) and Research and Graduate Office Travel Support Grant (totaling $700) that enabled me to attend "The Value of Culture" seminar in Amsterdam, Netherlands, Summer 1999.  Awarded on a competitive basis.
• Various Research and Graduate Studies Office Travel Support Grants that enabled me to travel to and present my research at scholarly conferences in the United States.  Awarded on a competitive basis.

Teaching

• Recipient of the UNL College of Arts and Sciences Distinguished Teaching Award, 2008.
• Nominee for the UNL Edgerton Teaching Award, 2007
• Recipient of a Certificate of Recognition for Contributions to Students, awarded by the UNL Parents Association, 2007.
• Recipient of the Outstanding Teaching Award for Graduate Students in the College of Liberal Arts, The Pennsylvania State University, 2001.  One of two recipients of annual college-wide award.

• Participated in a workshop on the "German New Wave" at the University of Missouri, Columbia, MO, Nvember 5-8, 2009
  • A weekend-long workshop on the cinemas of the Berlin School and the Austrian new wave
  • Organized and sponsored by the scholars from the University of Missouri and Washington University
• Participated in a Workshop on the "Berlin School" organized by the Missouri Film Institute, Washington University, St. Louis, MO, December 5-6, 2008.
  • A weekend-long workshop-driven event gathering scholars interested in the "Berlin School"
  • Participation based on invitation
  • Organized by Lutz Koepnick
• Participated in the German Film Institute at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, August 2008
  • Organized by Johannes von Moltke (U of Michigan)
  • Led by Eric Rentschler (Harvard) & Tony Kaes (Berkley)
• Read book manuscripts for Palgrave Macmillan, fall 2008-present
• Serve as special consulting editor for Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies (spring 2005-present)
  • Member of the editorial board, 2007-present (from vol. 4 on)
• Serve as special consulting editor for Twentieth Century Literature (2003-present) and PMLA (2006-present)
• Served as special consulting editor for Blackwell Press's Literature Compass (2006)
• Served as special consulting editor for Critical Studies in Media Communication (2001-2004)
• Moderated panel session at the Penn State conference, "Rethinking the Frankfurt School: Alternative Legacies of Cultural Critique," November 1998.

Department of English

Chair

• Recruitment (fall 2008-present)
• Placement Group (spring 2007-spring 2008)
• Teaching and Research Committee (spring 2007)

Member

• Teaching and Research Committee (fall 2004-spring 2008)
• Personnel Subcommittee and Chair's Advisory Committee (fall 2005-spring 2006; spring 2010)
• Placement Group (fall 2004-spring 2008)
• Judge on the Literary Contests Committee (Mari Sandoz/Prairie Schooner Graduate Short Fiction), March 2005

Additional Service at University of Community Level

• Member of the Advisory Board, Mary Riepma Ross Media Center (2004-present)
• Introduced Ian Christie, Professor of Film and Media History, at the University of Nebraska lecture series, "Architecture in 18th and 19th Century Historical Fiction," and moderated Q&A session, September 2007.

• Modern Language Association
• Society for Cinema and Media Studies
• German Studies Association