Dr Alasdair King
Senior Lecturer in German and Film Studies
Chair of the Department of Film Studies
Room: Arts 2.08
Tel: +44 (0)20 7882 8311
Fax: +44 (0)20 8980 5400
email: a.king@qmul.ac.uk
I am a graduate of King’s College London (BA, Philosophy and German), and of the Universities of East Anglia (MA, Comparative Literature), and Southampton (PhD, German). I also took film seminars at the TU Berlin and at Birkbeck, University of London. I took up a lectureship in German and Film Studies at Queen Mary in 2004 and have been Chair of Film Studies since 2009.
Teaching:
I teach three linked undergraduate modules on German film history, from the Weimar period (FLM102) and the post-1945 years of the ‘divided’ screen (FLM202), through to contemporary German cinema (FLM302). I co-teach the second year core module in film theory (FLM003), and contribute to the final year module in Film Philosophy (FLM602) and to the MA Core Course (SMLM035).
Research:
My current research interests include investigations into the ‘moving landscapes’ of contemporary European cinema. I am currently working on the aesthetics of landscape in recent German films, such as in Edgar Reitz’s Heimat trilogy and in the work of Christian Petzold and other directors associated with the ‘Berlin School’. My wider research interests include aspects of film and philosophy, film and geography, film aesthetics, the history of film theory, and German national cinema.
I welcome applications from research students interested in working in these and related fields. I am currently supervising PhDs on the following topics: Cinetopia: utopic dimensions of cinematic space; Landscape and identity in Swiss cinema; the representation of terrorism in contemporary German, British and Hollywood cinema.
Books and edited works
- Hans Magnus Enzensberger: Writing, Media, Democracy.
Peter Lang AG, Oxford and New York, 357pp.
(2007)
Further details
Articles and book chapters:
- 'The Province Always Rings Twice' appeared in Transit, 6 (1), 2010, UC Berkeley. http://german.berkeley.edu/transit/2010_2011/articles/KingJerichow.html
- ‘No Place Like Heimat: Mediaspaces and moving landscapes in Edgar Reitz’s Heimat 3’, in New Directions in German Cinema, eds Paul Cook and Christopher Homewood, (I.B. Tauris, London. ISBN 9781848859074).
http://www.ibtauris.com/Home/Books/The%20arts/Film%20TV%20%20radio/
Films%20cinema/New%20Directions%20in%20German%20Cinema.aspx - ‘Heimat 3: Edgar Reitz’s Time Machine’, in Cinema and Social Change in Germany and Austria, eds Gabriele Mueller and James Skidmore (Wilfried Laurier University Press, Canada, 2011. ISBN 13-9781554582259). http://www.wlupress.wlu.ca/press/Catalog/mueller.shtml
- Various entries, The Concise CineGraph: Encyclopaedia of German Cinema, ed. H-J Bock and Tim Bergfelder, (Berghahn Books, New York and Oxford, 2009).
- ‘Literatur und Linse: Enzensberger Goes to the Movies’, in Transpositions:Literature to Film – Film to Literature eds. Hermann Rasche and Christiane Schönfeld (Rodopi, Amsterdam NL, 2007)
Further details - ‘Enzensberger’s Titanic: The sinking of the German Left and the aesthetics of survival’, in The Titanic in Myth and Memory: Representations in Visual and Literary Culture, eds. Tim Bergfelder and Sarah Street (I.B.Tauris, London, 2004) pp. 73-83.
- ‘Placing Grün ist die Heide (1951): Spatial politics and emergent West German identity’ in Light Motives: German Popular Cinema, eds. Randall Halle and Margaret McCarthy (Wayne State UP, Detroit, Michigan, USA, 2003) pp. 130-147.
- ‘Landscape, ideology and national identity in the German cinema: A case study of Die goldene Stadt (1942)’ in Deutschland im Spiegel seiner Filme, eds. Martin Brady and Helen Hughes (CILT, London, 2000) pp. 96-117
- `The Ministry of Illusion?' - on recent books on National Socialist cinema, Journal of Area Studies, 13, Autumn, pp. 24-27.(1998)
- Review of Reiner Pommerin (ed), Culture in the Federal Republic of Germany 1945-1995, Berg, 1996, in `Nation, Place and Culture: Issues of Identity in Contemporary Europe', Journal of Area Studies, 10, Spring/Summer, pp. 155-57.
- Translations - `Geo Milev - The Road to Freedom', babel, Summer, 1991, pp. 44-45; H. M. Enzensberger, `Visit to Ingres', Times Literary Supplement, 13-19 July 1990; H. M. Enzensberger, `Short History of the Bourgeoisie', Times Literary Supplement, 15-21 June 1990.