Dr Elizabeth Ward

Profile

I am a film historian specialising in East German cinema and film during the Cold War.

I hold a MA in Modern and Medieval Languages and a MPhil in Screen Media and Cultures from the University of Cambridge, and a PhD in German from the University of Leeds.

I am a steering committee member of the German Screen Studies Network. Alongside my research and teaching, I regularly work with schools and museums to support and promote German studies beyond the academy.

Research interests

I research East German cinema in its social and historical context, with a particular focus on the relationship between GDR cinema and the West. I am completing a monograph on East German film and the Holocaust, and have published on both East German film and twenty-first century German cinema. My current research project examines the relationship between film festivals and cultural diplomacy in Cold War Germany.

Publications

Monograph

• East German Film and the Holocaust (New York: Berghahn Books, 2020).

Journal Articles and Book Chapters

• "Screen Identities. Maximilian Schell and The Man in the Glass Booth", in Deutsches Filminstitut & Filmmuseum (ed.), Maximilian Schell (Frankfurt: Deutsches Filminstitut & Filmmuseum, 2019), 90–97.
• "Revisiting the Crimes of the Past: The Image of the Perpetrator in Recent German Holocaust Film", Holocaust Studies: A Journal of Culture and History (2019).
• "Marc Rothemund’s Sophie Scholl — Die letzten Tage (2005), in Alexandra Lloyd (ed.), The White Rose: Reading, Writing, Resistance, (Oxford: Treasures of the Taylorian, 2018), 79–96.
• "Who is Heinz Stielke? Questions of Identity in Michael Kann’s "Stielke, Heinz, fünfzehn"", in Stephan Ehrig, Marcel Thomas and David Zell (eds), The GDR today: New Interdisciplinary Approaches to East German History, Memory and Culture (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2018), 43–63.
• "Dismantling the Third Reich: in Cate Shortland's Lore", Film and History 47(1) (2017), 18–27.
• "Contesting the memory of Frank Beyer’s Jacob the Liar", in David Seymour and Mercedes Camino (eds), The Holocaust in the Twenty-First Century: Contesting/Contested Memories (Routledge: New York, 2016), 163–181.
• “Screening out the East: The Playing out of Inter-German Relations at the Cannes Film Festival”, German Life and Letters 68(1) (2015), 37–53.
• "(Re)Presenting the Past in Uwe Boll’s Auschwitz (2011)", in Tanja Schult and Diana Popescu (eds), Revisiting Holocaust Representation in the Post-Witness Era (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), 198–213.
• "Zur strategischen Aneignung der Anne Frank-Figur in Konrad Wolfs Professor Mamlock (1961)", in Peter Seibert, Jana Piper and Alfonso Meoli (eds), (Berlin: Metropol Verlag, 2013), 54–62.

Book Reviews

• "Review of "Screening Auschwitz: Wanda Jakubowska's The Last Stage and the Politics of Commemoration" by Marek Haltof", Studies in European Cinema, 2019.
• "Review of "Re-Imagining DEFA: East German Cinema in its National and Transnational Contexts" edited by Seán Allan and Sebastian Heiduschke", The Modern Language Review, 2017.
• "Review of "DEFA after East Germany" edited by Brigitta B Wagner", Studies in European cinema, 2017.
• "Review of "Mothers, Comrades, and Outcasts in East German Women’s Film" by Jennifer L. Creech", The Modern Language Review, 2016.
• "Review of "The Nazi Past in Contemporary German Film. Viewing Experiences of Intimacy and Immersion" by Axel Bangert", New Cinemas, 2016.
• "Review of "Patriotic Betrayal: The Inside Story of the CIA's Secret Campaign to Enroll American Students in the Crusade against Communism" by Karen M. Paget", Journal of American Culture, 2016.
• "Review of "The Paradox of German Power" by Hans Kundnani", Journal of Contemporary European Studies, 2016.
• "Review of “East, West and Centre: Reframing Post-1989 European Cinema", Journal of Contemporary European Studies, 2015.
• "Review of "Sun, Sex, And Socialism: Cuba In The German Imaginary" by Jennifer Ruth Hosek", Sixties, 2014.

Qualifications

• PhD in German (Leeds)
• MPhil in Screen Media and Cultures (Cantab)
• MA in Modern and Medieval Languages (Cantab)

Professional memberships

• German Screen Studies Network
• Fellow of the Higher Education Academy
• British Association of Film, Television and Screen Studies

Student education

I teach German film from the Weimar period to modern-day.

I am a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.

Research groups and institutes

• German
• Centre for World Cinemas and Digital Cultures