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Berna Gueneli

Blurred image used as background for stylistic purposes.
Associate Professor of German
Study Abroad in Berlin Co-director
Max Kade Found. Writer/Artist/Professor liaison

A native of Kiel, Germany, I studied English, Spanish, and German literature and culture in Germany, Spain, and the US. Before coming to UGA, I taught at St. Lawrence University and Grinnell College. In the classroom, I love teaching courses on all aspects of German language, literature, culture, and film.

My primary research area is on German cinema and media, Turkish German studies, Turkish exiles in Europe, and Orientalist media. My scholarship has appeared in journals such as Monatshefte, The German Quarterly, The German Studies Review, and Colloquia Germanica as well as in edited volumes. I co-edited special issues of Colloquia Germanica 44.4 (2011 [publ. 2014], Narr/Francke/Attempto-Verlag) and Jahrbuch türkisch-deutsche Studien (2015, V&R Unipress). My first book is Fatih Akin’s Cinema and the New Sound of Europe (Indiana University Press, 2019); reviewed in Monatshefte; Transnational Screens; Music, Sound, and the Moving Image; EuropeNow; German Studies Review; German Quarterly; and Journal of Religion and Film.

My new projects examine Orientalist film and visual media during the Weimar Republic (Weimar Orientalisms), Turkish exile artists in Cold-War Europe (Turkish Exiles, European Artists), and Turkish German artistic productions (film, fine arts, multimedia) across the 20th and 21st centuries.

Research Areas:
Research Interests:

My new research projects examine Orientalist film and visual media during the Weimar Republic (Weimar Orientalisms), Turkish exile artists in Cold-War Europe (Turkish Exiles, European Artists), and Turkish German artistic productions (film, fine arts, multimedia) across the 20th and 21st centuries.

Grants:

CIRRF 2023

  • PhD, University of Texas at Austin

BOOK

Fatih Akin's Cinema and the New Sound of Europe. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2019.

CO-EDITED SPECIAL ISSUES

Jahrbuch türkisch-deutsche Studien 2015 special volume on "Turkish-German Studies: Past, Present, and Future." Göttingen: V&R Unipress, 2015. (with Ela Gezen)


Colloquia Germanica vol.44, no. 4 special issue on "Transnational Hi/Stories: Turkish-German Texts and Contexts." 2011; publ. date 2014. (with Ela Gezen)

RECENT ARTICLES AND BOOK CHAPTERS

“Art, Artifice, and Eroticized Infantilization: Imagining Japanese Femininities in the Weimar Republic in  Fritz Lang’s Harakiri (1919) and Kapitän Mertens’ 'Kio, die lasterhafte Kirschblüte' (1924/25).” The German Quarterly 96.3 (Summer 2023), pp. 326—343.

“Diversification and Politicization of a Discourse: Yilmaz Güney and Wim Wenders’s Room 666 (1982).” Celebrating Janet Swaffar: A Festschrift, edited by Hiram Maxim and Katherine Arens, 91-108. Agarita, 2023. 

"Im Juli (2000) Roadmovies und ein dehnbares, diverses Europa nach 1989." In Die Filme Fatih Akıns, eds. Cornelia Ruhe and Thomas Wortmann, 105-125. Brill-Fink-Verlag, 2022.

"Young, Diverse, and Polyglot: Ilker Çatak and Amelia Umuhire Track the New Urban Sound of Europe." In Minority Discourses in Germany Since 1990, eds. Ela Gezen, Priscilla Layne, and Jonathan Skolnik, 172-195. Berghahn Books, 2022.

"Screening Urban Space and Belonging in Germany: Contemporary Berliners in Sheri Hagen’s Auf den zweiten Blick/At Second Glance (2013), Ines Johnson-Spain’s Becoming Black (2019), and Amelia Umuhire’s Polyglot (2015)." In Germany from the Outside: Rethinking German Cultural History in an Age of Displacement, ed. Laurie Johnson, 281-302. Bloomsbury, 2022.

"Turkish Emigres, European Artists: Re/Discovering a Web of Turkish-European Artists in 1980s West-Germany and Europe" Monatshefte 113.2 (2021): 186-207.

Willson Center Research Fellowship (Spring 2023), CIRRF Funds (Spring Summer 2023,) Guest Scholarship at Christian-Albrechts-University in Kiel, Germany (SS 2023)

I am very grateful to the Willson Center and the selection committee for providing me with the needed time (teaching release) and to the CIRRF committee for granting me with the necessary funds to spend time in Germany from April 2023-July 2023. Only through these generous funds was I able to do initial archival work in Berlin and Bonn for my book project on Weimar Orientalims. The funds further allowed me to be a guest scholar at Kiel University where I could connect with German colleagues and uninterruptedly work on my research projects. 

Provost's Study in a Second Discipline Fellow (Spring 2021)

I am very grateful to The Provost's Office and the selection committee for providing me with this fabulous fellowship opportunity to study in a second discipline. I am also very thankful for the generous support of UGA's Art History Program at The Lamar Dodd School of Art, my host department during the fellowship period. I am thrilled to begin the interdisciplinary work on my second book project on German Orientalist film, art, and visual media, connecting my research in film and German studies with the related, but separate field of art history. 

Events featuring Marjanne E. Goozé, Berna Gueneli
Joe Brown Hall room 213

Faculty members from the department will present short related to their research.  Each talk will be approximately 20 minutes with time for questions after each, and refreshments.  This month's talks will be:

Dr. Marjanne Gooze'  - "The Holocaust Memoir as American Tale:  'Ruth Kluger's Still Alive'".

Dr. Berna Gueneli…

Articles Featuring Berna Gueneli

We are pleased to announce that we are now able to offer $2,500 each to 20 students accepted to our Summer Berlin study abroad program.

We are able to provide these scholarships because of the generous support of The Halle Foundation, who has been a…

The Department of Germanic and Slavic Studies will begin offering a new study abroad program in Berlin starting July of 2024.

University of Georgia German minor Caroline Johnston may be missing out on the electric football season in Athens. But she is having memorable experiences teaching English to Austrian high school students as a U.S Teaching Assistant (…

We congratulate Germanic & Slavic Studies faculty, Dr.

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