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Dr Nick Hodgin

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Available for postgraduate supervision

Teams and roles for Nick Hodgin

Overview

I teach and research cultural studies and am interested in international cinema and visual culture, especially German film and visual culture, and East German cultural history and its legacy.

My research is interdisciplinary; much of it has focussed on issues and meaning of representation, and on the relationship between culture and politics. These thematic interests have informed publications on diverse topics, from the representation of East Germany in post-unification film to the documentary treatment of trauma, from the construction and significance of authenticity in our understanding of blues music to the legacy of Communist visual culture and the significance of ruins and nostalgia.

My book publications include Screening the East: Heimat, Memory and Nostalgia in German Film Since 1989 (Berghahn 2011; paperback 2013), and the co-edited volumes The GDR Remembered:Representations of the East German State since 1989 (Camden House, 2011), Andreas Dresen (Peter Lang, 2016) and Scars and Wounds: Film and Legacies of Trauma (Palgrave 2017).

I regularly review manuscripts and book proposals for publishers, peer review for journals, am invited reader for other academics, and consult on doctoral work and promotion applications. 

Publication

2024

2019

2018

2017

2016

2015

2014

2011

2010

2007

2006

Adrannau llyfrau

Erthyglau

Llyfrau

Research

Broadly speaking, my research and research interests are in cultural studies and cultural history with a particular (but not exclusive) focus on German cultural life. My work falls into three main areas: East German cultural history, German film and visual culture, and Film Studies.

I have longstanding interest in the GDR and have written on East German cinema, investigating  the ways in which film was a medium used to subvert or to serve the regime, especially in documentary films that offered careful critiques of everyday life, or in positive representations of GDR values and its origins.

I have worked on representations of East Germany since unification, looking in particular at the ways in which filmmakers have been attracted to the problematic East German past and to portraying the  experiences of east Germans in the not unproblematic present, a topic  I explored in Screening the East: Heimat, Memory and Nostalgia in German Film Since 1989 (Berghahn 2011; paperback 2013). The GDR Remembered, co-edited with Caroline Pearce, brought together scholars and curators to reflect on the complex narratives of the East German past.

Other work has investigated the role film has played in mediating trauma (resulting in the volume co-edited  with Amit Thaakkar, Scars and Wounds: Film and Legacies of Trauma (Palgrave 2017), the filmmaker Andreas Dresen, resulting in the volume co-edited with Julian Preece, Andreas Dresen (Lang 2016), as well as essays on diverse topics including music of the Deep South, Soviet cosmic culture, nostalgia and its manifestation in contemporary culture, documentary film, omnibus films, and Weimar cinema.

Current research projects include work on the politics of loss, the disappearance of East German architecture, documentary film, music subcultures in Germany, the global developments of punk, and nostalgia for the Cold War. 

Teaching

Much of my teaching is research-driven and I teach or supervise on a range of topics on several undergraduate and postgraduate modules. These include:

Undergraduate teaching

  • Cultures in Context (convener)
  • United but Divided? Exploring German Unification (convener)
  • Introduction to Specialised Translation
  • Translation as a Profession
  • Translation for Eramus Students
  • Culture,Political protest and Dissent in the 1960s
  • Final Year Dissertation

Postgraduate Teaching

  • Global Cultures (MA)
  • Global Heritage (MA)

Doctoral Supervision (with Fabio Vighi)

  • Jacob Yopak

Biography

I came to Cardiff in 2017 having previously taught at  Sheffield, where I completed my PhD, Lancaster and Manchester.

I was among the first group of scholars to research East German cinema (DEFA) and spent some years living in Dresden, where I lived a double life - teaching English in businesses in the city and local region, and researching East German film and culture.

Supervisions

I would be very happy to supervise students in the areas of:

  • German cinema (especially DEFA, German documentary culture, Autorenkino, experimental filmmaking)
  • East  German cultural history (especially in areas such as youth cultures, music, cinema, architecture)
  • German visual culture (especially modern and contemporary visual culture - graphic art, graffiti, etc)
  • International and transnational filmmaking
  • Cold War culture (especially in the German context)
  • Berlin in the twentieth and twenty-first century
  • Trauma and its representation on film
  • Nostalgia (particularly in the context of post-communism)
  • Ruins (particularly in the context of post-communism)

Contact Details

Email HodginN@cardiff.ac.uk
Telephone +44 29225 10108

Research themes

Specialisms

  • 20th Century
  • 21st century