Dr Nicholas Hodgin
Senior Lecturer in German Studies
- Available for postgraduate supervision
Overview
I teach and research German 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).
My current research projects focus on:
- Aspects of GDR cultural history, looking at amateur filmmaking, DEFA documentary film in national and transnational contexts, and architecture on film.
- The end of the east German state and the meaning of 1989
- Communist ‘cosmic culture’ and visual culture
- International documentary film culture during the Cold War.
- Ruins and nostalgia in post-communist visual and pop culture
Publication
2024
- Hodgin, N. 2024. ‘How far can you go?’: Everyday lives in the films of Kurt Tetzlaff. In: Allan, S. and Heiduschke, S. eds. Documenting Socialism: East German Documentary Cinema. New York: Berghahn Books, pp. 116-136., (10.3167/9781805396574)
- Hodgin, N. 2024. Construction, demolition, extirpation? The Palast der Republik and the conflicting desires of German unification. German Life and Letters 77(2), pp. 238-262. (10.1111/glal.12409)
2019
- Hodgin, N. 2019. Futures remembered: Kosmonauts, the GDR, and the retrospective impulse. In: Skrodzka, A., Lu, X. and Marciniak, K. eds. The Oxford Handbook of Communist Visual Cultures. Oxford Handbooks Oxford: Oxford University Press, (10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190885533.013.28)
2018
- Hodgin, N. 2018. 'Like a Dream': Film, fears, fantasies and nightmares of the Wende. In: Byrnes, D., Conacher, J. E. and Holfter, G. eds. Reunification and the Legacy of East-German Literature and Culture. Brill, pp. 17-32.
2017
- Hodgin, N. and Thakkar, A. eds. 2017. Scars and wounds: film and legacies of trauma. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. (10.1007/978-3-319-41024-1)
- Preece, J. and Hodgin, N. eds. 2017. Andreas Dresen. Contemporary German Writers and Filmmakers. Peter Lang.
- Hodgin, N. 2017. Proximity and distance: approaching trauma in Katrina Films. In: Hodgin, N. and Thakkar, A. eds. Scars and Wounds: Film and Legacies of Trauma. Basingstoke: Palgrave, pp. 101-126.
- Hodgin, N. 2017. Introduction: Trauma studies, film and the scar motif. In: Hodgin, N. and Thakkar, A. eds. Scars and Wounds: Film and Legacies of Trauma. Basingstoke: Palgrave, pp. 1-29.
2016
- Hodgin, N. 2016. DEFA's Last Gasp. Ruins, Melancholy and the End of East German Filmmaking. In: Allan, S. and Heiduschke, S. eds. RE-Imagining DEFA East German Cinema in its National and Transnational Contexts. Berghahn Books, pp. 271-292.
- Hodgin, N. 2016. The cosmopolitan Communist: Joris Ivens, transnational film-maker before transnationalism?. Transnational Cinemas 7(1), pp. 34-49. (10.1080/20403526.2016.1140947)
2015
- Hodgin, N. 2015. 'Only one noble topic remained: the workers.' Sympathy, subtlety and subversion in East German documentary films. Studies in Eastern European Cinema 6(1), pp. 49-63. (10.1080/2040350X.2014.992130)
- Hodgin, N. 2015. East Germany revisited, reimagined, repositioned: Representing the GDR in Dominik Graf's Der rote Kakadu (2005) and Christian Petzold's Barbara (2012). In: Gott, M. and Herzog, T. eds. East, West and Centre: Reframing post-1989 European Cinema. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, pp. 237-252.
- Hodgin, N. 2015. In praise of authenticity? Atmosphere, song, and Southern states of mind in Searching for the Wrong-eyed Jesus. In: Mazierska, E. and Gregory, G. eds. Relocating Popular Music. Pop Music, Culture and Identity Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 186-206., (10.1057/9781137463388_10)
2014
- Hodgin, N. 2014. Cannibals, carnival and clowns: the grotesque in German unification films. Studies in Eastern European Cinema 5(2), pp. 124-138. (10.1080/17411548.2014.925333)
- Hodgin, N. 2014. The sons of Great Bear. In: Langford, M. ed. Directory of World Cinema: German 2. Intellect, pp. 104-106.
- Hodgin, N. 2014. Chingachgook, the great snake. In: Langford, M. ed. Directory of World Cinema: German 2. Intellect, pp. 108-109.
- Hodgin, N. 2014. Trail of the falcon. In: Langford, M. ed. Directory of World Cinema: German 2. Intellect, pp. 110-112.
- Hodgin, N. 2014. Alternative realities and authenticity in DEFA's documentary films. In: Silberman, M. and Wrage, H. eds. DEFA at the Crossroads of East German and International Film Culture: A Companion. Companions to Contemporary German Culture Berlin and Boston: Walter de Gruyter, pp. 281-304.
2011
- Hodgin, N. 2011. Aiming to please? Consensus and consciousness-raising in Wolfgang Becker's Good Bye, Lenin! (2003). In: Cooke, P. and Homewood, C. eds. New Directions in German Cinema. Taurus World Cinema Series I.B. Tauris, pp. 94-112.
- Hodgin, N. 2011. Screening the East: Heimat, memory and nostalgia in German film since 1989. Film Europa. Berghahn Books.
- Hodgin, N. and Pearce, C. 2011. Introduction. In: Hodgin, N. and Pearce, C. eds. The GDR Remembered: Representations of the East German State since 1989. Camden House/Boydell&Brewer, pp. 1-16.
- Hodgin, N. 2011. Screening the Stasi: the politics of representation in postunification film. In: Hodgin, N. and Pearce, C. eds. The GDR Remembered: Representations of the East German State since 1989. Camden House/Boydell&Brewer, pp. 69-92.
- Hodgin, N. and Pearce, C. eds. 2011. The GDR remembered: Representations of the East German state since 1989. Studies in German Literature Linguistics and Culture. Camden House.
2010
- Hodgin, N. 2010. Eastern blues, southern comforts: searching for Heimat on the Bayous. Mississippi Quarterly 3-4, pp. 512-534.
2007
- Hodgin, N. 2007. Marginalized subjects, mainstream objectives: insights on outsiders in recent German Film. New Readings 8, pp. 1-21. (10.18573/newreadings.55)
2006
- Hodgin, N. 2006. Berlin is in Germany and good bye Lenin! taking leave of the GDR?. Debatte: Journal of Contemporary Central and Eastern Europe 12(1), pp. 25-45. (10.1080/0965156042000230106)
Articles
- Hodgin, N. 2024. Construction, demolition, extirpation? The Palast der Republik and the conflicting desires of German unification. German Life and Letters 77(2), pp. 238-262. (10.1111/glal.12409)
- Hodgin, N. 2016. The cosmopolitan Communist: Joris Ivens, transnational film-maker before transnationalism?. Transnational Cinemas 7(1), pp. 34-49. (10.1080/20403526.2016.1140947)
- Hodgin, N. 2015. 'Only one noble topic remained: the workers.' Sympathy, subtlety and subversion in East German documentary films. Studies in Eastern European Cinema 6(1), pp. 49-63. (10.1080/2040350X.2014.992130)
- Hodgin, N. 2014. Cannibals, carnival and clowns: the grotesque in German unification films. Studies in Eastern European Cinema 5(2), pp. 124-138. (10.1080/17411548.2014.925333)
- Hodgin, N. 2010. Eastern blues, southern comforts: searching for Heimat on the Bayous. Mississippi Quarterly 3-4, pp. 512-534.
- Hodgin, N. 2007. Marginalized subjects, mainstream objectives: insights on outsiders in recent German Film. New Readings 8, pp. 1-21. (10.18573/newreadings.55)
- Hodgin, N. 2006. Berlin is in Germany and good bye Lenin! taking leave of the GDR?. Debatte: Journal of Contemporary Central and Eastern Europe 12(1), pp. 25-45. (10.1080/0965156042000230106)
Book sections
- Hodgin, N. 2024. ‘How far can you go?’: Everyday lives in the films of Kurt Tetzlaff. In: Allan, S. and Heiduschke, S. eds. Documenting Socialism: East German Documentary Cinema. New York: Berghahn Books, pp. 116-136., (10.3167/9781805396574)
- Hodgin, N. 2019. Futures remembered: Kosmonauts, the GDR, and the retrospective impulse. In: Skrodzka, A., Lu, X. and Marciniak, K. eds. The Oxford Handbook of Communist Visual Cultures. Oxford Handbooks Oxford: Oxford University Press, (10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190885533.013.28)
- Hodgin, N. 2018. 'Like a Dream': Film, fears, fantasies and nightmares of the Wende. In: Byrnes, D., Conacher, J. E. and Holfter, G. eds. Reunification and the Legacy of East-German Literature and Culture. Brill, pp. 17-32.
- Hodgin, N. 2017. Proximity and distance: approaching trauma in Katrina Films. In: Hodgin, N. and Thakkar, A. eds. Scars and Wounds: Film and Legacies of Trauma. Basingstoke: Palgrave, pp. 101-126.
- Hodgin, N. 2017. Introduction: Trauma studies, film and the scar motif. In: Hodgin, N. and Thakkar, A. eds. Scars and Wounds: Film and Legacies of Trauma. Basingstoke: Palgrave, pp. 1-29.
- Hodgin, N. 2016. DEFA's Last Gasp. Ruins, Melancholy and the End of East German Filmmaking. In: Allan, S. and Heiduschke, S. eds. RE-Imagining DEFA East German Cinema in its National and Transnational Contexts. Berghahn Books, pp. 271-292.
- Hodgin, N. 2015. East Germany revisited, reimagined, repositioned: Representing the GDR in Dominik Graf's Der rote Kakadu (2005) and Christian Petzold's Barbara (2012). In: Gott, M. and Herzog, T. eds. East, West and Centre: Reframing post-1989 European Cinema. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, pp. 237-252.
- Hodgin, N. 2015. In praise of authenticity? Atmosphere, song, and Southern states of mind in Searching for the Wrong-eyed Jesus. In: Mazierska, E. and Gregory, G. eds. Relocating Popular Music. Pop Music, Culture and Identity Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 186-206., (10.1057/9781137463388_10)
- Hodgin, N. 2014. The sons of Great Bear. In: Langford, M. ed. Directory of World Cinema: German 2. Intellect, pp. 104-106.
- Hodgin, N. 2014. Chingachgook, the great snake. In: Langford, M. ed. Directory of World Cinema: German 2. Intellect, pp. 108-109.
- Hodgin, N. 2014. Trail of the falcon. In: Langford, M. ed. Directory of World Cinema: German 2. Intellect, pp. 110-112.
- Hodgin, N. 2014. Alternative realities and authenticity in DEFA's documentary films. In: Silberman, M. and Wrage, H. eds. DEFA at the Crossroads of East German and International Film Culture: A Companion. Companions to Contemporary German Culture Berlin and Boston: Walter de Gruyter, pp. 281-304.
- Hodgin, N. 2011. Aiming to please? Consensus and consciousness-raising in Wolfgang Becker's Good Bye, Lenin! (2003). In: Cooke, P. and Homewood, C. eds. New Directions in German Cinema. Taurus World Cinema Series I.B. Tauris, pp. 94-112.
- Hodgin, N. and Pearce, C. 2011. Introduction. In: Hodgin, N. and Pearce, C. eds. The GDR Remembered: Representations of the East German State since 1989. Camden House/Boydell&Brewer, pp. 1-16.
- Hodgin, N. 2011. Screening the Stasi: the politics of representation in postunification film. In: Hodgin, N. and Pearce, C. eds. The GDR Remembered: Representations of the East German State since 1989. Camden House/Boydell&Brewer, pp. 69-92.
Books
- Hodgin, N. and Thakkar, A. eds. 2017. Scars and wounds: film and legacies of trauma. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. (10.1007/978-3-319-41024-1)
- Preece, J. and Hodgin, N. eds. 2017. Andreas Dresen. Contemporary German Writers and Filmmakers. Peter Lang.
- Hodgin, N. 2011. Screening the East: Heimat, memory and nostalgia in German film since 1989. Film Europa. Berghahn Books.
- Hodgin, N. and Pearce, C. eds. 2011. The GDR remembered: Representations of the East German state since 1989. Studies in German Literature Linguistics and Culture. Camden House.
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 with my colleague Heiko Feldner on 'The Meaning of 1989', the disappearance of East German architecture, documentary film in the GDR, music subcultures in Germany, and on the global developments of punk.
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
- Research Methods and Methodologies (convener)
- Global Cultures (convener)
- Introduction to Translation Methods
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)