Eric Ames

I am generally interested in historical and interdisciplinary approaches to the study of modern culture. Within this framework I also have a number of more specific interests, including visual culture, the various technologies and institutions that produce it, and the historical experiences associated with them. I have published on several forms of nineteenth-century display culture, including zoological gardens, ethnographic exhibitions (Völkerschauen), and Wild West shows in Germany. I have also published on the interrelationship of science, technology, and popular culture in specific situations: the vital importance of the phonograph and the archive to the formation of ethnomusicology, and the cinema’s function as an instrument of cultural power in the writings of Hugo Münsterberg. I am co-editor of Germany’s Colonial Pasts (Nebraska, 2005) and author of Carl Hagenbeck’s Empire of Entertainments (Washington, 2009) and of Ferocious Reality: Documentary according to Werner Herzog (Minnesota, 2012). My edited collection, Werner Herzog: Interviews (Mississippi, 2014), is now available in paperback. Most recently, I published a little book on Aguirre, the Wrath of God in the BFI Film Classics series.

In Autumn 2018, I will be working with my colleagues to develop a new graduate program in Cinema and Media Studies, and to search for a new assistant professor in new media. In Winter 2019, I will co-teach with Andy Nestingen (Scandinavian Studies) a new version of CMS 270, Introduction to Film: Northern Perspectives (for course information click here). And in Spring 2019, I return to my favorite course of all time, CMS 303: Film Noir -- can't wait!