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 2017, I co-taught with Jennifer Bean a gateway course to the new CMS major (CMS 301). I will also coordinated a new course on world literature and Nobel Prize winners (C LIT 200), taught by faculty from across the humanities. In Spring 2018, I'll teach a senior capstone (CMS 480) on intersections of documentary and avant-garde cinema. In June, I'll be attending the Flaherty Seminar, my first time -- can't wait!