Ph.D, University of California Berkeley
M.A., University of Freiburg
B.A., Washington and Lee University
Roger Cook is Professor Emeritus of German Studies and former Director of the Film Studies Program at the University of Missouri. He has written extensively on New German Cinema and contemporary German film. He co-edited The Cinema of Wim Wenders: Image, Narrative, and the Postmodern Condition (1996) and is co-editor of Berlin School Glossary: An ABC of the New Wave in German Cinema (2013). He has also written on nineteenth and twentieth-century German literature, with a particular emphasis on Heinrich Heine, and more recently, Franz Kafka. His current work engages media theory, neuroscience, and theoretical biology to investigate issues of embodied spectatorship in moving-image media and, more generally, the coevolution of the human and technology. His book Postcinematic Vision: The Coevolution of Moving-Image Media and the Spectator appeared in 2019 as part of the Posthumanities Series at the University of Minnesota Press.
Posthumanities Series. University of Minnesota Press, 2019. 235 pp.
A study of how film has continually intervened in our sense of perception, with fresh insights into the current state of lived experience Postcinematic Vision posits film as a stage in the long coevolution of visual technology and the human, offering a new perspective on the so-called divide between cinematic and digital media.
Ed. Roger F. Cook, Lutz Koepnick, Kristin Kopp, and Brad Prager. Chicago and Bristol: Intellect Books, 2013. 291 pp.
Berlin School Glossary is the first major publication to mark the increasing international importance of a group of contemporary German and Austrian filmmakers initially known as the Berlin School. This volume is organized as a glossary and is combined with an informative introduction that is essential to scholars and fans of the German New Wave.
Ed. Roger F. Cook. Camden House Companion Series. Columbia, S.C.: Camden House, 2003. 373 pp.
This volume of essays by scholars from Germany, Britain, Canada, and the United States offers critical insights on key recurring issues in Heinrich Heine's work: the symbiosis of German and Jewish culture; emerging nationalism among the European peoples; critical views of Romanticism and modern philosophy; European culture on the threshold to modernity; irony, wit, and self-critique as requisite elements of a modern aesthetic; changing views on teleology and the dialectics of history; and final thoughts and reconsiderations from his last, prolonged years in a sickbed.
Detroit: Wayne State UP, 1998. 392 pp.
German poet Heinrich Heine was bedridden with a debilitating illness for the last eight years of his life, during which time he reassessed many of his previous views on life. By the Rivers of Babylon examines the changes in his thinking about history, philosophy, and religion during that period and shows how those changes are reflected in his later poetry. It offers an analysis of Heine's vehement renunciation of the Hegelian ideas that had shaped his earlier conception of history. Refuting accepted opinions that this shift in thought was a displaced opposition to social developments, By the Rivers of Babylon contends that these late writings represent Heine's consistent rejection of idealist philosophy and reveal his new understanding of poetry's role as a transmitter of myth. It also shows how Heine transcended the boundaries of European culture and Judeo-Christian religion by aligning his work with alternative cultures on the margins of society.
Ed. Roger F. Cook and Gerd Gemünden. Detroit: Wayne State UP, 1996. 286 pp.
The Cinema of Wim Wenders is a unique anthology of source materials and selected critical essays on the films of Wim Wenders, a major filmmaker in the so-called New German Cinema movement. His work, probably more than that of any other European director, reflects the tension between the European auteur tradition and the increasing dominance of the American media industry. In both his filmmaking and his critical writing, he explores how the relationship between image and narrative manifests the basic opposition between these two film traditions. This book serves as an introduction to the central concerns of his cinema while situatting his work within German film history and the contemporary debates about postmodern film and media theory.
Studies in Modern German Literature 52. New York: Peter Lang, 1993. 226 pp.
This book examines how the concept of the autonomous writer evolved in German culture. Its scope includes various forms of representation that both engendered the notion of the autonomous writer and became vehicles for casting the writer's tenuous position in society. Taking the «writer» as a function not only of a literary discourse, but also of a network of interlocking discourses, it explores the genesis of the autonomy concept in relation to the changing make-up of the reading public, new practices in reading, and the intermediary role of the literary market between author and public. Combining the results of sociological studies with critical readings of theoretical and literary texts, this work contributes to the ongoing reassessment of how the aesthetic and the real act dialectically in the determination of social reality.
Book Chapters
“New Global Waves: Abbas Kiarostami and the Berlin School.” In A Transnational Art-Cinema: The Berlin School and Its Global Contexts. Ed. Marco Abel and Jaimey Fisher. Wayne State UP, June 2018. 174–95.
“Introduction: The Berlin School — Under Observation.” Roger F. Cook, Lutz Koepnick, and Brad Prager. In Berlin School Glossary: An ABC of the New Wave in German Cinema. Ed. Roger Cook, Lutz Koepnick, Kristin Kopp, and Brad Prager. Intellect Books, 2013. 1–25.
“Ambient Sound.” In Berlin School Glossary: An ABC of the New Wave in German Cinema. Ed. Roger Cook, Lutz Koepnick, Kristin Kopp, and Brad Prager. Intellect Books, 2013. 27–34.
“Disengagement.” In Berlin School Glossary: An ABC of the New Wave in German Cinema. Ed. Roger Cook, Lutz Koepnick, Kristin Kopp, and Brad Prager. Intellect Books, 2013. 87–91.
“Familiar Places.” In Berlin School Glossary: An ABC of the New Wave in German Cinema. Ed. Roger Cook, Lutz Koepnick, Kristin Kopp, and Brad Prager. 117–26. Intellect Books, 2013. 117–26.
“Ostalgie Provides Pushback against Western Views on the East German Collapse.” In A New History of German Cinema. Ed. Jennifer M. Kapczynski and Michael D. Richardson. Camden House, 2012. 524–29.
“Spatial Orientation and Embodied Transcendence in Werner Herzog’s Mountain Climbing Films.” In Heights of Reflection: Mountains in the German Imagination from the Middle Ages to Present. Ed. Sean Ireton and Caroline Schaumann. Camden House, 2012. 302–19.
“The Ironic Ecstasy of Werner Herzog: Embodied Vision in The Great Ecstasy of Woodcarver Steiner.” In A Companion to Werner Herzog. Ed. Brad Prager. Wiley-Blackwell, 2012. 281–300.
“Literary Discourse and Cinematic Narrative: Scripting Affect in The Lives of Others." In Cinema and Social Change in Germany and Austria. Ed. Gabriele Mueller and James M. Skidmore. Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2011. 81–97.
“Die fetten Jahre sind vorbei: Edukating the Post-Left Generation.” In The Collapse of the Conventional: German Film and its Politics at the Turn of the New Century. Ed. Jaimey Fisher and Brad Prager. Wayne State University Press, 2010. 309–332.
“Nostalgic Travels Through Space and Time: Good Bye Lenin!. In Violating Time: History, Memory, and Nostalgia in Cinema. Ed. Christina Lee. Continuum, 2008. 70–87.
“Die Wiederkehr der Religion: Heine aus amerikanischer Perspektive." In Sammelband zum Heine-Schumann Kongress. Ed. Joseph A. Kruse. Metzler Verlag, 2007. 145– 158.
“Vaterlandsliebe in Exile: Heinrich Heine and German-Jewish National Identity." In Confrontations/Accommodations. German-Jewish Literary and Cultural Relations from Heine to Wassermann. Ed. Mark H. Gelber. Tübingen: Niemeyer, 2004. 27–34.
“The Riddle of Love: Romantic Poetry and Historical Progress.” In A Companion to the Works of Heinrich Heine. Ed. Roger F. Cook. Columbia, SC: Camden House, 2002. 105–35.
“The Tyrannical ‘Knout’ of World History: Russia in the Writings of Heinrich Heine." In Cold Fusion: Aspects of the German Cultural Presence in Russia. Berghahn Books, 2000. 126-140.
“Alexander Kluge.” In Encyclopedia of German Literature. Ed. Matthias Konzett. Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers, 1999.
“Postmodern Culture and Film Narrative: Paris Texas and Beyond.” In The Cinema of Wim Wenders. Ed. Roger F. Cook and Gerd Gemünden. Detroit: Wayne State UP, 1996. 121-35.
“Wim Wenders’s Cinema of Displacement.” Co-authored with Gerd Gemünden. In The Cinema of Wim Wenders. Ed. Roger F. Cook and Gerd Gemünden. Detroit: Wayne State UP, 1996. 9-30.
Journal Articles
“From Triumph of the Will to Twitter: Modern Media and the Evolution of Tribalism.” In Authoritarianism in Literature, Film., and Politics. Ed. Manuel Clemens. Special issue of Colloquia Germanica 51.1 (Spring 2018). 18 pp.
“The Texture of History: Christian Petzold’s Barbara and The Lives of Others.” In Christian Petzold: A Dossier. Ed. Marco Abel and Jaimey Fisher. Senses of Cinema 84 (September 2017): 19 pp.
“Embodied Simulation, Empathy, and Social Cognition: Berlin School Lessons for Film Theory.” Screen 56.2 (Summer 2015): 153–71.
“Docu-Entertainment: Adaptations of Hollywood Genres in Recent Documentary Film.” Visual Communication Quarterly 22 (2015). 16–20.
“Cinema Returns to the Source: Werner Herzog’s Cave of Forgotten Dreams.” Film International 11.1 (Winter 2013): 24–41.
“Correspondences in Visual Imaging and Spatial Orientation in Dreaming and Film Viewing.” Dreaming: Journal of the Association of the Study of Dreams 21.2 (2011). 89–104.
“Hollywood Narrative and the Play of Fantasy: David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive." Quarterly Review of Film and Video 28.5 (2011). 369–81.
“Good Bye, Lenin!: Free-Market Nostalgia for Socialist Consumerism.” Seminar. A Journal of Germanic Studies. Special Issue. Between Historisation, Nostalgia and Mythmaking: Contemporary German Culture. (Spring 2007): 25–42.
“Re-charting the Skies Above Berlin: Nostalgia East and West.” German Politics and Society (Spring 2005): 39–57.
“‘Citronia’: ‘Kennst du das Land …?’: A Riddle of Sexuality and Desire.” Heine-Jahrbuch (1996): 81-112.
“Angels, Fiction and History in Berlin: Wim Wenders’s Wings of Desire.” The Germanic Review: Special Issue—German Film, 66.1 (Winter 1991): 34-47.
“Melodrama or Cinematic Folk Tale? Story and History in Deutschland, bleiche Mutter.” The Germanic Review, 66.3 (Summer 1991): 113-129.