Reinhild Steingrover
Associate Dean of Faculty Affairs
Professor of German
Affiliate Professor in Film Studies
BIOGRAPHY
Reinhild Steingröver is a Professor of German at the Eastman School of Music. She is also an affiliate Professor of Film Studies in the Program of Film and Media Studies at the University of Rochester. Her main research interests focus on contemporary German film and literature, as well as experimental and multi-media art. She has curated numerous live-to-picture programs with archival films and newly commissioned scores for live performances. Her most recent curatorial work includes “Klingende Utopien I-100 Jahre Bauhaus” with the National German Youth Jazz Orchestra (BuJazzO), which toured in Germany, the USA, Canada, and Israel in 2018-19. In 2021, she collaborated with BuJazzO once more to present “Klingende Utopien II-1700 Jahre Jüdisches Leben in Deutschland” featuring a newly commissioned score by Jeff Beal for the classic horror film Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari. The program was performed across Germany in 2021, including at the Film Music Festival, Halle, and the Jewish Museum, Berlin.
Steingröver is the author of Last Features; East German Cinema’s Lost Generation (2014), which appeared in German translation as Spätvorstellung – Die chancenlose Generation der DEFA (2014). The book was named “Outstanding Academic Title by Choice Magazine in 2014.She also authored a monograph on Thomas Bernhard (2000) and co-edited with Randall Halle the volume After the Avant-garde: Engagements with Contemporary German and Austrian Experimental Film (Camden House, 2008), as well as the anthology Not so plain as Black and White; Afro-German History and Culture 1890-2000 (with Patricia Mazon, 2005). Steingröver’s publications include essays on East German Cinema, documentary and experimental film, autobiographical writing and contemporary feminist writing. She is currently writing a book on cinematic miniatures. She has been invited to guest-lecture at universities across the US, Germany, Canada, and the UK.
Steingröver has won many grants and awards, including from the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), the DEFA Foundation, the Suhrkamp Foundation, as well as the Eisenhart Award for Excellence in Teaching from the Eastman School of Music. In 2021, she received the Edward Peck Curtis Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching from the University of Rochester.
WORKS AND PUBLICATIONS
Books
Last Features – East German Cinema’s Lost Generation Camden House, 2014. “Outstanding Academic Title List” Choice Magazine,2014.
Spätvorstellung-Die chancenlose Generation der DEFA Bertz & Fischer, Berlin, 2014, (my translation of Last Features).
After the Avant-garde: Engagements with Contemporary German and Austrian Experimental Film.
Edited with Randall Halle, Camden House, 2008.
“Not So Plain As Black and White:” Afro-German History and Culture 1890-2000. Edited with Patricia Mazón, University of Rochester Press, 2005.
Einerseits und Andererseits, Essays zur Prosa Thomas Bernhards. New York: Peter Lang, 2000, in the series “Literature and the Science of Man.” Editor Peter Heller.
Book Manuscripts in Progress
Cinematic Miniatures—DEFA Short Films
Select Articles
“Activism to Protect Speech and Species: Jörg Foth’s Biologie!” supplemental essay for DVD/ streaming release by DEFA Film Library, Amherst, MA (spring 2021).
“Re-imaging Woman: the short films of Helke Misselwitz” in Sex and Gender in GDR Literature and Film. Ed. Faye Steward, Kyle Frackmann. Camden House, 2019.
“Alternative GDR History in ‘Raus aus der Haut’”: in Andreas Dresen. Ed. Julian Preece, Nick Hodgin, Peter Lang, 2017.
‘Lies, Sex and Narrative; Confessional Politics in Magdalena the Sinner and Private Confessions.” Winning Back Lost Territory – The Writing of Lilian Faschinger. Eds. Vincent Kling, Laura McLary. Riverside: Ariadne Press. Invited contribution. 2014.
“Experimental Film” lead essay in History of World Cinema: Germany 2. Ed. Michelle Langford. Bristol: Intellect Boooks, 2013.
“Encountering Herzog at the End of the World” in Blackwell Companion to Werner Herzog. Ed. Bradley Prager. London: Blackwell, March 2012.
“The Unread Manifesto: DEFA’s Last Generation” in New History of German Cinema. Ed. Michael Richardson, Jennifer Kapczynski. Camden House, September 2012.
“From Farbe Bekennen to Schololadenkind – Generational Change in Afro-German Autobiographies” in Generational Change in German Literature Ed. Lauren Cohen Pfister, Suzanne Vees-Guliani, Rochester: Camden House, 2011, 287-307.
“The Films of Jörg Foth.” Essay on Foth in special features section of DVD Latest aus der DaDaeR Amherst: Icestorm International 2009.
“Blackbox GDR – DEFA’s Untimely Avant-garde.” After the Avant-garde: Engagements with Contemporary German and Austrian Experimental Film. Edited with Randall Halle. 2008.
“Gesichter der DEFA” Introduction (German and English) to photographer Sandra Bergemann’s. Gesichter der DEFA/ Faces of DEFA.Edition Braus, 2008, 4-11, invited contribution.
“Filming the End of the Cold War.” A Fearsome Heritage-Traces of the Cold War. Eds. John Schofield and Wayne Concroft. London: University College of London Press, 2007.
“Narren und Clowns: Abschied von der DDR in den letzten Defaproduktionen.” apropos: Film 2005, Das Jahrbuch der DEFA-Stiftung. Ed. Ralf Schenk. Berlin: Das Neue Berlin. 2005, 37-57. Translated and expanded version of “On Fools and Clowns.” Invited contribution
“On Fools and Clowns: Generational Farewell in Two Final DEFA Films; Egon Günther’s Stein and Jörg Foth’s Letztes aus der DaDaeR.” German Quarterly. 78.4 (Fall 2005) 441-460.
“’The most sharp-witted fool’: Glenn Gould, Schopenhauer and Thomas Bernhard.” Seminar, Journal for German Studies. 39:2 (May 2003): 135-52.
“Violent Acts- Comic Savagery in the Theater of Kerstin Hensel.” Violence and Patriarchy in Literature and the Arts: Perspectives for the New Millenium. Eds. Agatha Schwartz and Fernando Diega. Ottawa: Ottawa University Press, 2003, 87-98.
“Not Fate, Just History.” Contemporary German Writers: Kerstin Hensel. Eds. Birgit Dahlke and Beth Linklater. Swansea: University of Wales Press, UK, 2002, 91-106.
“’Der Hellsichtigste aller Narren’: Diskurse über das Genie.” Thomas Bernhard, Die Zurichtung des Menschen. Eds. Alexander Honold and Markus Joch. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 1999, 83-91.
HUMANITIES
