Prof. Dr. Christof Decker

Responsibilities

Fulbright Liaison Professor
Representative for International Relations (Graduate School of Language and Literature)
Member of the Council for International Affairs (LMU)
Coordinator of Study Programs
Member of Exam Board "Lehramtsstudiengänge Englisch"

Research fields:
Film, Media and Visual Culture Studies, Nineteenth and Twentieth Century American Literature and Culture, Cultural Studies

Current research project: Documentary in the Digital Age
My current research project examines documentary forms in the digital age, i.e. in an age of digital production, distribution, and experimentation. Feature length documentary films became popular entertainment as well as influential political activism in the 21st century. Digital technologies helped to diversify documentary forms and to create new ways of interaction and participation. Yet they have also contributed to the emergence of powerful tech companies and to the increasing commercialization of the public sphere. The project explores how this ongoing dynamic has redefined core tenets of documentary thinking, among them notions of evidence, knowledge, ethics, and impact.

Bio:
Christof Decker studied American Studies, Political Science, Psychoanalysis and Communication Studies at Frankfurt University and Goldsmiths’ College (London). He received his Ph.D. from the Free University Berlin where he also completed his second book (Habilitation) with a study on the aesthetics and cultural functions of the social melodrama in American literature and film. He is a recipient of fellowships and awards from the German Academic Exchange Service, the German Research Foundation, the Ernst-Reuter-Gesellschaft, the Bavarian American Academy, and the Terra Foundation for American Art. In his teaching he regularly offers courses on core topics of literary history and theory from the 19th to the 21st century, cultural and critical theory, media aesthetics, visual culture, and film studies. Christof Decker has published widely on documentary and Hollywood cinema, avant-garde film, literary and cultural history, melodrama, television, visual culture, and the history of mass media. Most recently he edited Visuelle Kulturen der USA. Zur Geschichte von Malerei, Fotografie, Film, Fernsehen und Neuen Medien in Amerika (2010) and Transnational Mediations: Negotiating Popular Culture between Europe and the United States (2015, with Astrid Böger).