Emily Dreyfus received her PhD in Germanic Studies from the University of Chicago in 2020. Her research considers the place of music, emotional address and political self-understanding in 20th-century German film and mass culture. Integrating analytical approaches from Cinema and Media Studies, Musicology and History, her work is prompted by the question of what moves us in a literal and figurative sense: the aesthetics of feeling in the motion picture of the film reel; the unfolding of music in time and the cultural and historical contingencies of emotional experience and understanding.
Intellectual Profile
Emily holds degrees in Classics and Modern Languages from Oxford University and Comparative Literature from the University of Göttingen, Germany. In 2015, she was awarded the Wayne C. Booth Graduate Student Prize for Excellence in Teaching (2015) from the University of Chicago.
Her research has been supported by grants and fellowships from the Fulbright Commission, the German Academic Exchange Service, the Mellon Humanities Foundation, Berlin Program for Advanced European Studies and the Josephine De Kármán Fellowship Trust. Recent presentations include the Cinepoetics Center for Advanced Film Studies in Berlin, the Leibniz Center for Contemporary History in Potsdam and a public lecture at the German Historical Museum, Berlin, as well as papers at the German Studies Association and the MLA.
She is currently developing her dissertation Classical Music on Screen: Affect and Ambivalence in Nazi Film into a first monograph and co-curating a 2021 exhibition to mark the 75th anniversary of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra’s opening season in occupied Berlin in 1945 in collaboration with Berlin Philharmonic Archive and the Allied Museum, Berlin. In December 2020 she will feature as a guest speaker at the Zeughaus cinema’s series on Beethoven in international film history.
Work with Students
Emily has taught in Germanic Studies and the Humanities Core since 2014. In 2015, she served as the Graudate Co-ordinator and Language Instructor for the Ferdinand Stern Vienna in Western Civilizations Study Abroad Program. From 2016-2017 she was a Writing Intern in the Humanities.
Selected Publications
2021 (forthcoming). “Beethoven through the Lens of International Cinema.” In Beethoven in Context,
edited by Glenn Stanley and John Wilson. Cambridge University Press.
2020 (forthcoming). “Widerhall des Unbehagens. Beethoven im NS-Kino.“ In Beethoven und der Film, edited by Stephan Ahrens. Berlin: Bertz und Fischer.
2020 (forthcoming). “Dienst an der ernsten und großen Musik: Philharmoniker im Spiegel der NS-Kulturpolitik.” Filmblatt 70 (Autumn).
2019. Review of Klang als Geschichtsmedium. Perspektiven für eine auditive Geschichtsschreibung, edited by Anna Langenbruch. Bielefeld: Transcript, 2018. H-Soz-Kult, June 7, 2019.
2018. Review of Musical Modernism and German Cinema from 1913 to 1933, by Francesco Finocchiaro. London, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017. Filmblatt 66/67 (Autumn).
Teaching
• (Re)-living Nazi Germany through the Eyes of the Graphic Novel: Winter 2021
• Advanced German in Vienna (GRMN 15005), University of Chicago: Fall 2015
• Intermediate German in Vienna (GRMN 15003), University of Chicago: Fall 2015
• Elementary German in Vienna (GRMN 15002), University of Chicago: Fall 2015
• Elementary German for Beginners (GRMN 10300), University of Chicago: Spring 2015
• Elementary German for Beginners (GRMN 10200), University of Chicago: Winter 2015
• Elementary German for Beginners (GRMN 10100), University of Chicago: Fall 2014; Fall 2020.
• Human Being and Citizen (HUMA 12300), University of Chicago: Fall 2016 (TA)