Eric Ames

Eric Ames is an Adjunct Professor at the University of Washington in the departments of Cinema & Media Studies and German Studies. He earned his Ph.D. in German Literature and Film Studies from the University of California, Berkeley in 2000. His interdisciplinary work bridges historical analysis with media studies, focusing on modern German culture and its intersections with visual and technological developments.

• Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley, 2000

Ames specializes in historical and interdisciplinary approaches to modern German culture, with a focus on visual culture, the technologies and institutions that produce it, and its historical implications. His research spans 19th-century display culture (zoological gardens, ethnographic exhibitions), the role of science and technology in popular culture (phonograph in ethnomusicology), and cinema as an instrument of cultural power. Recent projects examine documentary film, avant-garde cinema, and German cultural studies.

His publications include Carl Hagenbeck’s Empire of Entertainments (2008), Ferocious Reality (2012), and Werner Herzog: Interviews (2014), reflecting his expertise in German cinema, documentary theory, and media history. He has also co-edited Germany’s Colonial Pasts (2005). His 2016 work on Herzog’s Aguirre, the Wrath of God underscores his ongoing focus on film analysis and cultural critique. Courses taught span German cinema history, cultural studies, and intersections of documentary and avant-garde film.

Ames has advised graduate students including Rachel Herschman, Jasmin Krakenberg, and Kevin Johnson, whose dissertations explore topics like puppetry in German propaganda, the Berlin School in cinema, and cultural appropriation in Czech-German films. His work connects academic and public scholarship through resources like podcasts, interviews, and courses on cinema and the Anthropocene.