Ilka Rasch

Ilka Rasch is an Associate Professor in the Department of MLL and the Film Studies Program at Furman University. She holds a PhD from the University of Michigan, with a dissertation titled The Return of the Red Army Faction (RAF): German Tales of Terror. Her research focuses on terrorism aesthetics, politically motivated violence in media/film/literature, visual archives, collective memory, melodrama, and German/American film history. She has extensive experience organizing study abroad programs in Berlin, Cuxhaven, and Kiel, Germany, and works as a script consultant in her spare time, including a screen credit for Wer Wenn Nicht Wir/If Not Us, Who? (2011).

Education:

• PhD, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
• MA, German Department, University of Utah, Salt Lake City
• Bachelor’s Equivalent, Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel, Germany
• Certificate in Teaching German as a Foreign Language (DaF), Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel
• Research Semester: Fernsehen Konrad Wolf (HFF), Babelsberg, Germany
• Exchange Semester: Medienwissenschaft, University of Utah

Her work interrogates how cinematic and literary narratives engage with politically charged themes like terrorism, fascism, and collective memory. She emphasizes the intersection of visual archives and cultural memory, often analyzing how film and literature reinterpret historical traumas. Her advisory contributions were recognized with the Alester G. Furman Jr. and Janie Earle Furman Meritorious Advising Award. Beyond academia, she collaborates with filmmakers, showcasing her dual expertise in theory and practice. Though no labs are explicitly mentioned, her involvement in study abroad programs and script consulting highlights her commitment to experiential and applied research.