Entertaining German Culture: German Cultural History and Entertaining Transnational Film and Television

Audiences for contemporary German film and television are becoming increasingly transnational, and depictions of German cultural history are moving beyond the typical post-war focus on Germany’s problematic past. Entertaining German Culture explores this radical shift, building on recent research into transnational culture to argue that a new process of internal and external cultural reabsorption is taking place through areas of mutually assimilating cultural exchange such as streaming services, an increasingly international film market, and the import and export of Anglo-American media formats.

Elizabeth Ward is a film historian specializing in German cinema. She is a Visiting Fellow at the Institute of Languages, Cultures and Societies at the University of London and is a Wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin at the Europa-Universität Viadrina. Her monograph, East German Film and the Holocaust was published in 2021 with Berghahn Books.