Robert C. Reimer

Graduate Emeritus Professor

Contact via email: rcreimer@Charlotte.edu

Dr. Reimer is former Director of the Film Studies Program, which he began in 1992, former Chair of the Department of Languages and Culture Studies (Now named the Department of Languages, Cultures and Translation). He is a former Fulbright scholar and has taught at the Paedgogische Hochschule in Ludwigburg, Gemany, Kingstson University in the UK and most recently, 2013-2015, at the Université de Limoges in Limoges, France. Robert Reimer was Professor German and Film Studies. Professor Reimer’s outreach accomplishments include serving on the C/M Committee for Language Immersion. He assisted in starting German Language Immersion at Irwin Elementary after receiving a grant from AATG to survey parents on interest in German. He also received grants to create materials for German language immersion and together with the Pädagogische Hochschule (teachers’ institute) in Ludwigsburg, Germany, the Office of Study Abroad at UNC Charlotte and the C/M School System initiated a program to bring in native speaking assistants for language immersion instruction. He also supervised UNC Charlotte German students interning at Irwin Avenue Elementary. In addition to language immersion, Dr. Reimer also established the Film Studies program at UNC Charlotte which now offers a Minor in Film Studies as well as a Certificate in Video Production. Professor Reimer has actively promoted German and film in the Charlotte community. He was a founding member of Alemannia, a German language cultural association in Charlotte, served as vice president on the Charlotte Film Society, and solicited funds to establish an endowed scholarship for German majors. Professor Reimer’s research interests are film and language methodology. He has co-authored six books on German cinema on such topics as National Socialist film, postwar film, the Holocaust in film, and German film history.

Education

Ph.D. German Language and Literature, The University of Kansas. (1971)

M.A. German Language and Literature, The University of Kansas. (1968)

B. A. German Language and Literature, The University of Wisconsin Madison (1965)

Exchange Graduate Student, University of Stuttgart (196801969)

8-week Summer NEH on Existentialism, University of Minnesota (1977)

6-week Summer NEH on National Socialist Film, Cornell University (1996)

Appointments

Graduate Emeritus Professor, UNC Charlotte, 2024

Professor, UNC Charlotte, 1994

Associate Professor, UNC Charlotte, 1977

Assistant Professor, UNC Charlotte, 1971

Fulbright Exchange Professor, U. of Stuttgart, 1984-85

Exchange Professor, U. of Stuttgart, 1996, 2005

Director UNC Charlotte Program in Kingston, UK, 2002-2003

Exchange Professor, Université de Limoges, 2013-2015

Publications

Historical Dictionary of Holocaust Cinema. Lanham, Maryland and Plymouth, UK: The Scarecrow Press, 2012, 245 pages (co-authored with Carol J. Reimer).

Historical Dictionary of German Cinema, Second Edition. Lanham, Boulder, New York and London: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2019, 546 pages (Co-authored with Carol J. Reimer.

Arbeitsbuch zu German Culture through Film. Newburyport, M.A.: Focus Publishing 2006, 276 pages (Co-authored with Reinhard Zachau).

German Culture through Film: An Introduction to German Cinema, Second Edition. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., 2017, 359 pages (Co-authored with Reinhard Zachau and Margit Sinka).

Cultural History through a National Socialist Lens: Essays on the Cinema of the Third Reich, (editor). Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2000.

Nazi-Retro Film: How German Narrative Cinema Remembers the Past. New York: Twayne Publishers, 1992, 256 pages (Co-authored with Carol J. Reimer).

Environmental Debate in the USA: Cleaning Up Tomorrow? Munich: Bayerischer Schulbuch-Verlag, 1988, 88 pages. (An English Language Reader co-authored and edited with Peter Dörfel.)

Lehrerband zu Environmental Debate in the USA. Munich: Bayerischer Schulbuch Verlag, 2nd. edition, 1993, 77 pages. (Teachers’ Manual to reader cited above, co-authored with Peter Dörfel)

Papers

“Love Is Never Happy: Observations on the Role of Food in the Films of R. W. Fassbinder.” Southeastern Association of Cultural Studies 1st Annual Conference, Charlotte NC, February 8-10, 2020.

“Depiction of Auschwitz in Cinema over Time and Across Boundaries: A Comparison of Six Films.” Conference of Philosophical Association of the Carolinas, Charlotte, NC, April 7-9, 2017.

Articles, Essays, Encyclopedia Entries (selected)

“Does Laughter Make the Crime Disappear?: A Survey of Cinematic Images of Hitler and the Nazis, 1940-2007.” (7700 words). Senses of Cinema (2009), an electronic film journal found at http://archive.sensesofcinema.com/.

“Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph des Willens.” In Encyclopedia of the Documentary Film, 3 vols., ed. Ian Aitken. New York and London: Routledge, 2006. pages 1341-1344.

Leni Riefenstahl’s Olympia.” In Encyclopedia of the Documentary Film, 3 vols., ed. Ian Aitken. New York and London: Routledge, 2006. pages 1012-1015.

“Erwin Leiser’s Mein Kampf.” In Encyclopedia of the Documentary Film, 3 vols., ed. Ian Aitken. New York and London: Routledge, 2006. pages 884-886.

“Katrin Seybold.” In Encyclopedia of the Documentary Film, 3 vols., ed. Ian Aitken. New York and London: Routledge, 2006. pages 1211-1212.

“Looking for a Moral. Why America Didn’t Laugh: Analysis of Comedic Structure in Doris Dörrie’s Me and Him.” 95-105. In Straight through the Heart: Doris Dörrie, German Filmmaker and Author. Edited by Franz A. Birgel and Klaus Phillips. Scarecrow Press, 2004.

“Removing the Mask: Doris Dörrie’s Erleuchtung Garantiert.” 160-169. In Straight through the Heart: Doris Dörrie, German Filmmaker and Author. Edited by Franz A. Birgel and Klaus Phillips. Scarecrow Press, 2004.

“Self-Inflicted Wounds? Why German Enrollments Are Dropping.” 135-148. In Globalization and the Future of German. Edited by Andreas Gardt and Bernd Hüppauf. (Mouton de Gruyter, 2004).

“Picture-Perfect War: An Analysis of Joseph Vilsmaier’s Stalingrad (1993).” In Light Motives: German Popular Film in Perspective, edited by Maggie MacCarthy and Randall Halle, Wayne State University Press, 2003.

“Abschied von Sidonie: A Farewell Twice Visited: Analysis of Erich Hackl’s Novella and Karin Brandauer’s Film.” 138-155. In AfterPostmodernism: Austrian Literature and Film in Transition (Studies in Austrian Literature, Culture, and Thought) edited by Willy Riemer, Ariadne, 2000.

“Turning Inward: An Analysis of Helmut Käutner’s Auf Wiedersehen Franziska, Romanze in Moll, and Unter den Brücken,” 214-239. In Cultural History through a National Socialist Lens. edited by Robert C. Reimer, Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2000.

Specific Research Interests

German Cinema

Holocaust Cinema

Film History

Film Theory

Language Methodology

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