German and Russian Studies @ the

University of Missouri
451 Strickland Hall (formerly GCB) | Columbia, MO 65211-4170
email: grs@missouri.edu | phone: 573-882-4328 | fax: 573-884-8456

Faculty | Cook

Roger F. Cook

Professor of German
Chair of MU Film Studies Committee
Education: Ph.D., 1986, University of California, Berkeley
Office: 449 Strickland Hall
Phone: 573-882-9452
Email: cookrf@missouri.edu

On Leave 2007-2008

I came to the University of Missouri in 1986, after completing my Ph.D in German that year at the University of California, Berkeley. My B.A. is from Washington and Lee University, and before entering the graduate program at Berkeley I completed an M.A. in Germanistik at the Albert-Ludwigs-Universität, Freiburg i.Br. in Germany.

I have served as Chair of the department, and I am the Chair of the Film Studies Committee. This committee oversees the interdisciplinary Film Studies Program, which established a Film Minor in 2001 and is working toward a Major in Film Studies. This fast-growing program includes courses from such diverse departments as German and Russian Studies, English, Romance Languages, Theatre, and Computer Engineering and Computer Science.

My research interests range from film (including New German Cinema) to contemporary critical theory and 19th-century German literature and culture. My primary theoretical interests concern psychoanalytical theory, questions of identity formation, conceptions of history, and the German-Jewish symbiosis from the nineteenth century to the present. My publications have focused in particular on the New German Cinema filmmaker Wim Wenders and, more recently, on the nineteenth-century German-Jewish writer Heinrich Heine.

By the Rivers of Babylon:
Heinrich Heine's Late Songs
and Reflections
also available from Amazon

A Companion to the Works of Heinrich Heine
A Companion to the
Works of Heinrich Heine
also available from Amazon

The Cinema of Wim Wenders:
Image, Narrative, and
the Postmodern Condition
also available from Amazon

Publications

Books

By the Rivers of Babylon: Heinrich Heine's Late Songs and Reflections. Detroit: Wayne State UP, 1998. 392 pp.

The Demise of the Author: Autonomy and the German Writer 1770-1848. New York: Peter Lang, 1993. 226 pp.

Edited Books

A Companion to the Works of Heinrich Heine. Ed. Roger F. Cook. Columbia, S.C.: Camden House, 2002. 373 pp.

The Cinema of Wim Wenders: Image, Narrative, and the Postmodern Condition. Ed. Roger F. Cook and Gerd Gemünden. Detroit: Wayne State UP, 1996. 286 pp.

Selected Articles

"Vaterlandsliebe in Exile: Heinrich Heine and German-Jewish National Identity" in: Zur deutsch-jüdischen Literaturgeschichte im 19. Jahrhundert. Ed. Mark Gelber. Tübingen: Niemeyer, 2003.

"The Riddle of Love: Romantic Poetry and Historical Progress" in: A Companion to the Works of Heinrich Heine.
Ed. Roger F. Cook. Columbia, S.C.: Camden House, 2002.

"'Citronia': 'Kennst du das Land …?': A Riddle of Sexuality and Desire." in: Heine-Jahrbuch (1996): 81-112.
Reprinted in Poetry Criticism, vol . 25. Gale Research (1999).

"Postmodern Culture and Film Narrative: Paris Texas and Beyond" in: The Cinema of Wim Wenders. Ed. Roger F. Cook and Gerd Gemünden. Detroit: Wayne State UP, 1996. 121-35.

"Angels, Fiction, and History in Berlin: Wings of Desire"
in: The Cinema of Wim Wenders. Ed. Roger F. Cook and
Gerd Gemünden. Detroit: Wayne State UP, 1996. 163-190.

"Melodrama or Cinematic Folk Tale? Story and History in Deutschland, bleiche Mutter." in: The Germanic Review, 66.3 (Summer 1991): 113-129.

"Reader Response and Authorial Strategies: E. T. A. Hoffmann's View from Des Vetters Eckfenster." in: German Studies Review 12.3 (1989): 421-435.

"Relocating the Author: A New Perspective on the Narrator in Grillparzer's Der arme Spielmann" in: Franz Grillparzer's "Der arme Spielmann": New Critical Approaches. Ed. Clifford A. Bernd. Columbia, SC: Camden House, 1987. 322-336.

"Film Images and Reality: Alexander Kluge's Aesthetics of Cinema." in: Colloquia Germanica 18.4 (1985): 281-299.