Anna Mayer

Anna Mayer works at the intersection of German, Film, and Media Studies. Her research focuses on the late 20^th century, and particularly on the interplay of digital surveillance and terrorism in the German-speaking world. In August 2022, she completed her PhD thesis on grid and network structures in the works of writers, such as Friedrich Christian Delius and Rainald Goetz, as well as filmmakers, such as Volker Schlöndorff and Margarethe von Trotta. With the recent grant from the Faculty Research Committee, she began to turn her dissertation into a book project.

Her research examines material from the Literaturarchiv Marbach, the German Federal Archives, as well as the vast holdings of the New York Public Library—which featured her on their blog in 2020. Anna Mayer co-curated the exhibition Photography as Data, which is on display at The Loeb in Spring 2024.

Anna Mayer’s interdisciplinary scope is central to her teaching. She recently developed a course on digital surveillance, cross-listed between German Studies and Media Studies. This course engages with the works of artists such as Hito Steyerl, Harun Farocki, Trevor Paglen, as well as Laura Poitras, and explores contemporary projects such as Forensic Architecture’s investigation of the 2020 terror attack in Hanau, Germany. In the German department, Anna Mayer teaches an array of classes focusing on the 20^th century. Most recently, she taught the course “Contemporary German Culture and Media (230),” covering topics from the introduction of film and radio to contemporary issues of data surveillance.