Biography & Current Projects

My academic career began in Chicago, where I completed a B.A. (2007) and M.A. (2009) in German Studies at the University of Illinois. I then moved to St. Louis, where I completed a Ph.D. in Germanic Languages and Literatures and Film & Media Studies at Washington University in St. Louis (2015). Before starting my post at the University of British Columbia (UBC), I served as Assistant Professor of German at Sam Houston State University (SHSU). I have directed the undergraduate programs in German at both SHSU and UBC, served as Director of the UBC Centre for European Studies, was associate head of the UBC Department of Central, Eastern, and Northern European Studies (CENES), and am currently head of CENES. 

I am invested in collective approaches to infrastructure building for scholarship, teaching, and community building. For a decade I have contributed to the development of the international scholarly network “Diversity, Decolonization, and the German Curriculum” (DDGC), which I have co-founded in 2016. I served on the DDGC Steering Committee and have variously been involved in collaborative ventures such as the DDGC Blog, the DDGC Mutual Aid Network, and the DDGC Research Cooperatives initiative. 

Since the 2020 conference, "The Pasts and Futures of Queer German Studies," which I co-organized with Kyle Frackman (UBC), I have pursued a number of projects through which to facilitate the expansion of infrastructure for queer and trans German studies scholarship and teaching. This has led to UBC becoming a major hub for queer and trans German studies scholarship and teaching, including by sponsoring MA, PhD, and postdoctoral projects in these areas of inquiry. A highlight of my work in this area was establishing the Robert D. Tobin Distinguished Lecture Series in Queer and Trans German Studies at UBC. As has been my collaboration with Jasbir Puar to found UBC’s Queer Trans Centre for Radical Praxis. 

A substantial number of emerging short- and long-term research projects I am pursuing pertain to the broader arena of queer diaspora studies. I am interested in autofiction as method and am also pursuing projects that help theorize the media practices of the queer Balkan and particularly the queer Bosnian diaspora. Previously I have worked in queer German media studies with a focus on literature, film, and visual/material culture.

I serve on the editorial boards of Studies in Twentieth and Twenty-First Century Literature, Feminist German Studies, and the Women, Gender and Sexuality in German Literature and Culture series. I am collaborating with an international team of experts on co-editing the Intersectional Approaches to German Studies series with de Gruyter. I regularly review manuscripts for scholarly journals, presses, and grant boards in North America and beyond. 

My work has been funded by Fulbright, the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst / German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), the Canada Council for the Arts, and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. In 2023, I was awarded the DAAD Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm Prize in the Junior Category, which recognizes outstanding contributions to advancing international German Studies scholarship and teaching (here is the link to announcement & speech).

My personal background: I was born into a Muslim family in the former Yugoslavia. My family fled the Bosnian war. We were refugees in Germany before moving to the USA—a move inspired by German residency visa restrictions. I am a queer scholar.

Current Projects

  • a book on queer media engagement theory grounded in occult practices around 1900 provisionally titled Divinatory Cultural Techniques: Queer Media Engagement, 1900-1933 (funded through a SSHRC Insight Development Grant and an Alexander von Humboldt Fellowship for Senior Researchers).

  • a book of personal essays provisionally titled Tetka Theory: A Queer Life in the Bosnian Diaspora.

  • a co-written book with guest contributions provisionally titled Grimmelshausen’s Courasche im Kontext aktueller Theoriedebatten.

  • a co-edited volume provisionally titled Queer and Trans Approaches to German Studies (contracted with de Gruyter).

  • a co-edited volume provisionally titled Mediating World War I: Edward Berger’s All Quiet on the Western Front in Context (contracted with de Gruyter).

  • a co-edited special issue of Studies in European Cinema provisionally titled “The Visible Century: Béla Balázs’s Visible Man at 100.”

  • articles or book chapters on early German film stardom and ethnic difference, media theory and affect structures, queer film aesthetics, tarot and queer knowledge practices, fascist cinematic aesthetics, and the literary practices of the queer diaspora.

  • an art-practice project titled “The German Studies Tarot Deck” (reach out if you are interested in participating).

  • an undergraduate journal in German studies: Augenblick.

  • a collaborative research project with David Gramling titled “Linguaphobia, Linguistic Indifference, and the Monolingual University” (funded through a SSHRC Insight Grant).

  • a collaborative research project with Mo Pareles titled “On My Tongue Again: Cultural Intimacies in Jewish and Muslim Diasporic Poetics.”

  • a collaborative project with Jasbir Puar titled “Queer and Trans Solidarities and the Global Struggle Against Fascism” (funded through a SSHRC insight grant). 

  • a collaborative project with Harper Keenan and Harris Kornstein titled “Queer Play” (funded through a SSHRC Connection Grant).