Dr. Elizabeth Ward

By appointment. Contact ward@europa-uni.de

DEFA / East German Film

German film since 1945

The Holocaust on film

Historical film

Film festivals during the Cold War

German streaming series

Monographs

East German Film, Film Festivals and the Cold War. Projections of Prestige. Rochester, NY: Camden House, forthcoming 2027.

East German Film and the Holocaust. New York: Berghahn Books, 2021.

Sammelbände

East German Film and Cultural Diplomacy, ed. Elizabeth Ward. Rochester, NY: Camden House, forthcoming 2027.

Quo Vadis DEFA, eds. Mariana Ivanova, Andy Räder, Elizabeth Ward and Michael Wedel. Berlin: Springer VS, forthcoming 2027.

Entertaining German Culture. Contemporary Transnational Television and Film, eds. Stephan Ehrig, Benjamin Schaper and Elizabeth Ward. New York: Berghahn Books, 2023.

Artikel

“»Wir hoffen einen bescheidenen Beitrag zum Gelingen des Festivals geleistet zu haben.« DEFA auf dem Locarno Film Festival.” In Mehr als Tell und Heidi Deutsch-Schweizerische Filmbeziehungen, eds. Hans-Michael Bock and Erika Wottrich. Munich: edition + text, forthcoming 2026.

“Locating East German Stardom: The Case of Jutta Wachowiak.” In Stars, Stardom, and the Star System in German Cinema, eds. Chris Homewood and Jaimey Fischer. Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh Press, forthcoming 2026.

“»Nichts davon ist wirklich passiert: Some of it actually happened.« Genre trifft Geschichte in Netflix’ Kleo.” In: Transnationales deutsches Kino, eds. Jakub Gortat and Joanna Bednarska. Berlin: Springer VS, 2026.

“Spaces and Places of Economic Transformation in Hans-Christian Schmid’s Lichter (2003), Thomas Stuber’s In den Gängen (2018), and Vanessa Jopp’s Vergiss Amerika (2000).” In East German Perspectives on Transformation after 1989: Experiencing, Remembering and Responding to Unification, eds. Anna Saunders and Caroline Summers. Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2026: 158–180.

“Außenseiter mitten in der Gesellschaft. Wolfgang Kohlhaases Protagonistinnen.” In Wolfgang Kohlhaase, eds. Ilka Brombach, Chris Wahl and Michael Wedel. Munich: edition + text, 2025: 68–85.

“Ein Tagebuch für Anne Frank (A Diary for Anne Frank, 1958): The GDR’s Answer to Alain Resnais’ Nuit et Brouillard (Night and Fog, 1956)?” In: Documenting Socialism. eds. Seán Allan and Sebastian Heiduschke. New York: Berghahn Books, 2024: 265–286.

“Vom Wiederaufbau der Vergangenheit zum Aufbau der Zukunft. Kinder in den Trümmern in Gerhard Lamprechts Irgendwo in Berlin (1946) und Hans Deppes Die Kuckucks (1949).” In: Auferstanden aus Ruinen. Planen, Bauen und Wohnen in Spiel- und Dokumentarfilmen der DDR, eds. Michael Grisko and Günter Helmes. Freiburg im Breisgau: Verlag Herder GmbH, 2024: 91–104.

“Deterritorializing the Stasi in Deutschland 83/86/89.” In: Entertaining German Culture. Contemporary Transnational Television and Film, eds. Stephan Ehrig, Benjamin Schaper and Elizabeth Ward. New York: Berghahn Books, 2023: 127–150.

“Frank Beyer – Antifaschistisches Kino in der DDR.” In: 60 Jahre Nackt unter Wölfen. Zwischen Filmgeschichte und regionaler Erinnerungskultur, ed. Michael Grisko. Leipzig: Leipziger Universitätsverlag, 2023.

“Mother of the Nation? The German Democratic Republic’s Forgotten Television Star, Agnes Kraus.” In: Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, vol 42 no.3 (2022): 574–591.

“Revisiting the Crimes of the Past. The Image of the Perpetrator in Recent German Holocaust Films.” Holocaust Studies: A Journal of Culture and History, vol 2 (2021): 339–349.

“Screen Identities. Maximilian Schell and The Man in the Glass Booth.” In Maximilian Schell, eds. Hans-Peter Reichmann and Isabelle Louise Bastian. Frankfurt: Deutsches Filminstitut, 2019: 90–97.

“Marc Rothemund’s Sophie Scholl – Die letzten Tage (2005).” In: The White Rose: Reading, Writing, Resistance, ed. Alexandra Lloyd. Oxford: Treasures of the Taylorian, 2019: 79–96.

“Who is Heinz Stielke? Questions of Identity in Michael Kann’s Stielke, Heinz, fünfzehn.” In: The GDR Today. New Interdisciplinary Approaches to East German History, Memory and Culture, eds. Stephan Ehrig, Marcel Thomas and David Zell. Oxford: Peter Lang, 2018: 43–62.

“Dismantling Images of National Socialism in Cate Shortland’s Lore.” Film & History, vol. 47 no.1 (2017): 18–27.

“Contesting the Memory of Frank Beyer’s Jacob the Liar.” In. The Holocaust in the Twenty-First Century: Contesting/Contested Memories; eds. David Seymour and Mercedes Camino. New York: Routledge 2016: 163–181.

“Screening out the East. The Playing Out of Inter-German Relations at the Cannes Film Festival.” German Life and Letters, vol. 67 no.1 (2015): 37–55.

“Zur strategischen Aneignung der Anne Frank-Figur in Konrad Wolfs Professor Mamlock (1961).” In: Anne Frank. Mediengeschichten, eds. Peter Seibert, Jana Piper and Alfonso Meoli. Berlin: Metropol Verlag, 2014: 54–62.

Dr Elizabeth Ward has worked as a lecturer at several universities in Germany and the UK including the Universität Leipzig, the University of Leeds, King‘s College London and Royal Holloway, University of London.

Dr. Ward teaches a range of courses at B2.2 and C1 level.

“Prestige, Politics and Problematic Protagonists: DEFA at International Film Festivals in the West,“ DEFA-Grenzenlos: Mobilität und Raum, 2026. DEFA Tagung, Erfurt, Germany.

“Roundtable on Konrad Wolf,” German Studies Association, 2025. Atlanta, USA.

“When Disney Went to East Germany”, Society for Cinema and Media Studies, 2024. Chicago, USA.

“„Vom Kleinen Muck zum Draufgänger Biene.“ Die DEFA beim Locarno Film Festival,” Cinefest Kongress. Hamburg, Germany.

“ „Alle haben gelacht. Ich habe zu Hause geweint.“ Weibliche Selbstaushandlungen zwischen privater Erfahrung und sozialistischer Öffentlichkeit in Helga Schütz‘ Alltagsfilmen,” Helga Schütz. Ein halbes Jahrhundert in Literatur, Film, Fernsehen und Radio, 2024. Berlin, Germany.

“Pulling a Rabbit out of the Hat? East German Films at the Berlinale, 1990 to 1992,” German Studies Association, 2024. Atlanta, USA.

“Screening East Germany at the Berlin Film Festival,” Society for Cinema and Media Studies, 2024. Boston, USA.

“Nichts davon ist wirklich passiert: Some of it actually happened. Genre Meets History in Netflix’s Kleo,” Transnationales deutsches Kino, 2024. Uniwersytet Łódzki, Poland.

“Facing the Twenty-First Century with Your Back to the Border. Peripheries, Stagnation and Movement in Hans-Christian Schmid’s Lichter (2003),” Wende ohne Ende? Representing the East German Revolution and Transformation Years, 2023. University of Leeds, UK.

“From the “Biggest Flop of the Year” to the “Coolest Show of the Year”: Exploring German History and Film through Deutschland 83,” German Studies Association, 2023. Montréal, Canada.

“Streaming German Culture: German Cultural History as Transnational Entertainment,” Association for German Studies in Great Britain and Ireland, 2023. Trinity College Dublin, Ireland.

“Ein Tagebuch für Anne Frank: The GDR’s Nuit et Brouillard?,” Documenting Socialism, 2022, University of St. Andrews, UK.

“Competing Identities at the Berlin Film Festival during the Cold War,” (Re)Framing Film Festivals: Histories, Economies, Cultures, 2020. Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia, Italy.