The Division of Arts & Humanities at UC Berkeley is pleased to welcome professor Nicholas Baer as of July 1, 2023. He is an assistant professor in the Department of German and specializes in film and digital media, aesthetics, critical theory and intellectual history.
He received a summer travel grant from UC Berkeley’s Department of German in 2010 and focused his doctoral dissertation on “Absolute Relativity: Weimar Cinema and the Crisis of Historicism.” His works on film and digital media and critical theory have since been featured in publications like Film Quarterly, Krisis: Journal for Contemporary Philosophy, Los Angeles Review of Books, NECSUS: European Journal of Media Studies, Public Seminar and October
Baer earned his B.A. in cinema and media studies with general and special honors from the University of Chicago in 2007. He then went on to receive both his M.A. in rhetoric/film studies and Ph.D. in film and media with an emphasis on critical theory from UC Berkeley in 2010 and 2015, respectively. Before teaching at his alma mater, Baer most recently served as an assistant professor of media, arts & society at Utrecht University in the Netherlands.