Katja Riegler

Katja graduated from the University of Vienna, Austria, where she earned an M.A. in Film and Media Studies as well as an M.A. in German as a Foreign and Second Language. Before joining the Carolina-Duke Graduate Program in German Studies in 2021, she gained teaching experience at the University of Vienna, ELTE University in Budapest, and Trinity College Dublin. Her research focuses on political agency, democracies in crisis, and the ways in which literature, film, and the arts envision pathways from past crises to more peaceful futures. Her dissertation project, “Countervisions: Agency Through Critical Spectatorship in German Literature of the 1970s,” examines how German-language authors of the 1970s politicized visual reception within their texts, exploring new forms of agency in relation to political participation and social change. Both her research and her teaching have been recognized with competitive awards and fellowships, including a DAAD Research Grant, the Max Kade Dissertation Grant, and the Helga Bessent Teaching Award. Katja’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in venues such as Wayne State University Press, Cornell University Press, and Modern Language Review