Biography

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 at Chicago. From there, I 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 UBC, I served as Assistant Professor of German at Sam Houston State University. 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 incoming head of CENES (starting summer 2025).

I believe in scholarly collectives! Much of my own work in this regard has been with the international scholarly network “Diversity, Decolonization, and the German Curriculum” (DDGC), which I have co-founded in 2016. I serve 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 Networks initiative. Together with Jonah Garde (UBC), I co-convene the DDGC Queer and Trans German Studies Research Cooperative (aka, the Pink Pony Club).

Since the 2020 conference, "The Pasts and Futures of Queer German Studies," which I co-organized with Kyle Frackman (UBC), Kyle and I have been pursuing a number of projects through which we hope to facilitate 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. Part of this work entails founding the Robert D. Tobin Distinguished Lecture Series in Queer and Trans German Studies at UBC. 

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. Currently, I am collaborating with an international team of experts on two book series: one on intersectional approaches to German studies and another on queer Europe. I regularly review manuscripts for scholarly journals, presses, and grant boards in North America and beyond.

My work has been funded by Fulbright, the DAAD, SSHRC, the Canada Council for the Arts, and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. In 2023, I was awarded the Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm Prize by the DAAD 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 examining the influence of fluctuating literary markets on authorial agency and narrative form provisionally titled Fragile Poetics: Precarity and Literary Form in Early Wilhelmine Germany.

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

  • a book on queer media engagement theory grounded in occult practices around 1900 provisionally titled Divinatory Cultural Techniques: Queer Media Engagement, 1900-1933.

  • a companion to queer and trans German studies (part of a co-edited book series in development).

  • a co-edited volume on the work of Lauren Berlant.

  • a co-edited volume on Edward Berger’s All Quiet on the Western Front.

  • a co-written book with guest contributions on Grimmelshausen’s Courasche.

  • a co-edited special issue of a scholarly journal on the centennial of Béla Balázs’s Der sichtbare Mensch (Visible Man).

  • articles or book chapters on early stardom and ethnic difference, media theory and affect studies, queer film aesthetics, tarot and queer knowledge, fascist cinematic aesthetics, and queer diaspora and literary practice.

  • 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.