Nicholas Baer

Nicholas Baer is Assistant Professor of German at the University of California, Berkeley, with affiliations in Critical Theory, Film & Media, Jewish Studies, New Media, and Science, Technology, Medicine & Society. He is author of Historical Turns: Weimar Cinema and the Crisis of Historicism (University of California Press, 2024) and co-editor of three volumes: The Promise of Cinema: German Film Theory, 1907–1933 (University of California Press, 2016), Unwatchable (Rutgers University Press, 2019), and Technics: Media in the Digital Age (Amsterdam University Press, 2024). Baer has published on film and digital media, aesthetics, critical theory, and the philosophy of history in journals such as Film Quarterly, Krisis: Journal for Contemporary Philosophy, Los Angeles Review of Books, NECSUS: European Journal of Media Studies, Public Seminar, and Qui Parle, and his writings have been translated into six languages. At present, he is starting a new monograph, tentatively titled The Ends of Perfection: On a Limit Concept in Global Film and Media Theory. He is a series editor of “The Key Debates: Mutations and Appropriations in European Film Studies” for Amsterdam University Press.